| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: simply, who was commended, and not Martha who troubled about many
things. Learn from the Mary of Faith and not from these Marthas
of the Creeds. Let us abandon the presumptions of an ignorant
past. The perfection of doctrine is not for finite men. Give
yourselves to God. Give yourselves to God. Not to churches and
uses, but to God. To God simply. He is the first word of religion
and the last. He is Alpha; he is Omega. Epitelesei; it is He who
will finish the good work begun."
The bishop ended his address in a vivid silence. Then he began
his interrogation.
"Do you here, in the presence of God, and of this congregation,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: The children's faces showed that they knew nothing at
all as, with open eyes, they trotted and turned beside the
long-striding old man. He twitched his gown over his
shoulders, and a square plate of gold, studded with
jewels, gleamed for an instant through the fur, like a star
through flying snow.
'No matter,' he said. 'But, credit me, my Prince saw
peace or war decided not once, but many times, by the
fall of a coin spun between a Jew from Bury and a Jewess
from Alexandria, in his father's house, when the Great
Candle was lit. Such power had we Jews among the
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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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that
you were doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in
that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your well-
being, in your pleasant room - and Damien, crowned with glories and
horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs
of Kalawao - you, the elect who would not, were the last man on
earth to collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would
and did.
I think I see you - for I try to see you in the flesh as I write
these sentences - I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a
hyperbolical expression at the best. "He had no hand in the
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: They described how they were astonished at the sight of the relief
I sent them, and at the appearance of loaves of bread - things they
had not seen since their coming to that miserable place; how often
they crossed it and blessed it as bread sent from heaven; and what
a reviving cordial it was to their spirits to taste it, as also the
other things I had sent for their supply; and, after all, they
would have told me something of the joy they were in at the sight
of a boat and pilots, to carry them away to the person and place
from whence all these new comforts came. But it was impossible to
express it by words, for their excessive joy naturally driving them
to unbecoming extravagances, they had no way to describe them but
Robinson Crusoe |
