enabled to circle the world, through not being bound to one place. How much instruction, think ye, do your brethren 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 spir- itual songs.” Mark also the considerateness of Paul. Seeing that reading is toilsome, and its irksomeness 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 musicians; 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 ungodly”; (Ps. i. 1.), 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.863 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 ministered unto me.” (Ps. ci. 6, Sept.) 863 [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 Christians; while “spiritual songs” might include both the others, as being contrasted with secular songs. But the distinction cannot be confidently made. Compare Lightfoot here.—J.A.B.] 533 Colossians 3:16,17