Now the first virtue of beginners is to desire that their imperfection may imitate as far as possible the perfection of the teacher. But the divine Teacher is swifter even than time, for not even when He created the Universe did time co-operate with Him, since time itself only came into being with the world. God spake and it was done—no interval between the two—or it might suggest a truer view to say that His word was deed. Now even amongst us mortals there is nothing swifter than word, for the outrush of the parts of speech leaves behind the hearer’s understanding of them. As the perennial streams which pour through the outlets of their springs never cease their motion, and cannot rest, for the oncoming flow ever impels them, so the current of words, when it begins to move, keeps pace with that swiftest of things in us—swifter than the flight of birds—the understanding. Thus as the Uncreated anticipates all created being, so the word of the Uncreated outruns the word of the created, though that ride with all speed upon the clouds. Therefore it is that He does not hesitate to say, “now thou shalt see if my word shall overtake thee or not” (Numb. 11:23), implying that the divine word has outrun and overtaken all things. But if the word has proved swifter than all, much more is it so with Him who speaks, as He testifies in another place. “Here I stand there before thou wast” (Exod. 17:6). He shows hereby that His subsistence is before all created being, and that He who is here exists also there and elsewhere and everywhere, for He has filled all wholly and entirely and left nothing where His presence is not. For He does not say “I will stand here and there,” but even now, when I am present here, I stand at the same time there also. My motion is not one of transference in space, where the traveller leaves one place when he occupies another, but it is a motion of self-extension and self-expansion. Necessarily then do His loyal children imitate their Father’s nature and, with a forwardness that brooks no delay, do what is excellent, and the most excellent deed of all is before aught else to honour God.
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 18
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