MATHETΩN

Why do heads of grain grow? Is it not so they ripen? But when they ripen, is it not so they may be harvested? since they do not grow for themselves alone. If they had feeling, they might pray that they never be harvested, but never to be harvested is a condemnation of heads of grain. Similarly, I want you to realize that in the case of humans it would be a curse never to die: it would be like never ripening, never being harvested.

… Only let me not give up my life irrationally, only let me not give up my life faintheartedly, or from some casual pretext. For again, God does not so desire; for he has need of a good universe and of good men to go to and fro upon earth. …

What then? Must I explain these things to the multitude? When the children come up to us and say ‘Happy Saturnalia!’ do we say to them, ‘No, all this is not good’? Not at all; but we cheer too. And so you, therefore, when you are unable to make a man change his belief, realize that he is a child and cheer with him or hold your peace.

All these things a man ought to remember, and then, when he is summoned to meet some difficulty, he ought to know that the time has come to show whether he has learned. Wrestling students act displeased with the youths of light weight: ‘He cannot lift me,’ says one — ‘bring me a sturdy young man.’ But when the crisis comes, sometimes they weep and say, ‘I wanted to keep practicing!’ Why, what did you practice for! Now, I like to think that someone among you reading this is in travail within his soul, saying, ‘Alas that such a difficulty does not come to me now as came to such-and-such good man! Alas that now I must be sitting in a corner!’ You ought all to be thus minded.

If one should take away from a good tragic actor his paraphernalia, is he lost or does he abide? And so it is in actual life. God may say, ‘Take the governership’: I take it and show how a man educated in the good comports himself. ‘Lay aside the robe of state and put rags on’: What then? Has it not been given to me to mount the stage now as a witness summoned by God?

What kind of witness do you bear for God? ‘But, O Lord, I am in sore straits and in misfortune; no one regards me, no one gives me anything, all blame me and speak ill of me.’ Is this the witness that you are going to bear, and disgrace the summons so important?

Or what if the priest declares, ‘He is impious’ — what has happened? ‘I have been pronounced impious.’ Nothing else? ‘No nothing.’ And if he had made a declaration: ‘When it is day, then it is dark,’ or: ‘The circumference of a circle is not equidistant from its center’ — would the educated man pay attention? So why when he passes judgment on what is holy and unholy, just and unjust?

How great is the injustice committed by us if we do so! Leave to others quibbles, grumbling about the good. For what is lacking now is a man to bear witness to these arguments by his acts. This is the character I would have you assume, so that we may no longer use old examples of good men in the schools but may have some examples from our own time!

Marvel not that the animals other than man have furnished them, ready prepared by nature, what pertains to their bodily needs — not merely food and drink, but also a bed to lie on — and that they have no need of shoes or bedding or clothing, while we are in need of all these things. Why, consider what it would be for us to have to take thought not merely for ourselves, but also for them! But, as it is, we first forbear to give thanks for these beasts because we do not have to bestow on them the same care we require ourselves, and then we proceed to complain against God on our own account! Yet, by Zeus and the gods, one single gift of nature would suffice to make a man who is reverent and grateful perceive the providence of God. Do not talk to me now of great matters: Take the mere facts that milk is produced from grass, and cheese from milk, and that wool grows from skin — who is it that has created or devised these things? ‘No one,’ somebody says. O the depth of man’s stupidity and shamelessness!

Why, if we had sense, ought we to be doing anything else, publicly and privately, than hymning and praising the Deity and rehearsing his benefits? Ought we not, as we dig and plow and eat, to sing the praise of God? ‘Great is God, who has furnished us these instruments to till the earth. Great is God, who has given us hands, and power to swallow, and a belly, and power to grow unconsciously, and to breathe while asleep.’ Thus we ought to sing on every occasion, and above all to sing the greatest and divinest hymn: that God has given us the faculty to comprehend these things and to follow the path of reason. If I were a nightingale, I would sing as a nightingale; if a swan, as a swan. I must be singing hymns of praise to God. This is my task; I do it; I will not desert this post, and I invite you to join me in the same song.