Expositions on the Book of Psalms
PSALMS. 401
Psatm LXXXIV.] ON THE self to receive God: that which thou shalt have for ever, desire thou fora long time. . . . 4. Wherefore, most beloved, as each can, make vows, and perform to the Lord God! what each can: let no one look back, no one delight himself with his former interests, no one turn away from that which is before to that which is behind: let him run until he arrive: for we run not with the feet but with the desire. But let no one in this life say that he hath arrived. For who can be so perfect as Paul?? Yet he saith, "Brethren, 1 count not myself to have attained."
mentioned, let no one while here turn from ashamed: let no one be unwilling to suffer. There is danger, lest the grape, while it fears the winepress, should be devoured by birds or by wild beasts... . 7. Thou hast heard a groan in the winepress, " My soul longeth and faileth for the courts of the Lord:" hear how it holdeth out, rejoicing in hope: " My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God." Here they have rejoiced for that cause. Whence cometh rejoicing, but of hope? Wherefore have they rejoiced? "In the living God." What has rejoiced in thee? " My heart and my flesh." Why have they rejoiced? " For," saith he, " the sparrow hath found her a house, and the turtle-dove a nest, where she may lay her young " (ver. 3). What is this? He had named two things, and he adds two figures of birds which answer to them: he had said that his heart rejoiced and his flesh, and to these two he made the sparrow and turtle-dove to correspond: the heart as the sparrow, the flesh as the dove. The sparrow hath found herself a home: my heart hath found itself a home. She tries her wings in the virtues of this life, in faith, and hope, and charity, by which she may fly unto
5. If therefore thou feelest the passions of this world, even when thou art happy, thou understandest now that thou art in the winepress.. .. If therefore the world smile upon thee with happiness, imagine thyself in the winepress, and say, " I found trouble and heaviness, and I did call upon the name of the Lord.''3 He said not, I found trouble, without meaning, of such a kind as was hidden: for some troubles are hidden from some in this world, who think they are happy while they are absent from God. " For as long as we are in the body," he saith, "we are absent from the Lord.''+ If thou wert absent from thy father, thou wouldest be unhappy: art thou absent from the Lord, and happy? 'There are thensome who think it is well with them. But those who understand, that in whatever abundance of wealth and pleasures, though all things obey their beck, though nothing troublesome creep in, nothing adverse terrify, yet that they are in a bad case as long as they are absent from the Lord ; with a most keen eye these have found trouble, and grief, and have called on the name of the Lord. Such is he who sings in this Psalm. Who is he? The Body of Christ. Who is that? You, if you will: all we, if we will: for Christ's Body is One: 3s " How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts" (ver. 1). He was in some tabernacles, that is, in winepresses: but he longed for other tabernacles, where is no pressure: in this he sighed for them, from these, he, as it were, flowed down into them by the channel of longing desire.
her home: and when she shall have come thither, she shall remain; and now the complaining voice of the sparrow, which is here, shall no longer be there. For it is the very complaining sparrow of whom in another Psalm he saith, '' Like a sparrow alone on the housetop." 5 From the housetop he flies home. Now let him be on the housetop, treading on his carnal house: he shall have a heavenly house, a perpetual home: that sparrow shall make an end of his complaints. But to the dove he hath given young, that is, to the flesh: "the dove hath found a nest, where she may lay her young." The sparrow a home, the dove a nest, and a nest too where she may lay her young. A home is chosen as for ever, a nest is framed for a time: with the heart we think upon God, as if the sparrow flew to her home: with the flesh we do good works. For ye see how many good works are done by the flesh of the saints; for by this we work the things we are commanded to work, by which we are helped in this life. " Break thy bread to the hungry, and bring the poor and roofless into thy house; and if thou see one naked, clothe him:'® and other such things which are commanded us we work only through the flesh. . . . We speak, brethren, what ye know: how many seem to do good works without the Church?? how many even Pagans feed the hungry, clothe the naked, receive the
6. And what follows? "My soul longeth and faileth for the courts of the Lord" (ver. 2). It is not enough that it "longeth and faileth:" for what doth it fail? 'For the courts of the Lord." The grape when pressed hath failed: but for what? So as to be changed into wine, and to flow into the vat, and into the rest of the storeroom, to be kept there in great quiet. Here it is longed for, there it is received: here are sighs, there joy: here prayers, there praises: here groans, there rejoicing. Those things which I
5 Ps. cii. 7. 6 Isa. Iviii. 7. 7 Ed. Ben. refers to P. Lombard, //. Sent. Dist. 41, where this passage is quoted on the question, '*' Are all the works of those who are without faith evil?" [See A. N. F. vol. il. p. 517, note 4.—C.]
2 Phil. iii. 13. 4 aCor. v. 6. TPs. Ixxvi. tie ' 3 Ps. cxvi. 35 4.
THE WORKS' OF ST. AUGUSTIN, [Psatm LXXXIV stranger, visit the sick, comfort the prisoner? how many do this? The dove seems, as it were, to bring forth young: but finds not herself a nest. How many works may heretics do not in the Church; they place not their young in a nest. They shall be trampled on and crushed : they shall not be kept, shall not be guarded... . In that faith lay thy young: in that nest work thy works. For what the nests are, what that nest is, follows at once. Having said, And the dove hath found herself a nest, where she may lay her young; as if thou hadst asked, What nest? " Thy altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God." What is, " My King and my God?" Thou who rulest me, who hast created me.
What then? You have said already what we shall have; "Those who dwell in Thy house are blessed."" Say now what they shall do, for I see not then any need to induce me to action. Even what I am now saying and arguing springs from some need. Will there be any such argument there to teach the ignorant, or remind the forgetful? Or will the Gospel be read in that country where the Word of God Itself shall be contemplated? . . . "They shall be always praising Thee." This shall be our whole duty, an unceasing Hallelujah. Think not, my brethren, that there will be any weariness there: if ye are not able to endure long here in saying this, it is because? some want draws you away from that enjoyment. If what is not seen gives not so much joy here, if with so much eagerness under the pressure and weakness of the flesh we praise that which we believe, how shall we praise that which we see? '" When death shall be swallowed up in victory, when this mortal shall have put on immortality," 3 no one will say, "T have béen standing a long time ;" no one will say, "I have fasted a long time," "I have watched a long time." For there shall be great endurance, and our immortal bodies shall be sustained in contemplation of God. And if the word which we now dispense to you keeps your weak flesh standing so long, what will be the effect of that joy? how will it change us? 'For we shall be like Him, since we shall see Him as He is."4 Being made like Him, when shall we ever faint? what shall draw us off? Brethren, we shall never be satiated with the praise of God, with the love of God. If love could fail, praise could fail. But if love be eternal, as there will there be beauty inexhaustible, fear not lest thou be not able to praise for ever Him whom thou shalt be able to love for ever. For this life let us sigh.
8. . . . "Blessed are those who dwell in Thy house" (ver. 4). . . . Ifthou hast thy own house, thou art poor ; if God's, thou art rich. In thy own house thou wilt fear robbers ; of the house of God, He is Himself the wall. Therefore " blessed are those who dwell in Thy house." They possess the heavenly Jerusalem, without constraint, without pressure, without difference and division of boundaries; all have it, and each have all. Great are those riches. Brother crowdeth not brother: there is no want there. Next, what will they do there? For among men it is necessity which is the mother of all employments. I have already said, in brief, brethren, run in your mind through any occupations, and see if it is not necessity alone which produces them. Those very eminent arts which seem so powerful in giving help to others, the art of speaking in their defence or of medicine in healing, for these are the most excellent employments in this life ; take away litigants, who is there for the advocate to help? take away wounds and diseases? what is there for the physician to cure? And all those employments of ours which are required and done for our daily life, arise from necessity. To plough, to sow, to clear fallow ground, to sail ; what is it which produces all these works, but necessity and want? 'Take away hunger, thirst, nakedness ; who has need of all these things?
g. But how shall we come thither? '" Happy is the man whose strength is in Thee" (ver. 5). He knew where he was, and that by reason of the frailty of his flesh he could not fly to that state of blessedness: he thought upon his own burden, as it is said elsewhere ; " For the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly house depresses the understanding which has many thoughts." 5 'The Spirit calls upward, the weight of the flesh calls back again downward: between the double effort to raise and to weigh down, a kind of struggle ensues: this struggle goes toward the pressure of the winepress. Hear how the Apostle describes this same struggle of the winepress, for he was himself afflicted there, there he was pressed... . "'Miserablé man that I am: who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of. . . For instance, the injunction, " Break thy bread to the hungry.' For whom could you break bread, if there were nobody hungry? "Take in the roofless poor into thy house.' ! What stranger is there to take in, where all live in their own country? What sick person to visit, where they enjoy perpetual health? What litigants to reconcile, where there is everlasting peace? What dead to bury, where there is eternal life? None of those honourable actions which are common to all men will then be your employment, nor any of these good works ; the young swallows will then fly out of their nest.
2 Oxf. mss. '' want keeps you not away." 3 1 Cor. xv. 54. 4 x John iii, 2, 5 Wisd, ix. 15.
I Isa, lviii. 7+