| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther: they are all wrong. Circumcision and the law and good works are carnal.
"We," says Paul, "are above such things. We possess Christ by faith and in
the midst of our afflictions we hopefully wait for the consummation of
our righteousness."
You may say, "The trouble is I don't feel as if I am righteous." You must
not feel, but believe. Unless you believe that you are righteous, you do
Christ a great wrong, for He has cleansed you by the washing of
regeneration, He died for you so that through Him you may obtain
righteousness and everlasting life.
VERSE 6. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing,
nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: which provoked Pelopidas to pursue revenge in the heat of fight, may
excuse him.
The first thing for a captain is to gain
Safe victory; the next to be with honor slain,
as Euripides says. For then he cannot be said to suffer death; it is
rather to be called an action. The very object, too, of Pelopidas's
victory, which consisted in the slaughter of the tyrant, presenting
itself to his eyes, did not wholly carry him away unadvisedly: he could
not easily expect again to have another equally glorious occasion for the
exercise of his courage, in a noble and honorable cause. But Marcellus,
when it made little to his advantage, and when no such violent ardor as
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: others of them, and then sat waiting till the Cyclops should
come in with his sheep. When he came, he brought in with him a
huge load of dry firewood to light the fire for his supper, and
this he flung with such a noise on to the floor of his cave that
we hid ourselves for fear at the far end of the cavern.
Meanwhile he drove all the ewes inside, as well as the she-goats
that he was going to milk, leaving the males, both rams and
he-goats, outside in the yards. Then he rolled a huge stone to
the mouth of the cave--so huge that two and twenty strong
four-wheeled waggons would not be enough to draw it from its
place against the doorway. When he had so done he sat down and
The Odyssey |
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 Master of the World by Jules Verne: At the stern a similar hatch gave access probably to the cabin of the
captain, who remained unseen. When these different hatches were shut
down, they had a sort of rubber covering which closed them
hermetically tight, so that the water could not reach the interior
when the boat plunged beneath the ocean.
As to the motor, which imparted such prodigious speed to the machine,
I could see nothing of it, nor of the propeller. However, the fast
speeding boat left behind it only a long, smooth wake. The extreme
fineness of the lines of the craft, caused it to make scarcely any
waves, and enabled it to ride lightly over the crest of the billows
even in a rough sea.
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