The holy Word of the Father Himself, almighty and all-perfect, having come upon all things and spread His own powers everywhere, and having illumined all things visible and invisible, holds and binds them together in Himself. He has left nothing devoid of His power, but gives life to and preserves all things, through all things, each individually and all together. He blends into one the principles of all perceptible matter—hot and cold, wet and dry—and causes them not to oppose one another, but to form one harmonious concord.
Through Him and His power fire does not fight with cold, nor wet with dry. Rather, things that by themselves are opposites come together as friends and brothers, give life to visible things, and become principles of bodily existence. Obeying this God the Word, things on earth are given life and things in heaven are held together. Through Him the whole sea and the great ocean have their movement within their own bounds; all dry land grows green and flourishes with many different plants, as I said before.
And so that I do not linger by naming each thing separately when they are plain to see, there is nothing among things that exist or come to be that has not come to be and stood firm in Him and through Him, as the theologian says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came to be through Him, and without Him not one thing came to be.”
For just as a musician, after tuning a lyre and by his art joining the low notes with the high and the middle with the others, produces one melody, so the Wisdom of God, holding the whole like a lyre, joins the things in the air with those on earth, and those in heaven with those in the air, binds wholes to parts, and moves them all by His own command and will. In this way He forms one world and one order of it, beautifully and harmoniously, while He Himself remains unmoved with the Father but moves all things by His own ordering action, as each thing seems good to His Father.
This is the wonder of His divinity: by one and the same command He moves all things together, not at intervals but all at once—the straight and the circular, the things above, in the middle, and below, the wet, the cold, the hot, the visible and the invisible—and orders them according to the nature of each. At the same moment, by His one command, what is straight moves as straight, what is circular revolves, and what is in the middle moves as it is; the hot is heated and the dry is dried. All things are given life and held together by Him according to the nature each has, and through Him a truly wonderful and divine harmony is produced.