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 our labour is in vain. For if we, who have given up the world, have advanced so little in holiness, what spiritual gifts can we expect to find in one surrounded by so great pomp and glory?" But when Basil began to preach, it seemed to Ephrem as though the Holy Ghost, in shape like a dove, sat upon his shoulder, and suggested to him the words. From time to time the people murmured their applause, and Ephrem twice repeated sentences which had fallen from the preacher's lips. Upon this Basil sent his archdeacon to invite him into his presence, which, offended at the saint's ragged attire, he did reluctantly, and only after he had been twice bidden to summon him. After embracing one another, with many florid compliments, Basil asked him how it was that, knowing no Greek, he had twice cheered the sermon, and repeated sentences of it to the multitude? And Ephrem answered, "It was not I who praised and repeated, but the Holy Ghost by my mouth." Under pressure from St. Basil, Ephrem consented to be ordained deacon. When Basil had laid his hands upon him, being suddenly endowed with the knowledge of Syriac, he said to Ephrem in that tongue, "O Lord, bid him arise," upon which Ephrem answered in Greek, "Save me, and raise me up, O God, by Thy grace." Doubtless Ephrem, travelling about with an educated companion, and having been an eminent teacher at Edessa, a place famous for its schools, had picked up some knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, some evidence of which we shall later gather from his own writings. Two instances are given in the Acta of the influence of Ephrem's teaching on St. Basil. It had been usual at Caesarea in the Doxology to say, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, to the Holy Ghost; but after Ephrem's visit Basil inserted and before the third clause. Whereat the people in church murmured, and Basil defended himself by saying that his Syrian visitor had taught him that the insertion of the conjunction was necessary for the more clear manifestation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The other instance is as follows: In Gen. i. 2 the LXX renders "The Spirit of God was borne upon the surface of the water." So St. Basil had understood it, but the Peshitta-Syriac version renders it, "The Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters," which Ephrem explained of the Spirit resting upon them with a warm and fostering influence as of a hen sitting upon her nest, and so endowing them with the power of bringing forth the moving creature that hath life. St. Basil gives two reasons for trusting his Syrian friend. First, that Ephrem led a very ascetic life; "for in proportion as a man abandons the love of the world, so does he excel in that perfection which rises above the world." Secondly, that "Ephrem is an acute thinker, and has a thorough knowledge of the divine philosophy," i.e. of the general sense of Holy Scripture. There is nothing to suggest that any appeal was made to the Hebrew, as Benedict suggests, though, in fact, the Syriac and Hebrew words are the same; and, curiously enough, in his own exposition (Opp. Syr. i. 8), Ephrem says that the words simply mean that a wind was in motion; for the waters were instinct, he argues, with no creative energy till the fourth day. From Caesarea, Ephrem was recalled to Edessa by the news that the city was assailed by numerous heresies. On his journey he rescued the people of Samosata from the influence of false teaching by a miracle, and on reaching home sought to counteract heresy by teaching orthodoxy in hymns. The fatalistic tenets of Bardesan, a Gnostic who flourished at the end of the 2nd cent., had been embodied in 150 psalms, a number fixed upon in irreverent imitation of the Psalter of David. His son Honorius had set these hymns to music, and so sweet were both the words and tunes that they were known by heart even by children and sung to the guitar. To combat their influence Ephrem composed numerous hymns himself, and trained young women, who were aspirants after the conventual life, to sing them in chorus. These hymns have no rhyme, nor do they scan, but are simply arranged in parallel lines, containing each, as a rule, seven syllables. Their poetry consists in their elevated sentiments and richness of metaphor, but their regular form was an aid to the memory, and rendered them capable of being set to music. The subjects of these hymns were the Life of our Lord, including His Nativity, Baptism, Fasting, and chief incidents of his ministry, His Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. He wrote also on Repentance, on the Dead, and on Martyrs. Upon the Festivals of our Lord, we read, on the first days of the week, and on the days of martyrs, Ephrem gathered round him his choirs, and the whole city flocked to hear them, and the poems of Bardesan lost their influence. While thus occupied Basil endeavoured to persuade him to visit Caesarea again, intending to make him a bishop, but the saint even feigned madness rather than consent. Meanwhile he wrote upon the devastation committed by the Persians, the Maccabean martyrs, the Life of Constantine, and so on, until the accession of Julian rudely disturbed his studies. On his expedition against the Persians Julian had advanced as far as Haran, a town so famous for obstinate adherence to heathenism that Haranite in Syriac is equivalent to pagan, and there determined to hold a great sacrifice, to which he commanded the Edessenes to send chosen citizens to do him homage, and to grace by their presence his restoration of the old cult. But this met with such fierce opposition on the part of the people, and such an eager desire for martyrdom, that the embassy withdrew in haste, and Julian threatened Edessa with bitter vengeance upon his return. Ephrem, who had exerted himself to the utmost in this crisis, resumed his hermit life, quitting the mountains only for controversy with heretics or for charitable services. As a controversialist, Gregory of Nyssa relates of him with great approbation an act contrary to modern views of morality: The "insane and irrational Apollinaris" had written a treatise in two volumes containing much that was contrary to Scripture. These he had given in charge of a lady at Edessa, from whom Ephrem borrowed them, pretending that he was a disciple of Apollinaris and