The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: This cherished nephew, named Octave de Camps, was a descendant of the
famous Abbe de Camps, so well known to bibliophiles and learned men,--
who, by the bye, are not at all the same thing. People in the
provinces have the bad habit of branding with a sort of decent
reprobation any young man who sells his inherited estates. This
antiquated prejudice has interfered very much with the stock-jobbing
which the present government encourages for its own interests. Without
consulting his uncle, Octave had lately sold an estate belonging to
him to the Black Band.[*] The chateau de Villaines would have been
pulled down were it not for the remonstrances which the old uncle made
to the representatives of the "Pickaxe company." To increase the old
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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: If you ask how God may be found, who justifies sinners, know that there is no
other God besides this man Christ Jesus. Embrace Him, and forget about the
nature of God. But these fanatics who exclude our Mediator in their dealings
with God, do not believe me. Did not Christ Himself say: "I am the way, and
the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me"? Without
Christ there is no access to the Father, but futile rambling; no truth, but
hypocrisy; no life, but eternal death.
When you argue about the nature of God apart from the question of
justification, you may be as profound as you like. But when you deal with
conscience and with righteousness over against the law, sin, death, and the
devil, you must close your mind to all inquiries into the nature of God, and
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