| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: Count and Countess and their little daughter; my own, which
should have been HIS; and another for the canon of Saint-Denis,
who said grace, and then asked:
"Why, where can our dear Countess be?"
"Oh! she will be here directly," said the Count. He had hastily
helped us to the soup, and was dispatching an ample plateful with
portentous speed.
"Oh! nephew," exclaimed the canon, "if your wife were here, you
would behave more rationally."
"Papa will make himself ill!" said the child with a mischievous
look.
|
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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: but for a conception of this sort the mind of antiquity was not
ready, nor is the average mind of to-day yet ready; and the
sudden or premature dissolution of the Christian theory--which is
fortunately impossible--might perhaps entail a moral
retrogradation.
The above is by no means intended as a complete outline of the
religious philosophy of Paul. We have aimed only at a clear
definition of the character and scope of the doctrine of the
resurrection of Jesus, at the time when it was first elaborated.
We have now to notice the influence of that doctrine upon the
development of Christologic speculation.
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
