Augustine of Hippo

Since we know that you are devoted to the public welfare, you must see how plainly the sacred writings show that the happiness of the state has no other source than the happiness of humankind. One of the sacred writers, filled with the Holy Spirit, speaks thus as he prays: "Rescue me out of the hand of strange children, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is the right hand of iniquity; whose sons are as new plants in their youth; their daughters decked out, adorned round about after the similitude of a temple; their storehouse full, flowing out of this into that; their sheep fruitful in young, abounding in their goings forth; their oxen fat. There is no breach of wall nor passage nor crying out in their streets. They have called the people happy that have these things, but happy is the people whose God is the Lord."You see that a people is not called happy because of an accumulation of earthly good fortune, except by the "strange children," that is, by those who do not belong to the regeneration by which we become children of God. The psalmist prays to be rescued out of their hand, lest he be drawn by them into that false opinion and into their impious sins. Truly they speak vanity when they "have called the people happy that have these things"—the things that he had listed above, in which that good fortune consisted, the only good fortune that the lovers of this world seek. Therefore, "their right hand is the right hand of iniquity" because they have preferred those things that should have been set aside, as the right hand is preferred to the left. Happiness in life is not to be attributed to the possession of those things; they should be subordinate, not preeminent; they are intended to follow, not to lead. If, then, we were to speak to him who prayed thus and desired to be rescued from the "strange children" who "called that people happy that have these things," and if we said, "What is your own opinion? What people do you call happy?" he would not say, "Happy is the people whose strength is in their own mind." If he had said this, he would, it is true, distinguish that people from the former, which made happiness consist in that visible and corporeal good fortune, but he would not yet have passed beyond all the vanities and lying follies, for, as the same writings teach elsewhere, "Cursed be everyone that places his hope in humankind." Therefore, he ought not to place it in himself, because he himself is a human being. Thus, in order to pass beyond the boundaries of all vanities and lying follies and to place happiness where it truly exists, he says: "Happy is the people whose God is the Lord."

Now, you know, I think, not only the nature of your prayer but its object, and you have learned this not from me but from him who has deigned to teach us all. Happiness is what we must seek and what we must ask of the Lord God. Many arguments have been fashioned by many people about the nature of happiness, but why should we turn to the many people or the many arguments? Brief and true is the word in the Scripture of God: "Happy is the people whose God is the Lord." That we may belong to that people and that we may be able to attain to contemplation of him and to eternal life with him, "the end of the commandment is charity from a pure heart and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith." Among those same three, hope is put for a good conscience. "Faith therefore, and hope and charity," lead the praying soul to God, that is, the believing and hoping and desiring soul who attends to what he asks of the Lord in the Lord's Prayer. Fasting and abstinence from other pleasures of carnal desire—with due regard for our health—and especially almsgiving are great helps to prayer, so that we may be able to say: "In the day of my trouble I sought God with my hands lifted up to him in the night, and I was not deceived." How is it possible to seek an incorporeal God who cannot be felt with the hands, unless he is sought by good works?

“Can any praise be worthy of the Lord’s majesty?” “How magnificent his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom!” Humankind is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you “thwart the proud.” But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.Grant me, Lord, to know and understand whether a person is first to pray to you for help or to praise you and whether he must know you before he can call you to his aid. If he does not know you, how can he pray to you? For he may call for some other help, mistaking it for yours.
Or are people to pray to you and learn to know you through their prayers? “Only, how are they to call on the Lord until they have learned to believe in him? And how are they to believe in him without a preacher to listen to?”
“Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him,” because all who look for him shall find him, and when they find him they will praise him. I shall look for you, Lord, by praying to you, and as I pray I shall believe in you, because we have had preachers to tell us about you. It is my faith that calls to you, Lord, the faith that you gave me and made to live in me through the merits of your Son, who became man, and through the ministry of your preacher.

For how great things besides has His boundless Goodness and illimitable Greatness made, which we do not know! When we lift the gaze of our eyes even to the heaven, and then recall it from sun, moon, and stars to the earth, and there is all this space where our sight can wander; beyond the heavens who can extend the eyesight of his mind, not to say of his flesh? So far then as His works are known to us, let us praise Him through His works. [Romans 1:20] "Generation and generation shall praise Your works" [Psalm 145:4]. Every generation shall praise Your works. For perhaps every generation is meant by "generation and generation."...Did he perchance mean to imply two generations by that repetition? For we are in this generation sons of God, we shall be in another generation sons of the Resurrection. Scripture has called us "sons of the Resurrection;" the Resurrection itself it has called Regeneration. "In the regeneration," it says, "when the Son of Man shall be seated in His Majesty." [Matthew 19:28] So also in another place; "For they shall not marry, nor be given in marriage, for they are the sons of the Resurrection." [Luke 20:35-36] Therefore "generation and generation shall praise Your works....And they shall tell out Your excellence." For neither shall they praise Your works, save in order to "tell out Your excellence." Boys at school are set to praise, and all such things are set before them to be praised, as God has wrought: a mortal is set to praise the sun, the sky, the earth; to come to even lesser things, to praise a rose, or a laurel; all these are works of God: they are set, they are undertaken, they are praised: the works are lauded, of the Worker they are silent. I desire in the works to praise the Creator: I love not a thankless praiser. Do you praise what He has made, and art silent of Him who made? In that which you see, what is it that you praise? The form, the usefulness, some virtue, some power in the things. If beauty delight you, what is more beautiful than the Maker? If usefulness be praised, what more useful than He who made all things? If excellence be praised, what more excellent than He by whom all things were made?...

"Let all Your works, O Lord, confess to You, and let Your saints bless You" [Psalm 145:10]. How so? Is not the earth His work? Are not the trees His work? Cattle, beasts, fish, fowl, are not they His works? Plainly they too are. And how shall these too confess to Him? I see indeed in the angels that His works confess to Him, for the angels are His works: and men are His works; and when men confess to Him, His works confess to Him; but have trees and stones the voice of confession? Yes, verily; "let all" His "works confess to" Him. What do you say? Even the earth and the trees?...But there arises the same question in regard of praise, as in regard of confession. For if earth and all things devoid of sensation therefore cannot confess, because they have no voice to confess with; neither will they be able to praise, because they have no voice to proclaim with. But do not those Three Children enumerate all things, as they walked amid the harmless flames, who had leisure not only not to fear, but even to praise God? They say to all things, heavenly and earthly, "Bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever." Behold how they praise. Let none think that the dumb stone or dumb animal has reason wherewith to comprehend God. They who have thought this, have erred far from the truth. God has ordered everything, and made everything: to some He has given sense and understanding and immortality, as to the angels; to some He has given sense and understanding with mortality, as to man; to some He has given bodily sense, yet gave them not understanding, or immortality, as to cattle: to some He has given neither sense, nor understanding, nor immortality, as to herbs, trees, stones: yet even these cannot be wanting in their kind, and by certain degrees He has ordered His creation, from earth up to heaven, from visible to invisible, from mortal to immortal. This framework of creation, this most perfectly ordered beauty, ascending from lowest to highest, descending from highest to lowest, never broken, but tempered together of things unlike, all praises God. Wherefore then does all praise God? Because when you consider it, and see its beauty, thou in it praisest God. The beauty of the earth is a kind of voice of the dumb earth....And this which you have found in it, is the very voice of its confession, that you praise the Creator. When you have thought on the universal beauty of this world, does not its very beauty as it were with one voice answer you, "I made not myself, God made me"?

"That they may make known to the sons of men Your power, and the glory of the greatness of the beauty of Your kingdom" [Psalm 145:12]. Your saints then commend "the glory of the greatness of the beauty of Your kingdom," the glory of the greatness of its beauty. There is a certain "greatness of the beauty of Your kingdom:" that is, Your kingdom has beauty, and great beauty. Since whatever has beauty, has beauty from You, how great beauty has Your whole kingdom! Let not the kingdom frighten us: it has beauty also, wherewith to delight us. For what is that beauty, which the saints shall hereafter enjoy, to whom it shall be said, "Come, you blessed of My Father, enjoy the kingdom"? [Matthew 25:34] Whence shall they come? Whither shall they come? Behold, brethren, and, if you can, as far as you can, think of the beauty of that kingdom which is to come; whence our prayer says, "Your kingdom come." For that kingdom we desire may come, that kingdom the saints proclaim to be coming. Observe this world: it is beautiful. How beautiful are earth, sea, air, heavens, stars. Do not all these frighten him who considers them? Is not the beauty of them so conspicuous, that it seems as though nothing more beautiful could be found? And here, in this beauty, in this fairness almost unspeakable, here worm and mice and all creeping things of the earth live with you, they live with you in all this beauty. How great is the beauty of that kingdom where none but angels live with You! There is a greatness of a certain beauty; let it be loved before it is seen, that when it is seen, it may be retained.

"Your kingdom." What kingdom mean I? "a kingdom of all ages." For the kingdom of this age too has its own beauty, but there is not in it that greatness of beauty, such as in the "kingdom of all ages." "And Your dominion is in every generation and generation" [Psalm 145:13]. This is the repetition we noticed, signifying either every generation, or the generation which will be after this generation. "Faithful is the Lord in His words, and holy in all His works." "Faithful is the Lord in His words:" for what has He promised that He has not given? "Faithful is the Lord in His words." Hereto there are certain things which He has promised, and has not given; but let Him be believed from the things which He has given. We might well believe Him, if He only spoke: He willed not that we should believe Him speaking, but that we should have His Scriptures in our hands:...as though a kind of bond of God's, which all who pass by might read, and might keep to the path of its promise. And how great things has He already paid in accordance with that bond! Do men hesitate to believe Him concerning the Resurrection of the dead and the Life to come, which alone now remains to be paid, when, if He come to reckon with the unbelievers, the unbelievers must blush? If God say to you, You have My bond: I have promised judgment, the separation of good and bad, everlasting life for the faithful, and will you not believe? There in My bond read all that I have promised, reckon with me: verily even by counting up what I have paid, you can believe that I shall pay what still I owe. In that bond you have My only-begotten Son promised, "Whom I spared not, but gave Him up for you all:" [Romans 8:32] reckon this then among what is paid. Read the bond: I promised therein that I would give by My Son the earnest of the Holy Spirit: reckon that as paid. I promised therein the blood and the crowns of the glorious Martyrs; let the White Mass remind you that My debt has been paid....He sets before the eyes of all His payment of His debts: some He has paid in the time of our ancestors, which we saw not: some He has paid in our times, which they saw not; throughout all generations He has paid what was written. And what remains? Do men not believe Him, when He has paid all this? What remains? Behold you have reckoned: all this He has paid: is He become unfaithful for the few things which remain? God forbid! Wherefore? Because "the Lord is faithful in His words, and holy in all His works."