Orations

⁷ I seem indeed to hear that voice, from Him Who gathers together those who are broken, and welcomes the oppressed: Enlarge your cords, break forth on the right hand and on the left, drive in your stakes, spare not your curtains. I have given you up, and I will help you. In a little wrath I smote you, but with everlasting mercy I will glorify you. The measure of His kindness exceeds the measure of His discipline. The former things were owing to our wickedness, the present things to the adorable Trinity: the former for our cleansing, the present for My glory, Who will glorify them that glorify Me, and I will move to jealousy them that move Me to jealousy.

Behold this is sealed up with Me, and this is the indissoluble law of recompense. But you surrounded yourself with walls and tablets and richly set stones, and long porticos and galleries, and shone and sparkled with gold, which you did, in part pour forth like water, in part treasure up like sand; not knowing that better is faith, with no other roof but the sky to cover it, than impiety rolling in wealth, and that three gathered together in the Name of the Lord count for more with God than tens of thousands of those who deny the Godhead.

Would you prefer the whole of the Canaanites to Abraham alone? or the men of Sodom to Lot? or the Midianites to Moses, when each of these was a pilgrim and a stranger? How do the three hundred men with Gideon, who bravely lapped, compare with the thousands who were put to flight? Or the servants of Abraham, who scarcely exceeded them in number, with the many kings and the army of tens of thousands whom, few as they were, they overtook and defeated? Or how do you understand the passage that though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved? And again, I have left me seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal? This is not the case; it is not? God has not taken pleasure in numbers.