מי יורש קנייני אלוה ז׳Who is the Heir of Divine Things 7
א׳
1[30] And the watchful pen of Moses has recorded this my soul’s condition in his memorial of me. For Abraham, he says, drew near and said, ‘Now I have begun to speak to the Lord, and I am earth and ashes’ (Gen. 18:27), since it is just when he knows his own nothingness that the creature should come into the presence of his Maker.
ב׳
2[31] The words ‘What wilt Thou give me?’ are the cry not so much of uncertainty as of thankfulness for the multitude and greatness of the blessings which one has enjoyed. ‘What wilt Thou give me?’ he says. Is there aught still left for me to expect? Lavish indeed, Thou bounteous God, are Thy gifts of grace, illimitable without boundary or end, welling up like fountains to replace and more than replace what we draw.
ג׳
3[32] But we should look not only to the ever-flowing torrent of Thy loving-kindnesses but also to the fields—they are ourselves—which are watered by them. For it the stream pour forth in over-abundance, the plain will be marshy and fenny, instead of fruitful soil. I need then that the inflow on me should be in due measure for fertility, not unmeasured.
ד׳
4[33] Therefore I will ask ‘What wilt Thou give me?’ Thou whose gifts have been countless, almost to the very sum of what human nature can contain. For all that I still seek to learn and to gain is but this ‘Who should be a worthy heir of thy benefits?’
ה׳
5[34] Or shall I go hence childless (Gen. 15:2), the recipient of a boon shortlived, dying with the day, passing swiftly to its doom; I, who pray for the opposite, a boon of many days and years, proof against decay or death, so that it can lay the seed and extend the roots, which shall make the growth secure, and raise and uplift the stalk heavenwards.
ו׳
6[35] For man’s excellence must not tread the earth, but press upwards to heaven, that it may banquet there on incorruption and remain unscathed for ever.
ז׳
7[36] For I know that Thou, who givest being to what is not and generatest all things, hast hated the childless and barren soul, since Thou hast given as a special grace to the race of them that see that they should never be without children or sterile. And I myself having been made a member of that race justly desire an heir. For when I contemplate the race’s security from extinction, I hold it a deep disgrace to leave my own desire of excellence to come to naught.
ח׳
8[37] Therefore I beseech and supplicate that out of the smouldering tinder and embers the saving light of virtue may burn up with full flame and carried on as in the torch-race by unfailing succession may be coeval with the world.
ט׳
9[38] Also in the votaries of practice Thou hast implanted a zeal to sow and beget the children of the soul, and when they are thus endowed they have cried out in their pleasure, ‘The children, wherewith Thou hast shewn mercy to Thy servant’ (Gen. 33:5). Of such children innocence is the nurse and fostermother; their souls are virgin and tender and rich in nature’s gifts, ready to receive the glorious and divine impressions of virtue’s graving.
י׳
10[39] Tell me this too, whether the son of Masek, she who was born in my house, is fit to become the heir of thy gifts of grace. For till now I have not received him whom I hope for, and he, whom I have received, is not the heir of my hopes.”
