約伯倫理 第 1157 章

Chapter 37, verse 1. — 'At this my heart trembled, and was moved out of its place.' 31. When the light of the eternal homeland is beheld, the mind is caught up into ecstasy. — Because dread, when it strikes the mind, renders it a stranger to itself, the Latin interpreters sometimes call ecstasy by the name of dread, as is said through the Psalmist: 'I said in my dread, I am cast away from the sight of thine eyes' (Psalm 30:23). There, indeed, it could have been called not dread but rapture; yet dread is put there for rapture, because just as in rapture, so also in dread the soul is drawn out of itself. Hence here too, when the light of the eternal homeland has been beheld, it is rightly added: 'At this my heart trembled.' As though he were to say:

It passed over into the rapture of admiration, and because the mind was breathed upon by the spirit of a new hope, it left behind what it once had been in its old way of thinking. 33. The heart, despising earthly things, sighs after heavenly things alone. — It is well said, moreover: 'And it was moved out of its place.' For the place of the human heart is the delight of the present life. But when the place of our heart is touched by divine inspiration, there arises the love of eternity. Therefore, by the contemplation of the eternal homeland the soul is moved out of its place, because, having abandoned lowly things, it is set upon supernal thoughts. For before, it knew not what things were eternal, and had grown numb in the delight of present things, while it too, passing away, held fast to passing things in love.

But after it came to know what things are eternal, after by contemplation it had swiftly touched the rays of the supernal light, it raised itself up from its inmost depths through the admiration of the highest things, so that now nothing pleases it save the things that are eternal, and, despising the things that pass away, it seeks only those that abide. Well therefore is it said: 'At this my heart trembled, and was moved out of its place,' because the sluggish heart, long given over to earthly thoughts, when suddenly through rapture it lifts itself up to the highest things, changed the place of its lowest thinking.

But because of itself the mind, prostrate in the love of the present world, drowses, and unless it is struck by the inspiration of divine graces, grows cold and insensibly numb in its delights, it is necessary that he should add in what manner it is touched by inward thought, or how it is made sensible to spiritual things. There follows: