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Hymns on Faith

St Ephrem the Syrian, tr. Morris, 1847; selections

38. Rhythm the Thirty-eighth

Thy love, Lord, ticeth us and comforteth us, while it rebuketh us. It shaketh and rouseth, restraineth and reproveth, winketh at us and instructeth, since all it quickeneth, as knowing all. Who is he that would keep on still silence? Is he for making us mute as the beasts¹? Who again refraineth hateful talkativeness, lest we become devils speaking in their blasphemies?

The wranglers once² were men of traffic, and when they had met with losses, silence was proper: from those deceived their doctors got rich. Instead of with infidels it is with the faithful that they have come to fight; they have filled their treasuries from the doctrine, and their storehouses from the interpretations. When they laboured and taught him that fell into error, they ruined the principal with the interest, because they pried daringly.³

The persecutor has left the wicked one, and hath begun to pursue his sidesman. The adversary hath blinded the wrestler, and he hath thrown at his own self, and is overcome from himself⁴. Give unto us, Lord, to recognise our side, and the men of our side! Let not this right hand struggle, Lord, with itself, for that it should struggle with the left⁵; neither let us hate the wicked, Lord, since there is but one evil one⁶ which Thou also hatest. The delusion⁷ which is a hidden pang with the word of Truth hast Thou cut and cast it out, Thou hast made it as a confused smoke.⁸ Thy measure weighed silence and speaking that we might do so likewise. And does not even nature teach, my brethren, that by one scale without the twin one we can weigh nothing? Let us avail ourselves of silence and of speaking; let our speech be as the day, and as the night again let our silence be; for both the hearing and the tongue require rest: for they may be likened⁹ and compared, the doctrines of truth to the broad day, and again silence and stillness are as the night; and as sleep again is rest abounding in sweetness.

For the word of Truth be we labourers, and, as upon ground¹⁰, come and let us toil therein; sow we love and reap we peace. Let a sheaf come up from reconciliation to the Lord of peace. Lo, a breath of the Holy Ghost with its fanning¹¹ purifieth the corn-heap; the chaff it winnows, the¹² pollard it scatters, the wheat it gathers into the Barn of Life that hath no tares! Blessed be that Good One who gave us speech, and blessed be the Just that added silence! He gave us sides¹³ upon which we might search, and keepeth others from us that in them we may be silent, as being Teacher of all. And it is not the whole earth that He has given us to go up and down, but a portion of it only¹⁴; neither¹⁵ the whole sea to go down to; neither the whole sun for the eye to exercise lordship over.

And how then is it that the mind¹⁶ wishes to have that Majesty, which cannot be thoroughly comprehended, to exercise a lordship over It, as though it reckoned It to be less than the creatures? And if those things which are given unto us are not given unto us fully, how should we search into the hidden Generation which has a bound about it continually, my brethren, as the Mount Sinai¹⁷?

Adam wished to inherit brightness, and the earth became his inheritance. Uzziah wished to take to himself the priesthood, and a filthy leprosy was caught by him. And who shall venture upon hidden things, the boundaries whereof are stillness and silence¹⁸, yea, the walls¹⁹ thereof are fire and judgment, and their hedges are wailing, and weeping, and gnashing of teeth? Who shall make a breach in the rampart walls and enter in and take the fearful woes? Whoso maketh a breach in the foundations the hedges and the walls, doth it for gain; we, my brethren, should do it for damage. I will praise Thee, O Lord²⁰, who hast held me back from the hidden things, and from those follies which have emptied the treasuries of them that utter them. My debts²¹ I will pay from things revealed: to Thee be glory!

Notes

R. xxxvii. §. 4. ref. 2.
Aetius the founder of the Anomeans started in life as a tinker, and in that trade for some time throve by roguery: but on being detected in this he became a mountebank and quack doctor. In the latter trade he learnt a volubility of speech, which fitted him to become the heresiarch: Eunomius was first a labouring man, then he took to being a sort of secretary, and became tutor to his employer’s children, and afterwards joined Aetius. V. Greg. Nys. ii. p. 293—6. To something of this sort St. Ephrem probably alludes, as also to the use made by their school of heathen philosophy. See ab. p. 106, a.
comp. Luke 19, 23.
R. xxxvii. §. 4.
p. 135, n. a.
See n. c. on R. xxxvii. St. E. probably contemplates Satan as one abiding principle of evil actuating a mystical body of sin. see Athan. p. 9, n. s. and p. 434, ref. 8. and compare the rule of Tichonius given in St. Austin de Doctr. Christian, iii. §. 42. and St. E. vol. ii. p. 504, f.
p. 155, n. a.
Is. 51, 9.
S. for their comparisons are like
Comp. contr. Scrut. i. §. 16. and R. xxxvi. §. 6.
S. brooding
Mat. 3, 12; 13, 30.
R. viii. § 5. n. e.
S. in measure
Wisd. 9, 16.
R. iv. n. e. R. xlv. §§. 2. 4.
R. xxviii. §. 5. and §. 8.
Comp. p. 115, n. a.
p. 87, n. i. R. xxxvii. §. 5.
See R. xxxvii. §. 2. A similar thanksgiving occurs often in St. E. in vol. iii. p. 239, a. he puts into the mouth of one departed these words: “Disciple have I been, and reverer of all my masters and my fathers: do ye remember me in the prayer at the hour when the Holy Thing is divided; for whatever stains I am guilty of, stain amongst the truth have I not commingled! I have not sown tares in the field of the truth! No seams have I put into the Gospel of Christ! I have not doubted, all my lifelong, touching the Threefold Power! I have not pried boldly into Him that created me in order! I have not scrutinized the Father in my mind, nor have I disparaged the Son in my intellect! no idle thought of doubt about the Holy Ghost hath ever trickled into me!” See also p. 344, f. Vol. ii. p. 444, e. p. 524, f. Op. G. Vol. ii. p. 396. (quoted p. 133.) p. 404, d. “Sins of the body we have enough: add we not aught to our iniquity. In this one thing have I hope and comfort before God, that I have never contemned my Lord, and that blasphemy hath never gone forth of my mouth: for them that hate Thee, Lord, have I hated, and have not loved Thine enemies!” In all these passages he must be taken to regard orthodoxy as in such sense ‘before all things necessary’ to salvation, as implies that the forfeiture of it is the most terrible consequence of sin.
p. 125, n. n.