CHAPTER V
5. Who shall bring me to rest in you? Who will send you into my heart so to overwhelm it that my sins shall be blotted out and I may embrace you, my only good? What are you to me? Have mercy that I may speak. What am I to you that you should command me to love you, and if I do it not, art angry and threaten vast misery? Is it, then, a trifling sorrow not to love you? It is not so to me. Tell me, by your mercy, O Lord, my God, what you are to me. “Say to my soul, I am your salvation.” So speak that I may hear. Behold, the ears of my heart are before you, O Lord; open them and “say to my soul, I am your salvation.” I will hasten after that voice, and I will lay hold upon you. Hide not your face from me . . .
6. The house of my soul is too narrow for you to come in to me; let it be enlarged by you. It is in ruins; do you restore it. There is much about it that must offend your eyes; I confess and know it. But who will cleanse it? Or, to whom shall I cry but to you? “Cleanse you me from my secret faults,” O Lord, “and keep back your servant from strange sins.” “I believe, and therefore do I speak.” But you, O Lord, you know. Have I not confessed my transgressions unto you, O my God; and hast you not put away the iniquity of my heart? I do not contend in judgment with you, who are truth itself; and I would not deceive myself, lest my iniquity lie even to itself. I do not, therefore, contend in judgment with you, for “if you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?”
CHAPTER XII
19. But in this time of childhood . . . I had no love of learning, and hated to be driven to it. Yet I was driven to it just the same, and good was done for me, even though I did not do it well, for I would not have learned if I had not been forced to it. For no man does well against his will, even if what he does is a good thing. Neither did they who forced me do well, but the good that was done me came from you, my God. For they did not care about the way in which I would use what they forced me to learn, and took it for granted that it was to satisfy the inordinate desires of a rich beggary and a shameful glory. But you, Lord, by whom the hairs of our head are numbered, did use for my good the error of all who pushed me on to study: . . . And I—though so small a boy yet so great a sinner—was not punished without warrant. Thus by the instrumentality of those who did not do well, you did well for me; and by my own sin you did justly punish me. For it is even as you have ordained: that every inordinate affection brings on its own punishment.
I like Augustine's portrayal of the Soul as a House. He describes the house as being too narrow, and the God is the one who can enlarge it. He describes the house as being in ruins, with God as the mighty architect who can rebuild it. He describes the house as offensive, as something that only God himself can cleanse. I can definitely see his viewpoint there! Sometimes I feel that the soul is truly in ruin, that only through the power of the mighty architect can I get through. Without God, I am nothing, just a speck on this planet for a short time of existence. God, the soul enlarger, the home repairer, the cleanser of all unrighteousness, gives meaning and joy to this life, and excitement for the life to come.
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