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Where Possible Paul Avoids Quoting The Teaching Of Jesus, In Fact Even Mentioning It. If We Had To Rely On Paul, We Should Not Know That Jesus Taught In Parables, Had Delivered The Sermon On The Mount, And Had Taught His Disciples The 'our Father.' Even Where They Are Specially Relevant, Paul Passes Over The Words Of The Lord.

-Albert Schweitzer

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Where Possible Paul Avoids

Albert Schweitzer

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Where Possible Paul Avoids Quoting The Teaching Of Jesus, In Fact Even Mentioning It. If We Had To Rely On Paul, We Should Not Know That Jesus Taught In Parables, Had Delivered The Sermon On The Mount, And Had Taught His Disciples The 'our Father.' Even Where They Are Specially Relevant, Paul Passes Over The Words Of The Lord.

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Until He Extends His Circle Of Compassion To Include All Living Things, Man Will Not Himself Find Peace.

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Thinking About Death... Produces Love For Life. When We Are Familiar With Death, We Accept Each Week, Each Day, As A Gift. Only If We Are Able Thus To Accept Life Bit By Bit Does It Become Precious.

Only When An Ideal Of Peace Is Born In The Minds Of The Peoples Will The Institutions Set Up To Maintain This Peace Effectively Fulfill The Function Expected Of Them.

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Search And See If There Is Not Some Place Where You May Invest Your Humanity.

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Preservation Of Life

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Serious Illness

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If A Man Loses His Reverence For Any Part Of Life, He Will Lose His Reverence For All Of Life.

Do Not Let Sunday Be Taken From You. If Your Soul Has No Sunday, It Becomes An Orphan.

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Knowledge Of God

I Can Do No Other Than Be Reverent Before Everything That Is Called Life. I Can Do No Other Than To Have Compassion For All That Is Called Life. That Is The Beginning And The Foundation Of All Ethics.

Reverence For Life

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Man Must Cease Attributing His Problems To His Environment, And Learn Again To Exercise His Will - His Personal Responsibility In The Realm Of Faith And Morals.

Example Is Not The Main Thing In Influencing Others. It Is The Only Thing.

What Does Reverence For Life Say Abut The Relations Between [humanity] And The Animal World? Whenever I Injury Any Kind Of Life I Must Be Quite Certain That It Is Necessary. I Must Never Go Beyond The Unavoidable, Not Even In Apparently Insignificant Things. The Farmer Who Has Mowed Down A Thousand Flowers In His Meadow In Order To Feed His Cows Must Be Careful On His Way Home Not To Strike The Head Off A Single Flower By The Side Of The Road In Idle Amusement, For He Thereby Infringes On The Law Of Life Without Being Under The Pressure Of Necessity.

Even If It Is A Little Thing, Do Something For Those Who Have Need Of Help.

The Tragedy Of Life Is What Dies Inside A Man While He Lives.

The Only Ones Who Will Find Real Happiness Are Those Who Find A Way To Serve

We Are All So Much Together, But We Are All Dying Of Loneliness.

Reverence For Life Brings Us Into A Spiritual Relation With The World Which Is Independent Of All Knowledge Of The Universe.

There Slowly Grew Up In Me An Unshakable Conviction That We Have No Right To Inflict Suffering And Death On Another Living Creature, Unless There Is Some Unavoidable Necessity For It.

Suffering And Death

Faith Which Refuses To Face Indisputable Facts Is But Little Faith. Truth Is Always Gain, However Hard It Is To Accommodate Ourselves To It. To Linger In Any Kind Of Untruth Proves To Be A Departure From The Straight Way Of Faith.

The Thinking Man Must Oppose All Cruelties No Matter How Deeply Rooted In Tradition Or Surrounded By A Halo.

The Great Enemy Of Morality Is Indifference.

Does My Behavior In Respect Of Love Affect Nothing? That Is Because There Is Not Enough Love In Me.

Ethics Is Nothing Else Than Reverence For Life.

Reverence For Life

The Ethic Of Reverence For Life Is The Ethic Of Love Widened Into Universality.

Be Faithful To Your Love And You Mill Be Recompensed Beyond Measure.

A Heavy Guilt Rests Upon Us For What The Whites Of All Nations Have Done To The Colored Peoples. When We Do Good To Them, It Is Not Benevolence--it Is Atonement.

Compassion, In Which All Ethics Must Take Root, Can Only Attain Its Full Breadth And Depth If It Embraces All Living Creatures And Does Not Limit Itself To Mankind.

Ethical Existence [is] The Highest Manifestation Of Spirituality.

The Harvested Fields Bathed In The Autumn Mist Speak Of God And His Goodness Far More Vividly Than Any Human Lips.

If You Own Something You Cannot Give Away, Then You Don't Own It, It Owns You.

I Do Not Know What Your Destiny May Be, But I Do Know This, That Not One Of You Will Find The Happiness That Each Of You Is Seeking Until You Have First Sought And Found A Way In Which To Unselfishly Serve Others.

The Deeper We Look Into Nature, The More We Recognize That It Is Full Of Life, And The More Profoundly We Know That All Life Is A Secret And That We Are United With All Life That Is In Nature.

Constant Kindness Can Accomplish Much.

At That Point In Life Where Your Talent Meets The Needs Of The World, That Is Where God Wants You To Be.

Sincerity Is The Foundation Of The Spiritual Life.

The Bhagavad-gita Has A Profound Influence On The Spirit Of Mankind By Its Devotion To God Which Is Manifested By Actions.

Devotion To God

It Is Through The Idealism Of Youth That Man Catches Sight Of Truth, And In That Idealism He Possesses A Wealth Which He Must Never Exchange For Anything Else.

Profound Love Demands A Deep Conception And Out Of This Develops Reverence For The Mystery Of Life. It Brings Us Close To All Beings, To The Poorest And Smallest As Well As All Others.

We Are United With All Life That Is In Nature. Man Can No Longer Live His Life For Himself Alone.

No Ray Of Sunlight Is Ever Lost, But The Green Which It Awakes Into Existence Needs Time To Sprout, And It Is Not Always Granted To The Sower To See The Harvest. All Work That Is Worth Anything Is Done In Faith.

Day By Day We Should Weigh What We Have Granted To The Spirit Of The World Against What We Have Denied To The Spirit Of Jesus, In Thought And Especially In Deed.

The Demands Of Jesus Are Difficult Just Because They Require Us To Do Something Extraordinary. At The Same Time He Asks Us To Regard These As Something Usual, Ordinary.

Thought Is The Strongest Thing We Have. Work Done By True And Profound Thought - That Is A Real Force.

World-view Is A Product Of Life-view, Not Vice Versa.

Pain Is A More Terrible Lord Of Mankind Than Even Death Itself.

If There Is Anything I Have Learned About Men And Women, It Is That There Is A Deeper Spirit Of Altruism Than Is Ever Evident. Just As The Rivers We See Are Minor Compared To The Underground Streams, So, Too, The Idealism That Is Visible Is Minor Compared To What People Carry In Their Hearts Unreleased Or Scarcely Released.

The Great Secret Of Success Is To Go Through Life As A Man Who Never Gets Used To Failing.

Every Patient Carries His Or Her Own Doctor Inside.

Pablo Casals Is A Great Musician In All He Does: A Cellist Without Equal, And Extraordinary Conductor And Composer With Something To Say. I Have Been Profoundly Impressed By All I Have Heard Of His Work, But He Is A Musician Of This Stature Because He Is Also A Great Man.

In Case My Life Should End With The Cannibals, I Hope They Will Write On My Tombstone, 'we Have Eaten Dr. Schweitzer. He Was Good To The End.'

Our Degeneration, When It Is Traced Back To Its Origin In Our View Of The World Really Consists In The Fact That True Optimism Has Vanished Unperceived From Our Midst.

Most Men Are Scantily Nourished On A Modicum Of Happiness And A Number Of Empty Thoughts Which Life Lays On Their Plates. They Are Kept In The Road Of Life Through Stern Necessity By Elemental Duties Which They Cannot Avoid.

I Used To Suffer Particularly Because The Poor Animals Must Endure So Much Pain And Want. The Sight Of An Old, Limping Horse Being Dragged Along By One Man While Another Man Struck Him With A Stick He Was Being Driven To The Colmar Slaughterhouse - Haunted Me For Weeks.

Man Has Lost The Capacity To Foresee And To Forestall. He Will End By Destroying The Earth.

If You Truly Desire Happiness, Seek And Learn How To Serve.

For Us The Great Men Are Not Those Who Solved The Problems, But Those Whodiscovered Them.

O Heavenly Father, Protect And Bless All Things That Have Breath: Guard Them From All Evil And Let Them Sleep In Peace.

Jesus Means Something To Our World Because A Mighty Spiritual Force Streams Forth From Him And Flows Through Our Being Also. This Fact Can Neither Be Shaken Nor Confirmed By Any Historical Discovery. It Is The Solid Foundation Of Christianity.

I Always Think That We Live, Spiritually, By What Others Have Given Us In The Significant Hours Of Our Life. These Significant Hours Do Not Announce Themselves As Coming, But Arrive Unexpected.

What Has Been Presented As Christianity During These Nineteen Centuries Is Only A Beginning, Full Of Mistakes, Not Full Blown Christianity Springing From The Spirit Of Jesus.

I Am Life That Wants To Live, In The Midst Of Life That Wants To Live.

When People Have Light In Themselves, It Will Shine Out From Them. Then We Get To Know Each Other As We Walk Together In The Darkness, Without Needing To Pass Our Hands Over Each Other's Faces, Or To Intrude Into Each Other's Hearts.

I Believe That I Possess This Value: To Serve Jesus. I Am Less At Peace Than If My Goal Would Be To Attain A Professorship And A Good Life, But I Live. And That Gives Me The Tremendous Feeling Of Happiness, As If One Would Hear Music. One Feels Uprooted, Because One Asks, What Lies Ahead, What Decisions Should I Make-but More Alive, Happier Than Those Anchored In Life. To Drift With Released Anchor.

You Must Learn To Understand The Secret Of Gratitude. It Is More Than Just So-called Virtue. It Is Revealed To You As A Mysterious Law Of Existence. In Obedience To It We Have To Fulfill Our Destiny.

The African Is My Brother But He Is My Younger Brother By Several Centuries.

We All Owe To Others Much Of The Gentleness And Wisdom That We Have Made Our Own; And We May Well Ask Ourselves What Will Others Owe To Us

Not Less Strong Than The Will To Truth Must Be The Will To Sincerity. Only An Age, Which Can Show The Courage Of Sincerity, Can Possess Truth, Which Works As A Spiritual Force Within It.

Nature Compels Us To Recognize The Fact Of Mutual Dependence, Each Life Necessarily Helping The Other Lives Who Are Linked To It. In The Very Fibers Of Our Being, We Bear Within Ourselves The Fact Of The Solidarity Of Life.

Man Can Hardly Even Recognize The Devils Of His Own Creation.

Mind Your Own Business

No Man Need Fear Death, He Need Fear Only That He May Die Without Having Known His Greatest Power: The Power Of His Free Will To Give His Life For Others

Man's Ethics Must Not End With Man, But Should Extend To The Universe. He Must Regain The Consciousness Of The Great Chain Of Life From Which He Cannot Be Separated.

The Highest Proof Of The Spirit Is Love. Love The Eternal Thing Which Can Already On Earth Possess As It Really Is.

...try To Tell The People Of America About Dr. Gerson's Merits And ...results...i Wish You The Best In Your Difficult Task.

As We Acquire Knowledge, Things Do Not Become More Comprehensible, But More Mysterious.

The Thinking (person) Must Oppose All Cruel Customs, No Matter How Deeply Rooted In Tradition And Surrounded By A Halo. When We Have A Choice, We Must Avoid Bringing Torment And Injury Into The Life Of Another.

The Only Way Out Of Today's Misery Is For People To Become Worthy Of Each Other's Trust.

Happiness Is Nothing More Than Good Health And A Bad Memory.

For Animals That Are Overworked, Underfed, And Cruelly Treated; For All Wistful Creatures In Captivity That Beat Their Wings Against Bars; For Any That Are Hunted Or Lost Or Deserted Or Frightened Or Hungry; For All That Must Be Put To Death...and For Those Who Deal With Them We Ask A Heart Of Compassion And Gentle Hands And Kindly Words.

By Having A Reverence For Life, We Enter Into A Spiritual Relation With The World By Practicing Reverence For Life We Become Good, Deep, And Alive.

Eventually All Things Fall Into Place. Until Then, Laugh At The Confusion, Live For The Moments, And Know Everything Happens For A Reason.

Everything Happens For A Reason

I Am Conscious That Meat Eatingis Not In Accordance With The Finer Feelings,and I Abstain From It Whenever I Can.

The Quiet Conscience Is The Invention Of The Devil. No One Of Us May Permit Any Preventable Pain To Be Inflicted Even Though The Responsibility For That Pain Is Not Ours. No One May Shut His Eyes And Think That The Pain Which Is Therefore Not Visible, Is Non-existent.

It Is Not Always Granted To The Sower To See The Harvest.

My Life Is My Argument.

The Great Secret Of Success Is To Go Through Life As A Person Who Never Gets Used Up. That Is Possible For Those Who Never Argue And Strive With People And Facts, But In All Experience Retires Upon Themselves, And Look For The Ultimate Cause Of Things In Themselves.

Joy, Sorrow, Tears, Lamentation, Laughter -- To All These Music Gives Voice, But In Such A Way That We Are Transported From The World Of Unrest To A World Of Peace, And See Reality In A New Way, As If We Were Sitting By A Mountain Lake And Contemplating Hills And Woods And Clouds In The Tranquil And Fathomless Water.

Any Profound View Of The World Is Mysticism. It Has, Of Course, To Deal With Life And The World, Both Of Which Are Nonrational Entities.

Truth Has Not Special Time Of Its Own. Its Hour Is Now - Always And, Indeed Then Most Truly, When It Seems Unsuitable To Actual Circumstances.

Anyone Who Proposes To Do Good Must Not Expect People To Roll Stones Out Of His Way, But Must Accept His Lot Calmly If They Even Roll A Few More On It. A Strength Which Becomes Clearer And Stronger Through Experiences Of Such Obstacles Is The Only Strength That Can Conquer Them. Resistance Is Only A Waste Of Strength.

He Who Does Not Reflect His Life Back To God In Gratitude Does Not Know Himself.

The Christ Of Theology Is Not Alive For Us Today. He Is Wrapped In The Grave Cloths Of Dogma.

Only Through Love Can We Obtain Communion With God.

Communion With God

Wherever A Man Turns He Can Find Someone Who Needs Him.

By Ethical Conduct Toward All Creatures, We Enter Into A Spiritual Relationship With The Universe.

There Is Nothing More Negative Than The Result Of The Critical Study Of The Life Of Jesus. The Jesus Of Nazareth Who Came Forward Publicly As The Messiah, Who Preached The Kingdom Of God, Who Founded The Kingdom Of Heaven Upon Earth, And Died To Give His Work Its Final Consecration, Never Had Any Existence. He Is A Figure Designed By Rationalism, Endowed With Life By Liberalism, And Clothed By Modern Theology In An Historical Garb.

All Work That Is Worth Anything Is Done In Faith.

Constant Kindness Can Accomplish Much. As The Sun Makes Ice Melt, Kindness Causes Misunderstanding, Mistrust, And Hostility To Evaporate.

There Can Be No Kingdom Of God In The World Without The Kingdom Of God In Our Hearts.

Bach Is Thus A Terminal Point. Nothing Comes From Him; Everything Merely Leads To Him.

The Study Of The Life Of Jesus Has Had A Curious History. It Set Out In Quest Of The Historical Jesus, Believing That When It Had Found Him It Could Bring Him Straight Into Our Time As A Teacher And Saviour. ... But He Does Not Stay; He Passes By Our Time And Returns To His Own... He Returned To His Own Time, Not Owing To The Application Of Any Historical Ingenuity, But By The Same Inevitable Necessity By Which The Liberated Pendulum Returns To Its Original Position.

What The Activity Of This Disposition Of Ours Means In The Evolution Of The World, We Do Not Know. Nor Can We Regulate This Activity From Outside; We Must Leave Entirely To Each Individual Its Shaping And Its Extension. From Every Point Of View, Then, World- And Life-affirmation And Ethics Are Non-rational, And We Must Have The Courage To Admit It.

Thought Is The Strongest Thing We Have.

God Much Are The Truly Wealthy. So Our Inner Happiness Depends Not On What We Experience But On The Degree Of Our Gratitude To God, Gratitude — The Secret Of Life.

Reverence For Life Affords Me My Fundamental Principle Of Morality, Namely, That Good Consists In Maintaining, Assisting, And Enhancing Life And That To Destroy, Harm, Or To Hinder Life Is Evil. Affirmation Of The World - That Is Affirmation Of The Will To Live, Which Appears In Phenomenal Forms All Around Me - Is Only Possible For Me In That I Give Myself Out For Other Life.

To Affirm Life Is To Deepen, To Make More Inward, And To Exalt The Will-to-life. At The Same Time The Man Who Has Become A Thinking Being Feels A Compulsion To Give Every Will-to-live The Same Reverence For Life That He Gives To His Own. He Experiences That Other Life As His Own. He Accepts As Being Good: To Preserve Life, To Raise To Its Highest Value Life Which Is Capable Of Development; And As Being Evil: To Destroy Life, To Injure Life, To Repress Life Which Is Capable Of Development. This Is The Absolute, Fundamental Principle Of The Moral, And It Is A Necessity Of Thought.

Very Little Of The Great Cruelty Shown By Men Can Really Be Attributed To Cruel Instinct. Most Of It Comes From Thoughtlessness Or Inherited Habit. Extract From 'memories Of Childhood And Youth.'

A Man Does Not Have To Be An Angel In Order To Be Saint.

Thought Cannot Avoid The Ethical Or Reverence And Love For All Life. It Will Abandon The Old Confined Systems Of Ethics And Be Forced To Recognize The Ethics That Knows No Bounds. But On The Other Hand, Those Who Believe In Love For All Creation Must Realize Clearly The Difficulties Involved In The Problem Of A Boundless Ethic And Must Be Resolved Not To Veil From Humankind The Conflicts Which This Ethic Will Involve Us, But Allow Us Really To Experience Them. To Think Out In Every Implication The Ethic Of Love For All Creation This Is The Difficult Task Which Confronts Our Age.

Inspirational Love

To The Truly Ethical Man, All Of Life Is Sacred, Including Forms Of Life That From The Human Point Of View May Seem Lower Than Ours.

My Life Carries Its Own Meaning In Itself.

Meaning Of Life

Don't Stop To Ask Whether The Animal Or Plant You Meet Deserves Your Sympathy, Or How Much It Feels, Or Even Whether It Can Feel At All: Respect It And Consider All Life Sacred.

Anyone Who Proposes To Do Good Must Not Expect People To Roll Stones Out Of His Way, But Must Accept His Lot Calmly If They Even Roll A Few More Upon It.

Help Me To Fling My Life Like A Flaming Firebrand Into The Gathering Darkness Of The World.

My View Is That We Stand Up For Treating The Animals In A Considerate Way, For Completely Renouncing The Eating Of Meat And Also For Speaking Out Against It. This Is What I Do Myself. And In This Way Many A One Becomes Aware Of A Problem That Was Put Forward So Late.

The Result Of The Voyage Does Not Depend On The Speed Of The Ship, But On Whether Or Not It Keeps A True Course.

Ethics Cannot Be Based Upon Our Obligations Toward People, But They Are Complete And Natural Only When We Feel This Reverence For Life And The Desire To Have Compassion For And To Help All Creatures Insofar As It Is In Our Power. I Think That This Ethic Will Become More And More Recognized Because Of Its Great Naturalness And Because It Is The Foundation Of A True Humanism Toward Which We Must Strive If Our Culture Is To Become Truly Ethical.

Jesus No Doubt Fits His Teaching Into The Late-jewish Messianic Dogma. But He Does Not Think Dogmatically. He Formulates No Doctrine. He Is Far From Judging Any Man's Belief By Reference To Any Standard Of Dogmatic Correctness. Nowhere Does He Demand Of His Hearers That They Shall Sacrifice Thinking To Believing.

One Truth Stands Firm. All That Happens In World History Rests On Something Spiritual. If The Spiritual Is Strong, It Creates World History. If It Is Weak, It Suffers World History.

The Path Of Awakening Is Not About Becoming Who You Are. Rather It Is About Unbecoming Who You Are Not.

Becoming Who You Are

Aim For Service And Success Will Follow!

All People Are Endowed With The Faculty Of Compassion, And For This Reason Can Develop The Humanitarian Spirit.

I Have Always Held Firmly To The Thought That Each One Of Us Can Do A Little To Bring Some Portion Of Misery To An End.

A Man Is Truly Ethical Only When He Obeys The Compulsion To Help All Life Which He Is Able To Assist, And Shrinks From Injuring Anything That Lives.

Because I Have Confidence In The Power Of Truth And In The Spirit, I Believe In The Future Of Mankind. Affirmation Of The World And Of Life Contains Within Itself An Optimistic Willing And Hoping Which Can Never Be Lost. It Is, Therefore, Never Afraid To Face The Dismal Reality And To See It As It Really Is.

Living Truth Is That Alone Which Has Its Origins In Thinking. Just As A Tree Bears Year After Year The Same Fruit Which Is Each Year New, So Must All Permanently Valuable Ideas Be Continually Born Again In Thought.

Rational Thinking Which Is Free From Assumptions Ends Therefore In Mysticism. To Relate Oneself In The Spirit Of Reverence For Life To The Multiform Manifestations Of The Will-to-live Which Together Constitute The World Is Ethical Mysticism. All Profound World-view Is Mysticism, The Essence Of Which Is Just This: That Out Of My Unsophisticated And Naïve Existence In The World There Comes, As A Result Of Thought About Self And The World, Spiritual Self-devotion To The Mysterious Infinite Will Which Is Continuously Manifested In The Universe.

All The Kindness Which A Man Puts Out Into The World Works On The Heart And Thoughts Of Mankind.

There Is No Higher Religion Than Human Service.

Community Service

Kindness Works Simply And Perseveringly; It Produces No Strained Relations Which Prejudice Its Working; Strained Relations Which Already Exist It Relaxes. Mistrust And Misunderstanding It Puts To Flight, And It Strengthens Itself By Calling Forth Answering Kindness. Hence It Is The Furthest Reaching And The Most Effective Of All Forces.

In Resigning Ourselves To Our Fate Without A Struggle, We Are Guilty Of Inhumanity.

The Stronger The Reverence For Natural Life, The Stronger Grows Also That For Spiritual Life.

Reverence For Life

Just As The Wave Cannot Exist For Itself, But Is Ever A Part Of The Heaving Surface Of The Ocean, So Must I Never Live My Life For Itself, But Always In The Experience Which Is Going On Around Me.

But Merely Accepting Authoritarian Truth, Even If That Truth Has Some Virtue, Does Not Bring Skepticism To An End. To Blindly Accept A Truth One Has Never Reflected Upon Retards The Advance Of Reason. Our World Rots In Deceit. . . . Just As A Tree Bears The Same Fruit Year After Year And At The Same Time Fruit That Is New Each Year, So Must All Permanently Valuable Ideas Be Continually Created Anew In Thought. But Our Age Pretends To Make A Sterile Tree Bear Fruit By Tying Fruits Of Truth Onto Its Branches.

A Man Who Possesses A Veneration Of Life Will Not Simply Say His Prayers. He Will Throw Himself Into The Battle To Preserve Life, If For No Other Reason Than That He Himself Is An Extension Of Life Around Him.

When Man Learns To Respect Even The Smallest Being Of Creation...nobody Has To Teach Him To Love His Fellow Man. Compassion For Animals Is Intimately Connected With Goodness Of Character, And It May Be Confidently Asserted That He Who Is Cruel To Animals Cannot Be A Good Man.

Animal Protection Is Education To The Humanity.

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Bruce McCulloch

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