NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

Upon the gathering together of the waters.Upon the gathering together of the waters.Homily IV.721. There are towns where the inhabitants, from dawn to eve, feast their eyes on thetricks of innumerable conjurors. They are never tired of hearing dissolute songs whichcause much impurity to spring up in their souls, and they are often called happy, becausethey neglect the cares of business and trades useful to life, and pass the time, which is assignedto them on this earth, in idleness and pleasure. They do not know that a theatre full of impuresights is, for those who sit there, a common school of vice; that these melodious and meretricioussongs insinuate themselves into men’s souls, and all who hear them, eager to imitatethe notes 1520 of harpers and pipers, are filled with filthiness. 1521 Some others, who are wildafter horses, think they are backing their horses in their dreams; they harness their chariots,change their drivers, and even in sleep are not free from the folly of the day. 1522 And shallwe, whom the Lord, the great worker of marvels, calls to the contemplation of His ownworks, tire of looking at them, or be slow to hear the words of the Holy Spirit? Shall we notrather stand around the vast and varied workshop of divine creation and, carried back inmind to the times of old, shall we not view all the order of creation? Heaven, poised like adome, to quote the words of the prophet; 1523 earth, this immense mass which rests uponitself; the air around it, of a soft and fluid nature, a true and continual nourishment for allwho breathe it, of such tenuity that it yields and opens at the least movement of the body,opposing no resistance to our motions, while, in a moment, it streams back to its place, behindthose who cleave it; water, finally, that supplies drink for man, or may be designed forour other needs, and the marvellous gathering together of it into definite places which havebeen assigned to it: such is the spectacle which the words which I have just read will showyou.2. “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place,and let the dry land appear, and it was so.” And the water which was under the heavengathered together unto one place; “And God called the dry land earth and the gathering1520 κροῦμα, properly “beat,” “stroke,” is used of the blow of the plectrum on the string, and hence of thenote produced.1521 cf. Plato, Rep. iii. 18, ad init., and his reference to the μαλθακὸς αἰχμητής of Homer, Il. xvii. 586. Thesame subject is treated of the Laws ii. § 3 and 5 and vii.1522 cf. Ar., Nub. 16, ὀνειροπολεὶ ἵππους and 27, ὀνειροπολεῖ καὶ καθεύδων ἱππικήν. So Claudian, De vi.Cons. Hon. 1, sq.: Omnia quæ sensu volvuntur vota diurno, Pectore sopito reddit amica quies. Venator defessatoro cum membra reponit, Mens tamen ad sylvas et sua lustra redit. Judicibus lites, aurigæ somnia currus,Vanaque nocturnis meta cavetur equis.1523 Isa. xl. 22, LXX.291