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Hymns on Faith

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

42. Rhythm the Forty-second

Who hath been able to comprise as it were in water-pipes and pass over in his thought the billows of hidden things? As searching is to us in¹ our weakness, as it were, bitter, how much more then is the standard of glorious Might bitter? Who that hath his senses not healthful would be able to bear the might of that Power whose Generation is unsearchable? The sight of the Spirit² were not suited to our pupils³, and strange were the colour thereof for our eyes to gaze upon: and who is there that will by his scrutinizing become correlative to the Hidden One, who is in all respects unknown to all? Who that hath made his mouth correlative to flaming Fire⁴ and his taste to that Brilliancy which never was tasted at any time? Let him learn by this fire, the might of which cannot be tasted, though the power of it is tasted by the taste of what is dressed⁵, and in this way it is our profit and altogether our gain. So also is the hidden Essence; mingle⁶ and take Its might in the divers kinds of blessings, since the investigating of It in Its own self is too arduous and difficult⁷.

The sun passing into a transparent⁸ vessel, into water, begetteth in the cold element the hot fire, an offspring that is like itself; marvellously it generateth; an offspring rises up from it without division, so that his light is not quenched, and the water is not divided. The offspring is one of chastity, which glisteneth forth in spotlessness. Gold is uniform, a flower is threefold; stone is uniform, fire is threefold; burning, and heat, and light are blended in it⁹. For it is not by one comparison¹⁰ only that the language of the creation mounteth up; and thus, as They are preached, so receive ye without gainsaying these Threefold Ones¹¹. For they stand not by the ordering of our wills; that nature as it exists, existeth threefoldly, neither can it be comprehended, wherefore it is found to be such, as without question it really is. For who would blame him who said that fire exists threefoldly? No man condemns him, since every one allows him. The passage of fire¹² remains a mystery to thee, how it is conceived in the sun and hidden therein, and how again it is concealed in the womb of his brightnesses; and the pang which begot it is inscrutable! This wonderful birth of that miraculous thing¹³ silenceth thee and refraineth thy thought, since it surpasseth thy mind!

The fruit which thou hast never tasted what sort it is, if thou shouldest feel it with thy hand and smell it and also see it, yet because thou hadst not hitherto tasted it and tried it, thou wouldest rely upon another who had tried it¹⁴; since then He is too mighty for thee, even that hidden Essence, believe that Fruit¹⁵ whereby His might hath been tasted. Take wheat, and open it, and examine it, and shew us how the blade, the ear, and the root are hidden [there], which are each one of them perfect within it threefoldly, and which is recent, which old, or which afore other: and though they had a beginning, yet this is difficult to comprehend, since their hidden beginning is from themselves unto themselves¹⁶.

And since this type faileth, it being inadequate as requiring to be reaped and winnowed to be fit for use, and when the comparison is overborne by strife; do thou then behold, with sane mind, that in the blade there is a type of the body, and the full¹⁷ corn is a type of the spirit, and the ear of the soul. This is an illustrious parable! For see how that every similitude which is stamped and framed for use would, if it sufficed to depict the thing intended to perfection¹⁸, be found not to be a similitude, but the reality. It is necessary for shadows that they should pass through the net-work¹⁹ of time. And a grain of corn did our Redeemer liken to the kingdom for our²⁰ edification.

Examples and parables are feeble and inadequate: models and similitudes are weak, and insufficient. They stand in humble semblance to rebuke him that is lifted up and exalteth himself: since if he cannot attain to the similitudes, how came he madly to grasp at the height of the Divine Majesty. The cloud is higher than the mist²¹, and the heaven than both of these, and the heavens of heavens are again higher; and the low mountains of the creation are high [only] to them that dwell in the dust beneath. Thus also the similitudes, however great they are to us, are but fancied to be near, though they are at a very great distance²².

Notes

S. to our
Spirit is in the Syriac ambiguous: no doubt St. E. intended to leave it ambiguous, whether he used the word determinately of the Holy Ghost, or of Spirit, i. e. God indeterminately, or of the wind, as that which we have no sense to perceive, and can only discern by its effects. See R. xxxiii. §. 2, 3.
R. xxvii. §. 3. R. xli. §. 2.
R. x. §. 4. xli. §. 3.
S. of boiling
R. xli. §. 4.
R. xxxiii. §. 1.
[Syriac] in speculari vase Ass. The word is used for the alabaster box in Matt. xxvi. 1. &c. There is a stone of the same family as alabaster, the Theiochalix prismaticus, which readily splits, and is transparent, (the root [Syriac] is to split.) Schubert. Gesch. der Natur. ii. p. 238. Pliny N. H. xxxvi. 59. and Isidor. Orig. xvi. 3. there quoted, mention a species of gypsum called the lapis specularis, which would shew its applicability to the uses of a burning glass. A similar passage to this occurs below, R. lxxv. §. 2. on which see the notes.
R. xl. §. 3.
See Athan. p. 140, n. n.
See n. c. 239. and n. a, b. on R. xxviii.
§. 1. R. lxi. §. 2.
S. the birth of the miracle of its marvel.
R. xli. §. 2. p. 220, n. d.
p. 179, n. e. contr. Scrut. R. i. §. 33.
i. e. even in this created thing there are operations which rise in itself, and have no issue save what is internal to itself. St. E. means to imply that the relations of the Persons of the Ever-blessed Trinity to Each Other, result from operations internal to the Godhead, (such as Generation and Spiration,) and not from any operations issuing in us, comp. n. a. p. 126. n. d. p. 166. n. g. p. 234, f. This passage may be contrasted with Method. Conv. Virg. x. 6. and the names bestowed on the Son and the Spirit by Pseudo-Dionys. de Div. Nom. ii. §. 7. (τῆς θεογόνου θεότητος βλαστοὶ θεόφυτοι καὶ οἷον ἄνθη καὶ ὑπερούσια φῶτα,) there quoted by Gallandi, though without the apology with which Dionys. introduces it, εἰ οὕτω χρὴ φάναι. Cyril. in Joan. p. 12. c. points out how, in the in Joan. p. 12. c. points out how, in the case of the type of the sun with its ray and fire with its heat, the indwelling of one in the other does not destroy the coexistence of one with the other. τὸ ἐνυπάρχειν τὰ ἐξ αὐτῶν οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ τὴν συνπάρξιν. This Tertullian c. Prax. viii. fin. does of the root and its stem also, noticing besides the fruit the third. See also Dionys. in Athan. p. 45, n. g. and p. 142.
R. xviii. §. 2. xxxviii. §. 3.
S. to depict the whole perfectness
Aristocles ap. Euseb. P. Evan. p. 769, d. in the words, “The senses are like meshes and nets, and such like hunting implements,” implies what St. E. here states explicitly, viz. that they reach truth not without the intervention of a medium which partially obscures it. Compare note on R. xli. §. 4. and St. Austin c. Faust. xvi. 15. “as if when a thing is said to be like it was like in all parts and ways! surely it is not those things only which are of one and the same nature, which are said to be like, as, two men.....but many things also which are of a different nature, &c.”
Mark 4, 31.
See n. f. p. 271.
See on Athan. 326, n. f. and comp. contr. Scrut. R. i. §. 32. Vol. ii. p. 512, 13. quoted p. 210. Vol. iii. p. 368, a. “Similitudes suit in some points, in others again do not agree: neither does the mouth eat fruit, because sweet, with the husks. The Hebrews have left the cities of refuge [of which he was speaking]; let us abide for ever in that City of refuge [penitence]. The Hebrews have cast aside the types; come, let us clothe ourselves in the realities.” Upon the Heaven of heavens, see St. Austin’s Confess. p. 249. Chrysost. on the Romans, p. 258. Clementin. xi. 22. Clem. Strom. iv. §. 161. v. §. 94, 5. Orig. c. Cels. p. 289. J. Mart. p. 29. Basil, Hex. iii. 3. Ambros. in Ps. xxxvi. §. 83. Hex. ii. 2. ap. Petav. de Opif. i. 10. A similar tenet prevailed widely in the East. see Wilson on the Vishnu-Purana, pp. 213. 635. Windischm. i. p. 177. and the Coran, ii. §. 39.