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| Chapter XXVI. How we ought also to offer our firstfruits to the Lord.
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Chapter XXVI.
How we ought also to offer our firstfruits to the
Lord.
But what shall I say of the
firstfruits which surely are given daily by all who serve Christ
faithfully? For when men
waking from sleep and arising with renewed activity after their rest,
before they take in any impulse or thought in their heart, or admit any
recollection or consideration of business consecrate their first and
earliest thoughts as divine offerings, what are they doing indeed but
rendering the firstfruits of their produce through the High Priest
Jesus Christ for the enjoyment of this life and a figure of the daily
resurrection? And also when roused from sleep in the same way they
offer to God a sacrifice of joy and invoke Him with the first motion of
their tongue and celebrate His name and praise, and throwing open, the
first thing, the door of their lips to sing hymns to Him they offer to
God the offices of their mouth; and to Him also in the same way their
bring the earliest offerings of their hands and steps, when they rise
from bed and stand in prayer and before they use the services of their
limbs for their own purposes, take to themselves nothing of their
services, but for His glory advance their steps, and set them in His
praise and so render the first fruits of all their movements by
stretching forth the hands, bending the knees, and prostrating the
whole body. For in no other way can we fulfil that of which we sing in
the Psalm: “I prevented the dawning of the day and cried;”
and: “Mine eyes to Thee have prevented the morning that I might
meditate on Thy words;” and: “In the morning shall my
prayer prevent Thee;”2208
unless after
our rest in sleep when, as we said above, we are restored as from
darkness and death to this light, we have the courage not to begin by
taking any of all the services both of mind and body for our own uses.
For there is no other morning which the prophet
“prevented,” or which in the same way we ought to prevent,
except either ourselves, i.e., our occupations and feelings and earthly
cares, without which we cannot exist—or the most subtle
suggestions of the adversary, which he tries to suggest to us, while
still resting and overcome with sleep, by the phantoms of vain dreams,
with which, when we presently awake, he will fill our minds and occupy
us, that he may be the first to seize and carry off the spoils of our
firstfruits. Wherefore we must take the utmost care (if we want to
fulfil in act the meaning of the above quoted verse) that an anxious
watchfulness takes regard of our first and earliest morning thoughts,
that they may not be defiled beforehand being hastily taken possession
of by our jealous adversary, and thus he may make our firstfruits to be
rejected by the Lord as worthless and common. And if he is not
prevented by us with watchful circumspection of mind, he will not lay
aside his habit of miserably anticipating us nor cease day after day to
prevent us by his wiles. And therefore if we want to offer firstfruits
that are acceptable and well pleasing to God of the fruits of our mind,
we ought to spend no ordinary care to keep all the senses of our body,
especially during the hours of the morning, as a sacred holocaust to
the Lord pure and undefiled in all things. And this kind of devotion
many even of those who live in the world observe with the utmost care,
as they rise before it is light or very early, and do not at all mix in
the ordinary and necessary business of this world before hastening to
church and striving to consecrate in the sight of God the firstfruits
of all their actions and doings.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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