| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: When you have learnt this, you will know that Christ is necessary
for you, since He has suffered and risen again for you, that,
believing on Him, you might by this faith become another man, all
your sins being remitted, and you being justified by the merits
of another, namely of Christ alone.
Since then this faith can reign only in the inward man, as it is
said, "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness" (Rom. x.
10); and since it alone justifies, it is evident that by no
outward work or labour can the inward man be at all justified,
made free, and saved; and that no works whatever have any
relation to him. And so, on the other hand, it is solely by
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: the fortifications raised by nature, and the granite towers built by
man; combined with all the artifices of light and shade, with the
contrasts of the varieties of foliage, with the groups of houses where
an active population swarms, with the lonely barren places where the
granite will not suffer even the lichen to fasten on its surface, in
short, with all the ideas we ask a landscape to possess: grace and
awfulness, poesy with its renascent magic, sublime pictures,
delightful ruralities,--all these are here; it is Brittany in bloom.
The tower called the Papegaut, against which the house now occupied by
Mademoiselle de Verneuil rested, has its base at the very bottom of
the precipice, and rises to the esplanade which forms the cornice or
The Chouans |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: who knew, and have handed the business over to them and trusted in them;
nor should we have allowed those who were under us to do anything which
they were not likely to do well; and they would be likely to do well just
that of which they had knowledge; and the house or state which was ordered
or administered under the guidance of wisdom, and everything else of which
wisdom was the lord, would have been well ordered; for truth guiding, and
error having been eliminated, in all their doings, men would have done
well, and would have been happy. Was not this, Critias, what we spoke of
as the great advantage of wisdom--to know what is known and what is unknown
to us?
Very true, he said.
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