| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: coming of the Messiah in Galilee, it is impossible to conjecture.
His fellow-townsmen of Nazareth appear to have ridiculed him in
his prophetical capacity; or, if we may trust the third
evangelist, to have arisen against him with indignation, and made
an attempt upon his life. To them he was but a carpenter, the son
of a carpenter (Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3), who told them
disagreeable truths. Our author represents his teaching in
Galilee to have produced but little result, but the gospel
narratives afford no definite data for deciding this point. We
believe the most probable conclusion to be that Jesus did attract
many followers, and became famous throughout Galilee; for Herod
 The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: an Anglican pulpit unchallenged. There remains no alert doctrinal
criticism in the church congregations. It was possible,
therefore, for the bishop to say all that follows without either
hindrance or disturbance. The only opposition, indeed, came from
within, from a sense of dreamlike incongruity between the place
and the occasion and the things that he found himself delivering.
"All ceremonies," he began, "grow old. All ceremonies are
tainted even from the first by things less worthy than their
first intention, and you, my dear sons and daughters, who have
gathered to-day in this worn and ancient building, beneath these
monuments to ancient vanities and these symbols of forgotten or
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