And therefore in another place we find, “thou shalt rise up away from the head of the hoary and thou shalt honour the head of the elder” (Lev. 19:32). He suggests a vast contrast between the two words. For by “hoary” is meant time which has no activity, from whose presence we must hurry to depart and shun the illusion which deceives the multitude, that time is capable of effecting anything. By “elder” is meant he that is worthy of honour and privilege and high place, and to approve such was the task entrusted to Moses, the friend of God. For “whom thou knowest,” it runs, “these are the elders” (Numb. 11:16), meaning that he would welcome no mere innovation, but his wont is to love the truths that come from older days and are worthy of the highest reverence. No doubt it is profitable, if not for the acquisition of perfect virtue, at any rate for the life of civic virtue, to feed the mind on ancient and timehonoured thoughts, to trace the venerable tradition of noble deeds, which historians and all the family of poets have handed down to the memory of their own and future generations. But when, unforeseen and unhoped for, the sudden beam of self-inspired wisdom has shone upon us, when that wisdom has opened the closed eye of the soul and made us spectators rather than hearers of knowledge, and substituted in our minds sight, the swiftest of senses, for the slower sense of hearing, then it is idle any longer to exercise the ear with words.
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 22
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