| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: householder,--which strains its ear to catch the chink of the gold a
thrifty man lays by, and spends its evenings in calculating the
incomes of the village and the town and the department. It was mere
chance that enabled Modeste to escape discovery through Ernest's
reconnoitring expedition,--a step which he already regretted; but what
Parisian can allow himself to be the dupe of a little country girl?
Incapable of being duped! that horrid maxim is the dissolvent of all
noble sentiments in man.
We can readily guess the struggle of feeling to which this honest
young fellow fell a prey when we read the letter that he now indited,
in which every stroke of the flail which scourged his conscience will
Modeste Mignon |
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 Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: business and transaction, as though they were written in every place
wherever he would look, yea, wherever he walks or stands. Thus there
would be occasion enough, both at home in our own house and abroad with
our neighbors, to practice the Ten Commandments, that no one need run
far for them.
From this it again appears how highly these Ten Commandments are to be
exalted and extolled above all estates, commandments, and works which
are taught and practiced aside from them. For here we can boast and
say: Let all the wise and saints step forth and produce, if they can, a
[single] work like these commandments, upon which God insists with such
earnestness, and which He enjoins with His greatest wrath and
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