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Hymns on Faith

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

19. Rhythm the Nineteenth

Praise becometh the Son Who taught the Truth! do thou praise the Lord that became the brother of His servants! Honour is becoming from the time that He came in¹, Who became a Child and ministered unto the lowly. Thy garment seeing it was the covering² of Thy Human Nature, and Thy Body seeing it was the covering³ of Thy Divine Nature, coverings twain they were to Thee, Lord, the garment and the Body that Bread, the Bread of Life⁴. Who would not marvel at Thy changes of garments? Lo! the Body covers Thy glorious fearful brightness⁵: the garment covered Thy feebler nature: the bread covereth the Fire which dwells therein. Never at any time did the mind of mortal touch it. Who hath the Hands of Fire and the Fingers of Spirit which our Maker hath to⁶ grasp That, in respect of the Invisible Nature of Which even our mind is as it were a body⁷? Neither again is the knowledge of the highest [Angels] capable of that Glorious One, Who is within all and without all. He is His own knowledge and our knowledge. He is the Life⁸ of our soul which dwelleth in us. Who is not astonished that though every thing is in Him⁹, and He is also in them all, yet never at any time have they touched Him though they be in Him; like as the body never at any time hath touched with the hand it hath, the soul which is within it.

Who would not praise that Hidden One that is hidden from all, Who came openly to manifestations¹⁰ the plainest of all? When He had clothed Himself with a Body bodies touched Him, though minds had never at any time felt Him. It is a great thing that the little ones pressed upon His Greatness, that even It¹¹ was made little in their form that It might be like them. Since it was hard for them to be like unto Him, for Him it was a light thing to make Himself like them.

The weak man that armeth himself is deceived. He putteth armour of brass upon his feeble body¹². Thou, O Lord, didst clothe Thy Nature with a frail Body, that Thou mightest be able to suffer in it. Divers remedies flowed¹³ from Thee to them that needed; though all of them were one undivided Virtue, it was many for the frail, was divided to the needy: it gathered [them into one] and was one Verity for the truthful¹⁴. Thy Love collected stores for our neediness, that to each one Thou mightest assign a different gift from out of Thy Treasury. By little portions Thou didst move our needy estate, Lord, that it might come near to Thy door.

Notes

Hahn takes the words [Syriac] [Syriac] as if a pleonasm for [Syriac]: this seems an unnecessary assumption; since [Syriac] may be a verb, and there is no great difficulty in supposing that ‘to come in’ might mean in Syriac as in English ‘to be in season,’ ‘to be come into vogue,’ or the like.
p. 51, n. y.
on Ath. p. 291.
R. x. §. 4. 5. R. xxxi. §. 5.
A passage from St. Cyril on St. Luke, ap. Mai. A. Class. vol. x. p. 375. will throw light upon the connection in St. E.’s mind here: “That we might not recoil in fear at the sight of the Flesh and Blood lying openly upon the holy Tables of the Churches, God, accommodating Himself to our weaknesses, sendeth a power of Life into what lieth before us, and changeth them so as that they should have the operation of His own Flesh, that we may have them, so as to partake of Life through them,” &c.
S. for that
Hil. in Matt. v. §. 8. “The different kinds of souls, whether possessed of bodies or devoid of bodies, yet have a bodily substance allotted to them as that of their nature; because every created thing of necessity existeth in somewhat whence it originates.” Greg. Mor. ii. §. 3. “The spirits of Angels in comparison of our bodies are spirits; but in comparison of the Supreme and Illimitable Spirit, body.” Comp. Basil Ep. viii. §. 2 fin. Method, ap. Phot. Cod. 234, p. 301. Bekker, Arnob. c. Serap. Joan. Thessalon. ap. Harduin Conc. iv. p. 294. Most of these places are referred to by Petav. de Ang. i. 2 and 3: they are to be explained, as a strong mode of stating the finiteness of all spirits but God. See R. xxx. §. 2. and Bar. Bak. in Michälis Lex. p. 445. It should be added that some have spoken of our Lord’s Body as more subtle than the Angels whom we know to be spirits. Vid. Petav. de Inc. x. 6. §. 3. This premised, the following may be suggested as the drift of the passage. In speaking of changes of garments, it is not meant to imply that the Body, &c. is a mere investiture which may be cast aside at pleasure; on the contrary, it is part of His person and adorable as such; (see p. 158, n. c. p. 199, n. a. and Pet. de Inc. xv. 3.) The Fire, i. e. God, though so concealed, is unapproachable even by the mind. True that in the Eucharist the Word of Life is handled and seen, yet it will not follow from this that we can know, and explore, and grasp, as if in our hands, the Invisible Person there present, as the Eunomians fancy. (See p. 116, n. e.) We have not those Hands, &c. i. e. those creative energies (it not being the priest who is able to make the Body, p. 146, n. d.) which produce That which, in respect of It’s Divine Nature, is such that even our souls are gross and material when compared with it. So far then from our mind being able to grasp It, even the highest Angels, who are ever praising Him, know Him not to the full; so far from having any independent knowledge of Him, He it is Who is the Light and Life of our souls. If then we would argue that we can grasp Him, because in a sense we do so in the Eucharist; let us reflect that we cannot lay hold of our own souls. This interpretation satisfies myself; it is right to mention that Hahn thinks the text corrupt.
p. 22, n. r.
p. 105, n. i.
S. to an open openness open from all
R. xxxii. §. 3, 4.
This alludes to 1 Sam. xvii. 17. where, among other reasons for rejecting Saul’s armour, he gives the following: David “was musing in the spirit of prophecy upon the sufferings of his Lord, and contemplating how wholly unbecoming it was for the servant to clothe himself with princely apparel in the place wherein he was to shadow forth a type of the Son of God, Who was to struggle with the king of the proud ones, not in the might of His Power, but in the lowliness of His Cross.”
Vol. ii. p. 480, b. “To the soul itself He restored the health which it had lost: and lo, the bodies that were raised bear witness thereof! And if He changed the Law and so gave life, it was as a physician that changes medicines. His medicines then are not strange to the world: the physician useth all kinds of medicines to cure, and God all arguments to give life.” Comp. R. liii. §. 3. He is there arguing that God is unchanged though He applied the Law, and then the Gospel, to heal us.
R. vi. §. 2.