| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: obedience? What fulfilment can be more full than universal
obedience? Now this is not accomplished by works, but by faith
alone.
On the other hand, what greater rebellion, impiety, or insult to
God can there be, than not to believe His promises? What else is
this, than either to make God a liar, or to doubt His truth--that
is, to attribute truth to ourselves, but to God falsehood and
levity? In doing this, is not a man denying God and setting
himself up as an idol in his own heart? What then can works, done
in such a state of impiety, profit us, were they even angelic or
apostolic works? Rightly hath God shut up all, not in wrath nor
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: steal from poesy a single lie with which to embellish this narrative.
The following is a true history, on which you may safely spend the
treasures of your sensibility--if you have any.
In these days the French language has as many idioms and represents as
many idiosyncracies as there are varieties of men in the great family
of France. It is extremely curious and amusing to listen to the
different interpretations or versions of the same thing or the same
event by the various species which compose the genus Parisian,--
"Parisian" is here used merely to generalize our remark.
Therefore, if you should say to an individual of the species
Practical, "Do you know Madame Firmiani?" he would present that lady
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: of rest. He hadn't told me he was ill again that he had had a
warning; but I hadn't needed this, for I found his reticence his
worst symptom. The only thing he said to me was that he believed a
comfortable attack of something or other would set him up: it
would put out of the question everything but the exemptions he
prized. I'm afraid I shall have presented him as a martyr in a
very small cause if I fail to explain that he surrendered himself
much more liberally than I surrendered him. He filled his lungs,
for the most part; with the comedy of his queer fate: the tragedy
was in the spectacles through which I chose to look. He was
conscious of inconvenience, and above all of a great renouncement;
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