Of course none of the three groups is without a large element common to it and to the other two: it is the same facts that are looked at and loved, by means of the same powers of the soul, and within the same great common principles and convictions. Only the precise antecedents, point of view, temper of mind; the selection, presentation, and degree of elaboration of the facts and of their spiritual meaning; the preponderance of this or that mental activity; the reasons and connections sought and seen, are often widely different in each, and produce a distinctiveness of impression which can be taken to correspond roughly to the three main powers of the soul: to the range of sense-perception and of memory; to that of reasoning; and to that of intuition, feeling, and will. If each group had _only_ that element which can be taken as being its predominant one, then any single group would be of little value, and each group would imperatively require ever to be taken in conjunction with the other two. But, as a matter of fact, neither are the “Petrine” writings free from all reasoning and mystical affinities; nor are the “Pauline,” free from the historic, positive spirit, or, still less, from the mystical habit; nor the “Joannine” free from the deepest teaching as to the necessity of external facts, or from some argument and appeals to reason. Hence each group, indeed each writing even singly, and still more all three groups if taken together, profoundly embody and proclaim, by the rich variety of their contents and spirit, the great principle and measure of all life and truth: unity in and through variety, and steadfastness in and through growth. Specially easy is it to find in all three types the two chief among the three modalities of all advanced religion: the careful reverence for the external facts of nature (so far as these are known), and for social religious tradition and institutions; and the vivid consciousness of the necessity and reality of internal experience and actuation, as the single spirit’s search, response, and assimilation of the former.[8] 3. _The “Petrine” attestations: their special message._ Thus the “Petrine” group gives us, as evidence for the observation and love of the external world: “Behold the birds of the air, how they sow not, neither harvest nor gather into barns”; “Study the lilies of the field how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these”; “The seed sprouts and shoots up, whilst the man knows not; the earth beareth fruit of itself, first the stalk, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear”; “When now the fig-tree’s shoot grows tender and putteth forth leaves, you know that summer is nigh”; and, “When it is evening, you say: ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning: ‘It will be foul weather to-day, for the heaven is red and lowering.’”[9]