| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: And lastly, as beyond all controversy admirable, note this contrast:
First, the Persian, who, believing that in the multitude of his riches
he had power to lay all things under his feet, would fain have swept
into his coffers all the gold and all the silver of mankind: for him,
and him alone, the costliest and most precious things of earth. And
then this other, who contrariwise so furnished his establishment as to
be totally independent of every adventitious aid.[5] And if any one
doubts the statement, let him look and see with what manner of
dwelling-place he was contented; let him view the palace doors: these
are the selfsame doors, he might well imagine, which Aristodemus,[6]
the great-great-grandson of Heracles, took and set up in the days of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS AND BENEVOLENCE,
AFFECTION FOR HIS PERSON, AND
GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP,
AND AS
A Small but most Sincere Acknowledgement of
HIS PRE-EMINENT SERVICES IN BEHALF OF THE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
OF AN
AFFLICTED, DESPISED AND DEEPLY OUTRAGED PEOPLE,
BY RANKING SLAVERY WITH PIRACY AND MURDER,
AND BY
DENYING IT EITHER A LEGAL OR CONSTITUTIONAL EXISTENCE,
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: on the Sabbath lay in the tomb the entire day of rest, free from
all His works, and was the first to fulfil this Commandment,
although He needed it not for Himself, but only for our comfort,
that we also in all suffering and death should be quiet and have
peace. Since, as Christ was raised up after His rest and
henceforth lives only in God and God in Him, so also shall we by
the death of our Adam, which is perfectly accomplished only
through natural death and burial, be lifted up into God, that God
may live and work in us forever. Lo! these are the three parts
of man: reason, desire, aversion; in which all his works are
done. These, therefore, must be slain by these three exercises,
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