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.
1241
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;”
1242
His
“word is a lamp unto my feet.”
1243
Hope and endure until the
night,—the mother of the wicked,—until the anger of the Lord be
overpast,
1244
whereof we
also were once children who were sometimes darkness,
1245
the
remains whereof we carry about us in our body, dead on account of
sin,
1246
“until
the day break and the shadows flee away.”
1247
“Hope thou in the Lord.” In
the morning I shall stand in Thy presence, and contemplate Thee;
1248
I shall
for ever confess unto Thee.
1249
In the morning I shall stand in
Thy presence, and shall see “the health of my countenance,”
1250
my God,
who also shall quicken our mortal bodies by the Spirit that
dwelleth in us,
1251
because in
mercy He was borne over our inner darksome and floating deep.
Whence we have in this pilgrimage received “an earnest”
1252
that we
should now be light, whilst as yet we “are saved by hope,”
1253
and are
the children of light, and the children of the day,—not the
children of the night nor of the darkness,
1254
which yet we have been.
1255
Betwixt
whom and us, in this as yet uncertain state of human knowledge,
Thou only dividest, who provest our hearts
1256
and callest the light day, and the
darkness night.
1257
For who
discerneth us but Thou? But what have we that we have not received
of Thee?
1258
Out of the
same lump vessels unto honour, of which others also are made to
dishonour.
1259
1241
Ibid. ver. 4
.
1242
Ibid. ver. 5
.
1243
Ps. cxix. 105
.
1244
Job xiv. 13
.
1245
Eph. ii. 3, and v. 8
.
1246
Rom. viii. 10
.
1247
Cant. ii. 17
.
1248
Ps. v. 3
.
1249
Ps. xxx. 12
.
1250
Ps. xliii. 5
.
1251
Rom. viii. 11
.
1252
2 Cor. i. 22
.
1253
Rom. viii. 24
.
1254
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.
1255
Eph. v. 8
,
and
1 Thess. v. 5
.
1256
Ps. vii. 9
.
1257
Gen. i. 5
.
1258
1 Cor. iv. 7
.
1259
Rom. ix. 21
.