386 WiUideriny ofPreachers hrinysfood to Jewinlt Raven.
Job 38, they Say to these their fathers in the flesh, who were opposing
^^L^ their spiritual preaching, We ought to speak the word of
Acts i;i ^^^ ^^ y^^ fi^'^^-i ^^^ since ye reject it, and judge yourselves
4^- unworthy of eternal life^ lo ! we turn to the Gentiles
;
knowing full surely that after the Gentiles believed, Judaea
also would come to the faith. Whence also it is written,
Rom. Until the fulness of the Gentiles should cojne in. and so all
11 25
./ ^
26*. Israel should he saved. Because therefore the holy Apostles
especially endeavoured, first to preach to those who heard
them, and afterwards to set before those that resisted the
example of the converted Gentiles ; the hungry young
ones sought its food for this raven, first by crying, and
afterwards by wandering. For the raven finds food from
the quarter where the young ones wander; for whilst the
Jewish people beholds the Gentiles converted to God by
the labour of preachers, it blushes sometime at the last,
at the folly of its own unbelief, and then understands the
sentences of Holy Scripture, when it perceives that they were
known to the Gentiles before they were known to itself.
And the wandering of its young ones having been fulfilled,
it opens the mouth of its heart to take in the holy word
;
because when the courses of the Apostles through the world
have been completed, it at last spiritually understands those
things, from which it had long abstained through the
bondage of unbelief. But because the virtue of Divine
Power alone effects all these things, it is rightly said. Who
prepareth for the raven his food, when his young ones cry
to God, wandering because they have no meat. Thou
understandest, Except Myself, Who both bear with the
unbelieving people, when its sons entreat, and feed it by
their preaching, and support it, to be converted at length in
the end, when they w^ander to other places.
MoR. 33. There is something further, which can be understood
of this raven in a moral sense. For when its young are
hatched, it declines, as is said, to give them food to
the full, before they become dark in their plumage, and
allows them to suffer from want of food, until its own
resemblance appears in them, through the blackness of their
wings. But they wander hither and thither in the nest, and
seek for the support of food with open mouth. But when