HOMILY IX.] HOMILIES ON COLOSSIANS. 301 procure books that will be medicines for the soul. If ye will not any other, yet get you at least the New Testament, the Apostolic Epistles, the Acts, the Gospels, for your constant teachers. If grief befall thee, dive into them as into a chest of medicines ; take thence comfort of thy trouble, be it loss, or death, or bereavement of relations ; or rather dive not into them merely, but take them wholly to thee ; keep them in thy mind. This is the cause of all evils, the not knowing the Scriptures. We go into battle without arms, and how ought we to come off safe? Well con tented should we be ifwe can be safe with them, let alone without them. Throw not the whole upon us ! Sheep ye are, still not without reason, but rational ; Paul committeth much to you also. They that are under instruction, are not for ever learning ; for then they are not taught. If thou art for ever learning, thou wilt never learn. Do not so come as meaning to be always learning ; (for so thou wilt never know ;) but so as to fin ish learning, and to teach others. In the arts, do not all persons continue for set times, in the sciences, and in a word, in all the arts ? Thus we all fix definitely a certain known time ; but if ye are ever learning, it is a certain proof that ye have learned nothing. This reproach God spake against the Jews. " Borne from the belly, and instructed even to old age." (Isa. xlvi. 3, 4, Sept.) If ye had not always been expecting this, all things would not have gone backward in this way. Had it been so, that some had finished learning, and others were about to have finished, our work would have been forward ; ye would both have given place to others, and would have helped us as well. Tell me, were some to go to a gramma rian and continue always learning their letters, would they not give their teacher much trouble ? How long shall I have to discourse to you con cerning life? In the Apostles times it.was not thus, but they continually leaped from place to place, appointing those who first learned to be the teachers of any others that were under in struction. Thus they were enabled to circle the world, through not being bound to one place. How much instruction, think ye, do your breth ren in the country stand in need of, [they] and their teachers? But ye hold me riveted fast here. For, before the head is set right, it is superfluous to proceed to the rest of the body. Ye throw everything upon us. Ye alone ought to learn from us, and your wives from you, your children from you ; but ye leave all to us. Therefore our toil is excessive. "Teaching," he saith, "and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." Mark also the considerateness of Paul. Seeing that reading is toilsome, and its irksome- ness great, he led them not to histories, but to psalms, that thou mightest at once delight thy soul with singing, and gently beguile thy labors. " Hymns," he saith, " and spiritual songs." But now your children will utter songs and dances of Satan, like cooks, and caterers, and musi cians ; no one knoweth any psalm, but it seems a thing to be ashamed of even, and a mockery, and a joke. There is the treasury house of all these evils. For whatsoever soil the plant stands in, such is the fruit it bears ; if in a sandy and salty soil, of like nature is its fruit ; if in a sweet and rich one, it is again similar. So the matter of instruction is a sort of fountain. Teach him to sing those psalms which are so full of the love of wisdom ; as at once concerning chastity, or rather, before all, of not companying with the wicked, immediately with the very beginning of the book ; (for therefore also it was that the prophet began on this wise, " Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the un godly" ; Ps. i. i, and again, "I have not sat in the council of vanity " ; Ps. xxvi. 4, Sept., and again, " in his sight a wicked doer is contemned, but he honoreth those that fear the Lord," Ps. xv. 4, Sept.,) of companying with the good, (and these subjects thou wilt find there in abundance,) of restraining the belly, of restraining the hand, of refraining from excess^ of not overreaching ; that money is nothing, nor glory, and other things such like. When in these thou hast led him on from childhood, by little and little thou wilt lead him forward even to the higher things. The Psalms contain all things, but the Hymns again have nothing human. 1 When he has been instructed out of the Psalms, he will then know hymns also, as a diviner thing. For the Powers above chant hymns, not psalms. For " a hymn," saith one, " is not comely in the mouth of a sinner " (Ecclus. xv. 9) ; and again, "Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they sit together with me" (Ps. ci. 6, 7, Sept.) ; and again, " he that worketh haughtiness hath not dwelt in the midst of my house " ; and again, " He that walketh in a blameless way, he min istered unto me." (Ps. ci. 6, Sept.) So that ye should safely guard them from in termixing themselves, not only with friends, but even with servants. For the harm done to the free is incalculable, when we place over them corrupt slaves. For if when enjoying all the benefit of a father s affection and wisdom, they can with difficulty be preserved safe throughout ; when we hand them over to the unscrupulous- 1 [This distinction is unfounded. It is likely that by " psalms " the Apostle meant especially the Psalms of the Old Test., and by " hymns " those which were already being written among the Chris tians; while " spiritual songs" might include both the others, as be ing contrasted with secular songs. But the distinction cannot be confidently made. Compare Lightfoot here. J. A. B.]