Commentary on Ecclesiastes
Gregory of Nazianzus (329–390)
As for the sea, if I had felt no wonder at its size, I should have felt it for its stillness, at the way it stands free within its proper limits. If its stillness had not moved my admiration, its size must have done. Since both aspects move me, I shall praise the power involved in both. What binding force brought the sea together? What causes it to swell yet stay in position, as if in awe of the land its neighbor? How can it take in all rivers and stay the same through sheer excess of quantity?—I know no other explanation. Why does so great an element have sand as its frontier? Can natural philosophers, with their futile cleverness, give any account of it, when they actually take the sea's vast measurements with pint size pots of their own ideas? Or shall I give you the short answer from Scripture, the one more credible, more real, than their long arguments? "He made his command a boundary for the face of the waters." This command is what binds the elemental water. What makes it carry the sailor in his little boat with a little wind—do you not find it a marvelous sight, does not your mind stand amazed at it?—to bind land and sea with business and commerce and unify for humanity…
See also
Enable JavaScript to read the full text and search the library.