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Hymns on Faith

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

65. Rhythm the Sixty-fifth

Speak for thy side: Nature¹ is before thy hand, Scripture before thine eyes, and nature is hard for us, Scripture is easy² for us; for it was not from nature that we learnt Christ. It is right and meet that from the same source whence we learnt His Humanity, we should also learn His Divinity. It is right that from the same source whence we learnt His Birth from Mary, we should also learn His other prior Birth³. And though nature is hard to us in every thing, the Scripture is able to teach us of the Father and the Son and the Spirit⁴, if They of a truth baptize us and give us life. He is convicted by himself! for either he denies the baptism of the heretics to be valid⁵; or else if he is baptized and asserts their baptism to be valid, he is like Marcion, who ate the goods of the Maker, and denied the Maker, and though he was conceived and born, yet vilified marriage⁶. A bitter fruit this which denieth its own root⁷! For who when he baptizeth denies and casts aside That into Which he baptizeth? He cannot then cast them aside, since he cannot baptize without the Names of Father and Son and Spirit. And though every form of words has a fixed shape⁸, thou hast had trial of those of the heretics!

Who hath searched out the ventricles and ducts⁹ of animals, meats and their changes, natures and their vicissitudes, some whereof are solitary¹⁰, and some of them productive of others. There is also reason to be greatly astonished at the trees, how it is that they put forth and bear leaves and branches and yield fruit; the investigating whereof ends in¹¹ stillness, and the searching after them in silence. Who hath searched out the olive¹², which, when thought¹³ to be of even texture, yet bringeth forth in wondrous sort leaves that are not like the branches, nor in their colour to the twigs, and are different from the fruit in their taste; aye, and in each single fruit three are conceived; and when it is pressed it bringeth forth water and fire and oil. Who again can find out how fire is conceived in the midst of its stone and cometh forth from it at the contact of its fellow, yea, and propagates itself in wood its fellow-servant?

In measure the blind man¹⁴ can search into light, though he cannot shadow forth the sun and his ray¹⁵ in his heart and imagination; how can he gain any kind of sight of the ray and offspring¹⁶ of that sun save only by putting implicit faith in him who hath told him thereof? Hence if a sightless man were minded to raise difficulties in what he was told, and did not believe, he would fall into countless evils; for that he pried and would not rest [content with one], but was minded¹⁷ to be found blind in both, in the eye as well as in the mind. But had he been willing to believe¹⁸, God in His justice had provided a light for his blindness¹⁹.

Why do we vex ourselves, even our own selves, with questionings? why trouble we ourselves, even our own selves, with scrutinizing? Blind is our mind which would gaze upon that Generation, and pry into the mode of it; for there is no other way for man save only that he believe¹⁷ implicitly the words of the True One. Who would not fear—if a blind man is reproved for hearing and not believing the word of man who wisheth to tell him of light, what the way of it is—that he will be much more judged²⁰ who heareth and yet believeth not the voice of God? for the voice of the Father proclaimed ‘This is My Son²¹.’

Here end seventeen Rhythms to the tune of Bardesanes’²² Odes.

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