| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: of the landing at Boulogne with the tame eagle? Will not that, and
stranger facts still, but just as true, be relegated to the region
of myth, with the dream of Astyages, and the young and princely
herdsman playing at king over his fellow-slaves?
But enough of this. To me these bits of romance often seem the
truest, as well as the most important portions of history.
When old Herodotus tells me how, King Astyages having guarded the
frontier, Harpagus sent a hunter to young Cyrus with a fresh-killed
hare, telling him to open it in private; and how, sewn up in it was
the letter, telling him that the time to rebel was come, I am
inclined to say, That must be true. It is so beneath the dignity of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: gardened townships spoke of country fare and pleasant summer
evenings on the stoop. It was a sort of flat paradise; but, I am
afraid, not unfrequented by the devil. That morning dawned with
such a freezing chill as I have rarely felt; a chill that was not
perhaps so measurable by instrument, as it struck home upon the
heart and seemed to travel with the blood. Day came in with a
shudder. White mists lay thinly over the surface of the plain, as
we see them more often on a lake; and though the sun had soon
dispersed and drunk them up, leaving an atmosphere of fever heat
and crystal pureness from horizon to horizon, the mists had still
been there, and we knew that this paradise was haunted by killing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: word of God or be in the soul. Faith alone and the word reign in
it; and such as is the word, such is the soul made by it, just as
iron exposed to fire glows like fire, on account of its union
with the fire. It is clear then that to a Christian man his faith
suffices for everything, and that he has no need of works for
justification. But if he has no need of works, neither has he
need of the law; and if he has no need of the law, he is
certainly free from the law, and the saying is true, "The law is
not made for a righteous man" (1 Tim. i. 9). This is that
Christian liberty, our faith, the effect of which is, not that we
should be careless or lead a bad life, but that no one should
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