| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: show and pretence, with nothing back of them; against which
Christ warns us, Matthew vii: "Beware of false prophets, which
come to you in sheep's clothing." Such are all who wish with
their many good works, as they say, to make God favorable to
themselves, and to buy God's grace from Him, as if He were a
huckster or a day-laborer, unwilling to give His grace and favor
for nothing. These are the most perverse people on earth, who
will hardly or never be converted to the right way. Such too are
all who in adversity run hither and thither, and look for counsel
and help everywhere except from God, from Whom they are most
urgently commanded to seek it; whom the Prophet Isaiah reproves
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: love of power that he labored, as from the excitement of the
game. The larger the scale the better he liked it; a large
railroad operation, a large tract of real estate, a big and
noisy statesman,--these investments he found irresistible.
On which of his two sets of principles he would manage a wife
remained to be proved. It is the misfortune of what are called
self-made men in America, that, though early accustomed to the
society of men of the world, they often remain utterly
unacquainted with women of the world, until those charming
perils are at last sprung upon them in full force, at New York
or Washington. John Lambert at forty was as absolutely
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: wounded elephant. Torn out of its bolt-ropes, it faded like a
whiff of smoke in the smoky drift of clouds shattered and torn by
the shift of wind. For the shift of wind had come. The unveiled,
low sun glared angrily from a chaotic sky upon a confused and
tremendous sea dashing itself upon a coast. We recognised the
headland, and looked at each other in the silence of dumb wonder.
Without knowing it in the least, we had run up alongside the Isle
of Wight, and that tower, tinged a faint evening red in the salt
wind-haze, was the lighthouse on St. Catherine's Point.
My skipper recovered first from his astonishment. His bulging eyes
sank back gradually into their orbits. His psychology, taking it
The Mirror of the Sea |
