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| Chapter XXXV.—Immense is this reward. How shall we obtain it?
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Chapter XXXV.—Immense is this reward.
How shall we obtain it?
How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts
of God! Life in immortality, splendour in righteousness, truth in perfect
confidence,145
faith in assurance,
self-control in holiness! And all these fall under the cognizance of our
understandings [now]; what then shall those things be which are prepared
for such as wait for Him? The Creator and Father of all worlds,146
the Most Holy, alone knows their amount and
their beauty. Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number
of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised
gifts. But how, beloved, shall this
be done? If our understanding be fixed by faith towards God; if we
earnestly seek the things which are pleasing and acceptable to Him; if we
do the things which are in harmony with His blameless will; and if we
follow the way of truth, casting away from us all unrighteousness and
iniquity, along with all covetousness, strife, evil practices, deceit,
whispering, and evil-speaking, all hatred of God, pride and haughtiness,
vainglory and ambition.147
| 147
The reading is doubtful: some have ἀφιλοξενίαν,
“want of a hospitable spirit.” [So Jacobson.] | For
they that do such things are hateful to God; and not only they that do
them, but also those that take pleasure in them that do them.148
For the Scripture saith, “But to the
sinner God said, Wherefore dost thou declare my statutes, and take my
covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my
words behind thee? When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with149
| 149 Literally, “didst run
with.” | him, and didst make thy portion with adulterers.
Thy mouth has abounded with wickedness, and thy tongue contrived150
| 150 Literally, “didst
weave.” | deceit. Thou sittest, and speakest against thy
brother; thou slanderest151
| 151
Or, “layest a snare for.” | thine own
mother’s son. These things thou hast done, and I kept silence; thou
thoughtest, wicked one, that I should be like to thyself. But I will
reprove thee, and set thyself before thee. Consider now these things, ye
that forget God, lest He tear you in pieces, like a lion, and there be
none to deliver. The sacrifice of praise will glorify Me, and a way is
there by which I will show him the salvation of God.”152
| 152 Ps. l.
16–23. The reader will observe how the Septuagint
followed by Clement differs from the Hebrew. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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