darkness, and raises up those who have wandered in error. “Awake,” He says, “thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light,”[102]--Christ, the Sun of the Resurrection, He “who was born before the morning star,”[103] and with His beams bestows life. Let no one then despise the Word, lest he unwittingly despise himself. For the Scripture somewhere says, “To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers proved me by trial.”[104] And what was the trial? If you wish to learn, the Holy Spirit will show you: “And saw my works,” He says, “forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in heart, and have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest.”[105] Look to the threatening! Look to the exhortation! Look to the punishment! Why, then, should we any longer change grace into wrath, and not receive the word with open ears, and entertain God as a guest in pure spirits? For great is the grace of His promise, “if to-day we hear His voice.”[106] And that to-day is lengthened out day by day, while it is called to-day. And to the end the to-day and the instruction continue; and then the true to-day, the neverending day of God, extends over eternity. Let us then ever obey the voice of the divine word. For the to-day signifies eternity. And day is the symbol of light; and the light of men is the Word, by whom we behold God. Rightly, then, to those that have believed and obey, grace will superabound; while with those that have been unbelieving, and err in heart, and have not known the Lord’s ways, which John commanded to make straight and to prepare, God is incensed, and those He threatens. And, indeed, the old Hebrew wanderers in the desert received typically the end of the threatening; for they are said not to have entered into the rest, because of unbelief, till, having followed the successor of Moses, they learned by experience, though late, that they could not be saved otherwise than by believing on Jesus. But the Lord, in His love to man, invites all men to the knowledge of the truth, and for this end sends the Paraclete. What, then, is this knowledge? Godliness; and “godliness,” according to Paul, “is profitable for all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”[107] If eternal salvation were to be sold, for how much, O men, would you propose to purchase it? Were one to estimate the value of the whole of Pactolus, the fabulous river of gold, he would not have reckoned up a price equivalent to salvation.