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Hymns on Faith

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

69. Rhythm the Sixty-ninth

If thou priest into the Eternal, it is a distraction; where wilt thou begin, and where wilt thou end, O weak man! From the beginning to the end there is rest to him that goeth by the King’s high-way¹. To the Eternal there is no beginning nor end, and so He perplexeth him that seeketh into Him. If in the Truth which thou hast laid hold of, thou lettest thyself be of divided mind, thou wilt pour thyself out and error will drink thee in, that thirsty land. If with His secret counsel thou let thyself become perplexed, disputing about Him will be a mighty sea² and will come over thee. In the faith as in a ship³ go down to His Scriptures as a sailor to the port. Save by His Scriptures⁴ go not thou down into Him, for He hath made Him many havens⁵ among His billows. Praise thou His Name!

The High One came down in His Love and became small though greater than all, and was little⁶ unto Him who was too weak to go. Again, in His Love He hath become a Sea, that he might traffick therein who was lacking in treasures. But if in His own Nature one should familiarly use Him, neither things above nor things below can go down into Him. What created thing⁷ can search into His Godhead, when there is a gulph between him and the Creator? Unto the Godship is naught of the things which are made⁸ far away; for Love is between Him and the creatures. Unto God there is not a man of the disputers that cometh nigh, though He be very nigh unto them of distinguishing mind. In that Holy⁹ One none that is impure partaketh, for that He dwelleth in His entirety¹⁰ in the holy. To that All-knowing One none attaineth that is subtle, for that His Love is with plain men. To that High One none that is haughty attaineth, since His Love condescendeth to the lowly. He, being God, cannot be measured¹¹ of a man, though very loving unto men. He, being Maker, cannot be measured of things made⁷, how great soever the thing made by Him may be. He, as Only Living, cannot be uttered by mortals¹², nor His Generation by the disputers. Unto that Majesty who can reach? the spirit is feeble, the soul is little, the flesh weak¹³. Whoso hath thought that he could search out Him, of him the speech strayeth, of him the heart roameth, of him the whole rebelleth.

Notes

c. Scrut. i. §. 34. and p. 244, n. a. R. lxvi. §. 2.
p. 144, n. g. R. lxx. §. 1.
R. xlix. §. 3.
R. lxvii. §. 1.
R. lxx. §. 1.
p. 209, n. b.
R. lx. §. 1.
S. [Syriac] p. 278, c. p. 320, ref. 1.
Mat. 5, 8.
p. 22, n. t. p. 174, n. e.
R. lxvi. §. 1.
R. lv. §. 3.
It seems but little to add, that the flesh cannot reach God, which assertion may yet be illustrated by reference to n. d. p. 116. It would however appear more likely, that the word ‘flesh’ is used (as in Scripture) for the soul considered as acting upon, and acted upon by, the body; and the sentence will then mean, that that one substance, (which we call spirit, soul, or flesh, according to the subject matter which at the time of speaking we conceive of it as acting upon,) cannot by any of its faculties find out God. The oneness of the soul in all these three functions ought to have been noticed above, p. 166, n. d. and p. 295, n. d. as what St. E. makes analogous to the oneness of God in Three Persons. It will be following the example of the Fathers again to remind the reader, that God is not one out of all things and does not come under the laws relating to all things, and that consequently any one of them selected to illustrate His Nature only illustrates It partially. Each of these three functions of the soul seems as we contemplate them to engross its whole substance, and so to correspond to the Trinity in Unity in the rude way in which alone we can contemplate His Adorable Substance. The soul’s mode of existence does not, in reality, answer to God’s mode of existence: but the two objects, as we contemplate them, do (ἐπινοίᾳ, see p. 145, n. a. p. 246, n. b.) exhibit a kind of resemblance. Comp. R. lvii. n. a. b. p. 341.