| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: grateful to yourself and family for different marks of interest and of
indulgence. The difficulty is here. There is one point in which we
pull two ways. You are trying to hang James Stewart, I am trying to
save him. In so far as my riding with you would better your lordship's
defence, I am at your lordships orders; but in so far as it would help
to hang James Stewart, you see me at a stick."
I thought he swore to himself. "You should certainly be called; the
Bar is the true scene for your talents," says he, bitterly, and then
fell a while silent. "I will tell you," he presently resumed, "there
is no question of James Stewart, for or against, James is a dead man;
his life is given and taken - bought (if you like it better) and sold;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: reckoned without Woola, and before ever a blade touched me,
a roaring embodiment of a thousand demons hurtled above my
prostrate form and my loyal Martian calot was upon them.
Imagine, if you can, a huge grizzly with ten legs armed with
mighty talons and an enormous froglike mouth splitting his head
from ear to ear, exposing three rows of long, white tusks. Then
endow this creature of your imagination with the agility and
ferocity of a half-starved Bengal tiger and the strength of a span
of bulls, and you will have some faint conception of Woola in action.
The Warlord of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: hands above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly
and shrilly, in unmitigated PATOIS.
All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon dinner
and a fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in my bosom.
Alas, and I was on the brink of new and greater miseries!
Suddenly, at a single swoop, the night fell. I have been abroad in
many a black night, but never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a
glimmer of the track where it was well beaten, a certain fleecy
density, or night within night, for a tree, - this was all that I
could discriminate. The sky was simply darkness overhead; even the
flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to human eyesight. I
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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 The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: in the world, are ye subject to ordinances (touch not; taste
not; handle not, which all are to perish with the using) after
the commandments and doctrines of men! which things have
indeed a show of wisdom. Also in Titus 1, 14 he openly forbids
traditions: Not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments
of men that turn from the truth.
And Christ, Matt. 15, 14. 13, says of those who require
traditions: Let them alone; they be blind leaders of the
blind; and He rejects such services: Every plant which My
heavenly Father hath not planted shall be plucked up.
If bishops have the right to burden churches with infinite
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