| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: I marked a sombre building whereto it ran, and went there, not
unalarmed by stray cattle who had managed to escape from their
proper quarters. A pleasant smell of brine warned me of what was
coming. I entered the factory and found it full of pork in
barrels, and on another story more pork un-barrelled, and in a
huge room the halves of swine, for whose behoof great lumps of
ice were being pitched in at the window. That room was the
mortuary chamber where the pigs lay for a little while in state
ere they began their progress through such passages as kings may
sometimes travel.
Turning a corner, and not noting an overhead arrangement of
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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: beautiful ornamented parks in the midst of a region naked and
without trees, the weather being very cold, he gave full
commission to his soldiers to provide themselves with wood by
cutting down any, without exception, even the pine and cypress.
And when they hesitated and were for sparing them, being large
and goodly trees, he, taking up an ax himself, felled the
greatest and most beautiful of them. After which his men used
their hatchets, and piling up many fires, passed away the night
at their ease. Nevertheless, he returned not without the loss
of many and valiant subjects, and of almost all his horses. And
supposing that his misfortunes and the ill success of his
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: wreck of his boat. The miser had had faith, and had risen to go, but
he tried to take his gold with him, and it was his gold that dragged
him down to the bottom. The learned man had scoffed at the charlatan
and at the fools who listened to him; and when he heard the mysterious
stranger propose to the passengers that they should walk on the waves,
he began to laugh, and the ocean swallowed him. The girl was dragged
down into the depths by her lover. The Bishop and the older lady went
to the bottom, heavily laden with sins, it may be, but still more
heavily laden with incredulity and confidence in idols, weighted down
by devotion, into which alms-deeds and true religion entered but
little.
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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 Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther: of the false apostles "another gospel," as if he would say, "You Galatians
have now another gospel, while my Gospel is no longer esteemed by you."
We infer from this that the false apostles had depreciated the Gospel of Paul
among the Galatians on the plea that it was incomplete. Their objection to
Paul's Gospel is identical to that recorded in the fifteenth chapter of the
Book of Acts to the effect that it was not enough for the Galatians to believe
in Christ, or to be baptized, but that it was needful to circumcise them, and
to command them to keep the law of Moses, for "except ye be circumcised after
the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." As though Christ were a workman
who had begun a building and left it for Moses to finish.
Today the Anabaptists and others, finding it difficult to condemn us, accuse
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