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Hymns on Faith

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

48. Rhythm the Forty-eighth

Grant that I may open my senses to Thy Well-beloved, since He alone is able to tell me of Thee: and he that hath¹ not learnt of Him Thy Nature², hath erred greatly in thinking that he had found Thee. In the faithful³ are shadowed out the Names of the Threefold who have not been searched out at any time, nor comprehended at any time. Give unto us that our congregation may praise Thee without division! If we had attained to [knowing] ourselves⁴ in every thing, yet would the Lord of every thing be entirely hidden from us: and if we were an assay-furnace⁵ for these disputations, then no man might deceive us by his words. Our soul is like a hand which without instruction cannot mark out the letters⁶.

For lo, there are many that err as without reason, and perceive not this which I have taught, to wit, that we are not an assay-furnace for every thing, so as to know of our own selves alone that He is One⁷. For His preachers have taught us our make by the type of an eye, which in itself alone is blind, and without the light cannot distinguish colours⁸. He both⁹ made light to rise up for us, and books too He had written for us. His light is for things revealed; His Scripture for things hidden; at first it was with visible things and now with His Law. His Light and His Law are a lamp that, without grudging, with His bright glistenings crieth aloud to them that see it, that by the gleamings of the Law the Truth is to be comprehended. Nature was an instructress to us in every thing, and every man according to his ability learns in proportion his pains; and he that learneth not is reckoned among the unlearned. Compare one with the other, and be persuaded that he who subjects not himself to the Teacher of all, is justly styled ‘one who errs through self-will.’

It is hard for one to find fault with a poor or an unlearned person, that he knoweth not how to paint, or that he skills not to chase gold; yet one might be able to find fault with him who, it may be, did not learn. In the former case he escapes, and the latter he is condemned. And yet not even on this very score for which he thought to have escaped, could he have escaped, if men had condemned him upon the same. Let go to a full length the fish that he may get himself refreshed; for thee he is struggling, and his labour is against himself; he bringeth the crown to thee by his run though he perceive it not. Despise thou the bold disputer and the erring man, who is overcome by his own weapon; for when he thinks that he shall draw with him¹⁰, then is he drawn himself at the will of the fisherman. Since he could not explore the sea into which he plunged deep, the air he wished to pierce into, and the height he wished to explore, though not able to live in a place not his own¹¹. The fish whose frolicksomeness leads him astray, leaps and goes aloft that it may come up and feel the air¹²; because the breath thereof tosses him away, back into his waters does it send him; because he is a child of the water he thinks that every thing will give him a watery dwelling-place. His stream persuadeth him that he is not of a nature adapted to a dwelling¹³ in chambers, and that he is not of a nature at all adapted to¹⁴ our dwelling-place. Thus our priers are not of a nature adapted to, or capable of¹⁵, attaining to the things above, or searching out the natures thereof.

The Gospel in the figure of Gihon breaks forth to give us drink; by Euphrates is typified its fruitfulness, because of the abundance of its doctrine; by Pishon is shadowed forth the type of it and of the pause put to scrutinizing it. Our washing, like the Deklath, with its word washeth us, and we come up by it into the lands of Paradise. And let not its fishes pass over the boundaries of life¹⁶!

Notes

Mat. 11, 27.
S. how Thou art
In Pearl v. §. 1. R. xxxiii. §. 2. he speaks of the faith in connection with colours in a similar way. Such passages are not of course meant to assert that the faith is subjective only and without any existence save that in our minds: what they are meant to do, is to contrast the expression of them in words with the impression in the mind of the faithful, which is of the two the most accurate representative of these objects of faith. Hence the fathers commonly disparage in contrast with this impression ‘the noise of the words.’ See Basil c. Eun. ii. 27. Gr. Naz. xxxvii. p. 605. Nyss. ii. p. 853. Jerome ad Damas. Ep. xv. §. 4. (al. 37.): and see on Athan. p. 17. n. m. and p. 328, n. h.
R. xlvi. §. 4.
p. 122, n. i.
Comp. p. 180, n. a.
p. 106, n. b. p. 217, n. g.
Aristotle de Anima, iii. 3. “After a certain sort the light maketh the things which are colours potentially to be colours actually.” Plato Rep. vi. §. 18.— Vol. ii. p. 537, d. “Blessed be he that made all things in proportion over against the senses. He as a discriminating Giver gave us the earth for the feet; He gave us light for the eyes, and for the ears sounds and words: by those things which He gave, He is accredited to be Ruler over all. The mouth He gave us was for His Bread and for His Cup: the eyes He created were for His Scriptures, and for His Church also did He give us feet.” By ‘preachers’ perhaps he means such lights of the Church as Greg. Naz. who compares God to the sun, Or. 34. p. 559, b. Or. 40. p. 639, a. Dionys. de Div. Nom. iv. Thomassin de Deo, iii. 5. §. 12, &c. and may be referred to as evidence how received an illustration this was.
Mat. 6, 22.
R. xliv. §. 6. contr. Scrut. i. §. 29.
R. li. §. 5.
R. lxiv. §. 5.
Ex. 8, 12.
S. quite a stranger to
S. our prying is strange and not able.
Gihon means ‘breaking forth’—Euphrates he connects with a word signifying fruitfulness, as Simonis ap. Gesen. in v. has done. See Ecclus. 24, 27—38. which St. E. probably had in his eye. As for Pishon it seems to a Hebrew scholar connected with ‘pause’ by the mere accident of alliteration, though in Syriac the same root is used in the sense of stopping. In like way he connects Deklath the Syrian name of the Tigris with a Syriac word signifying ‘washing,’ which is against the well-attested etymology of the name from the Persian teger an arrow, though possibly it may be a correcter one for the Semitic name Hiddekel. St. E. on the whole may perhaps be said to be very much less open to the charge of nonsensicalness in etymologies, so deservedly brought against the ancients, than his Grecian and Roman cotemporaries: in places he traces accurately and scientifically the ramifications of a word’s senses from a common idea, and therefore some weight is to be attached to his opinion in such matters.