| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: negations. In different ages and countries there have been forms of light
in which nothing could be discerned and which have nevertheless exercised a
life-giving and illumining power. For the higher intelligence of man seems
to require, not only something above sense, but above knowledge, which can
only be described as Mind or Being or Truth or God or the unchangeable and
eternal element, in the expression of which all predicates fail and fall
short. Eternity or the eternal is not merely the unlimited in time but the
truest of all Being, the most real of all realities, the most certain of
all knowledge, which we nevertheless only see through a glass darkly. The
passionate earnestness of Parmenides contrasts with the vacuity of the
thought which he is revolving in his mind.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: ceiling. The service began by my son reading a chapter from the
Samoan Bible, Tusitala following with a prayer in English,
sometimes impromptu, but more often from the notes in this little
book, interpolating or changing with the circumstance of the day.
Then came the singing of one or more hymns in the native tongue,
and the recitation in concert of the Lord's Prayer, also in Samoan.
Many of these hymns were set to ancient tunes, very wild and
warlike, and strangely at variance with the missionary words.
Sometimes a passing band of hostile warriors, with blackened faces,
would peer in at us through the open windows, and often we were
forced to pause until the strangely savage, monotonous noise of the
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