Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume I/Confessions/Book XIII/Chapter 14
Chapter XIV.—That Out of the Children of the Night and of the Darkness, Children of the Light and of the Day are Made.
15. And so say I too, O my God, where art Thou? Behold where Thou art! In Thee I breathe a little, when I pour out my soul by myself in the voice of joy and praise, the sound of him that keeps holy-day.[1] And yet it is “cast down,” because it relapses and becomes a deep, or rather it feels that it is still a deep. Unto it doth my faith speak which Thou hast kindled to enlighten my feet in the night, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God;”[2] His “word is a lamp unto my feet.”[3] Hope and endure until the night,—the mother of the wicked,—until the anger of the Lord be overpast,[4] whereof we also were once children who were sometimes darkness,[5] the remains whereof we carry about us in our body, dead on account of sin,[6] “until the day break and the shadows flee away.”[7] “Hope thou in the Lord.” In the morning I shall stand in Thy presence, and contemplate Thee;[8] I shall for ever confess unto Thee.[9] In the morning I shall stand in Thy presence, and shall see “the health of my countenance,”[10] my God, who also shall quicken our mortal bodies by the Spirit that dwelleth in us,[11] because in mercy He was borne over our inner darksome and floating deep. Whence we have in this pilgrimage received “an earnest”[12] that we should now be light, whilst as yet we “are saved by hope,”[13] and are the children of light, and the children of the day,—not the children of the night nor of the darkness,[14] which yet we have been.[15] Betwixt whom and us, in this as yet uncertain state of human knowledge, Thou only dividest, who provest our hearts[16] and callest the light day, and the darkness night.[17] For who discerneth us but Thou? But what have we that we have not received of Thee?[18] Out of the same lump vessels unto honour, of which others also are made to dishonour.[19]
Footnotes
[edit]- ↑ Ibid. ver. 4.
- ↑ Ibid. ver. 5.
- ↑ Ps. cxix. 105.
- ↑ Job xiv. 13.
- ↑ Eph. ii. 3, and v. 8.
- ↑ Rom. viii. 10.
- ↑ Cant. ii. 17.
- ↑ Ps. v. 3.
- ↑ Ps. xxx. 12.
- ↑ Ps. xliii. 5.
- ↑ Rom. viii. 11.
- ↑ 2 Cor. i. 22.
- ↑ Rom. viii. 24.
- ↑ Though of the light, we are not yet in the light; and though, in this grey dawn of the coming day, we have a foretaste of the vision that shall be, we cannot hope, as he says in Ps. v. 4, to “see Him as He is” until the darkness of sin be overpast.
- ↑ Eph. v. 8, and 1 Thess. v. 5.
- ↑ Ps. vii. 9.
- ↑ Gen. i. 5.
- ↑ 1 Cor. iv. 7.
- ↑ Rom. ix. 21.