The Previous Gathering and Today’s Teaching

I was grieved that I was absent from you at the previous gathering, but I rejoiced that you enjoyed a richer table. The man who shares the yoke with me opened the furrow for us, scattered the seed with a generous tongue, and cultivated your souls with great care. You saw a purified tongue; you heard polished speech; you enjoyed water springing up into eternal life; you saw a spring pouring forth rivers of pure gold.

There is said to be a river that carries flakes of gold to the people living beside it. The water does not produce the gold by its own nature. Rather, the river’s sources pass through mineral-bearing mountains, and as the water flows through them it carries along gold-bearing soil and becomes a treasure to those who live nearby, providing them, as it were, with ready-made wealth. Our teacher the other day imitated such a river. Flowing through the Scriptures as through mineral-bearing mountains, he carried thoughts more precious than any gold into your souls.

I know that what I offer today may seem poorer by comparison. Someone who continually eats at a modest table and then happens upon a richer one will notice the poverty of his own table all the more when he returns to it. Yet I will not enter the work any less eagerly. You have learned from Paul both to be filled and to be hungry, to abound and to lack, to admire the rich and not despise the poor. Just as lovers of wine welcome the better wine yet do not refuse an inferior one, so you, passionately devoted to hearing the divine sayings, welcome teachers who are wiser while still showing no small earnestness toward those who are more modest.

People who are sluggish and dissipated become sick even at a luxurious table. But those who are awake and sober, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, run eagerly even to a poorer table. And you showed especially in our previous discussion that these words are not flattery.