Fire, again, by its nature purifies gold, and melts lead: wax it dissolves, clay it hardens, wood it dries, by one burning force accomplishing so many changes. And thus, too, the heavenly Word of God, the Creator of sun and heaven and of the whole Cosmos, present in all things with effective power, and reaching through all things, showers light on sun and moon and stars from Its own eternal force, and having first formed the heaven to be the meetest likeness of Its own greatness rules over it for ever, and fills the powers of angels and spirits beyond the heaven and the Cosmos, and the beings who have mind and reason, at once (153) with life, and light, and wisdom, and all virtue, and every good thing from Its own treasures, with one and the same creative art. And It never ceases to bestow their special being to the elements, their mixings, combinations, forms, shapes and fashions, and their many qualities, in the animal and vegetable world, and in souls, and in bodies rational and irrational, varying Its gifts now in one way now in another, and supplying all things to all together at the same time, and dowering all mankind with self-conscious mind able to (b) contemplate Its wisdom, standing close by all and shewing beyond all doubt that the one Cosmos is the work of the one Cosmos-making Word.