Leaves from St. John ChrysostomJohn Chrysostom, Saint
Religion
Leaves from St. John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom, Saint
Christian literature, Early; John Chrysostom, Saint, -407
God to create a thousand endless worlds, or, rather, as easy as it is to
you to _think_ of a city or countless worlds, and indeed much more so.
_You_ spend a little time upon the thought, but it is not so with God.
In the same proportion as stones are heavier than the swiftest birds, or
rather than this mind of ours, so much is our mind removed from God’s
swiftness of action. Have you wondered at His power with regard to the
earth? Consider again how the heavens were made from nothing, the
countless stars, the sun and moon: none of these things were previously
in being. Again, tell me how, after they were made, they remained in
place, and on what they rested? What was their basis, and what is the
earth’s basis? And what comes after the earth? What is that something?
Do you see to what a giddy height the light of your reason leads you if
you do not hold eagerly to the faith and to the inscrutable power of the
Creator? If you will make a guess from human things, you will shortly be
able to give wings to your reason. ‘What human things?’ you ask. See you
not what potters do? How they remould a broken and shapeless thing into
a vessel; how melters make gold and iron and brass out of earth? Again,
how others who manipulate glass transform sand into one compact and
transparent body? Let me mention dyers of leather, who dress garments:
they produce one piece after the other, which they have received, with
the dye. Again, as to our own generation: is not the seed, formless and
shapeless at first, implanted in the mother’s womb? Whence, then, comes
so wonderful a formation of the living man? And what about wheat? Is not
a mere seed put into the ground? And does it not rot after it has been
put there? Whence come the ear of corn and the stalk and all the rest?
Does not a small grain of fig, which is often scattered into the earth,
take root and put forth branches and fruit? You receive each one of
these things, and do not trouble yourself about them, but would subject
God alone, Who disposes of our bodies, to scrutiny! What can justify
such a demand?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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