Confessions

¹⁵ And so say I too, O my God, where are You? Behold where You are! In You 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. 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 does my faith speak which You have kindled to enlighten my feet in the night, “Why art you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted in me? hope in God;” His “word is a lamp unto my feet.” Hope and endure until the night—the mother of the wicked—until the anger of the Lord be overpast, whereof we also were once children who were sometimes darkness, the remains whereof we carry about us in our body, dead on account of sin, “until the day break and the shadows flee away.” “Hope in the Lord.”

In the morning I shall stand in Your presence, and contemplate You; I shall for ever confess unto You. In the morning I shall stand in Your presence, and shall see “the health of my countenance,” my God, who also shall quicken our mortal bodies by the Spirit that dwells in us, because in mercy He was borne over our inner darksome and floating deep. Whence we have in this pilgrimage received “an earnest” that we should now be light, while as yet we “are saved by hope,” and are the children of light, and the children of the day—not the children of the night nor of the darkness, which yet we have been. Between whom and us, in this as yet uncertain state of human knowledge, Thou only dividest, who provest our hearts and callest the light day, and the darkness night. For who discerns us but Thou?

But what have we that we have not received of You? Out of the same lump vessels unto honour, of which others also are made to dishonour.