membrance all that I said unto you." It is a miracle only surpassed by the miracle of the person it records. (5) In the whole no contradiction can be made out, and there is not even a slip of the pen by any one of them. And even if there were a hundred times as many variances and difficulties, we still might, without the shadow of a doubt, accept the Gospels for the person of the Godman they contain. ARTICLE IV. ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM. BY THE REV. JOHN ALFRED FAULKNER, MINOOKA, PENNSYLVANIA. THERE were ten men whom God gave to the church in the fourth century, men as great, perhaps, as any one century can boast of. These were Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, Gregory Nazianzen, his brother Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Ephraem Syrus, Ambrose, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine. These men have left an ineffaceable impress upon the life and theology of the church. Of these ten no one deserves a higher estimation than he whose life and genius we are now to consider. John, afterwards called Chrysostom, the Golden Mouth, was born in Antioch, Syria, in 347. As in the case of Frederick W. Robertson, whom he resembled in many respects, his father was a military officer of rank, who died when he was an infant, leaving him to the care of his mother Anthusa, a woman of more than ordinary character and talent. She devoted herself to the training of her son, and it is chiefly to her influence that he was kept from contamination by the vices of one of the wickedest cities of the world, and was at last given to the church as a shining ornament. She was to him what Monica was to Augustine, and Nonna to Gregory Nazianzen. It was with reference to her that Libanius, John's pagan teacher, when told that he was the son of a widow who at the age of forty had lost her husband twenty years, exclaimed with mingled jealousy and admiration, "Heavens! what wonderful women these Christians have!" Anthusa gave her son the benefit of the best intellectual culture of the age in the school of Libanius, the most distinguished rhetorician and literary representative of heathenism at the close of the fourth century. Anthusa was not careful whether it was a pagan or a Christian school, deeming rightly that the careful home training in Christian principles would be a safeguard in any moral or intellectual temptations to which he might be exposed. Libanius esteemed him his best pupil, and desired him to become his successor as professor of rhetoric. Chrysostom began his public life as a lawyer, and he promised to obtain eminence in that calling. "The profession of law," says W. R. Stephens, "was at that time the great avenue to civil distinction. The amount. of litigation was enormous. One hundred and fifty advocates were required at the court of the praetorian prefect in the East alone. The display of talents in the law courts frequently obtained for a man the government of a province, whence the road was open to those higher dignities of vice-prefect, prefect, patrician, and consul, which were honored by the title 'illustrious.' But the upright character of the young lawyer revolted from a profession which revealed to his gaze so much fraud, artifice, and wickedness. His standard of truth was so much higher than that of the world around him that he was continually offended by the chicanery and doubledealing in which his calling abounded. "Like many another in that degraded age, his soul revolted from the glaring contrast presented by the ordinary life of the world around him to that standard of holiness which was held up in the gospel." Chrysostom left the practice of the law, hearing a voice within calling him to a more devoted Christian life, spent three years in catechetical instruction, the usual term of probation, and was baptized by Meletius, the bishop of Antioch. Neander well remarks, that the "seeds of faith sown in the young mind of John were not, as in the case of Augustine, kept in check by the predominance of 'Life of St. John Chrysostom (3d ed., London, 1883), p. 13. worldly passions, and without experiencing such violent storms and struggles in his more gentle soul, he was enabled to develop himself with a quiet and gradual progress under many favorable influences." Chrysostom passed through no convulsion of spirit, which by some has been thought to be necessary to conversion, but his baptism marked a higher consecration to which his whole past life had been leading him. His first impulse was to embrace the monastic life, which, since Anthony of Egypt had set the example, and such men as Athanasius, Basil, the Gregories, Ambrose, and Augustine had given it their praise, was now carrying away many of the most earnest youths of the church. It was looked upon as a mode of life which renounced the perishing vanities of the world, and by taking up the cross in self-denial and crucifixion of the flesh, obtained unbroken communion with God. Anthusa, however, defeated this design for a season. She took him by the hand, led him to her room, and by the bed where she had given him birth she remonstrated with him, in tears and tender entreaties, not to forsake her. This scene is described with great dramatic vividness by Chrysostom himself in his work "On the Priesthood." " 2 While at home he carried on a severe self-discipline by study and religious austerities. With some fellow-students of a congenial spirit he formed a voluntary fraternity for spiritual culture. They did not dwell in a separate building, nor were established as a monastic community; but, like Wesley and his young friends at Oxford, they lived by rule, and practised monastic severities. Their studies and general conduct were submitted to Diodorus and Carterius, presidents of the monasteries in the vicinity of Antioch. Diodorus was a man of liberal and discriminating mind, ahead of his age in the grasp of many of the princi1 History of the Christian Religion and Church (Torrey's Translation), Vol. ii. p. 754. 'De Sacerdotio, i. 3-6. ples of biblical interpretation, and it is to the long training under him that Chrysostom owes his emancipation from the allegorical method of interpretation, and his life-long adherence to the simple, grammatical, and historical method. The eyes of the church were now set upon John and his friends, and upon the banishment of Meletius in 370, he was sought for the office of bishop. This he avoided by stratagem, and thrust it upon his unwilling friend, Basil, whom he considered worthier, but who bitterly complained of the deception. Chrysostom justified himself on the principle of good management (oikovoμía), and brought forward the legitimate use of stratagem in army tactics, in medicine, and in St. Paul's circumcision of Timothy and observance of the ceremonial law in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 26). Many of the ancient Fathers did not rise above the conceptions of their times in their oriental laxity in matters of veracity. If the intention was a holy one, deception was allowable. But in the midst of so much ecclesiastical ambition and unworthy means of selfpromotion, it is refreshing to look back upon self-abnegation so sincere, generosity so noble, and humility so deep as that shown by the action of John at this time. It was this occurrence which gave rise to one of the earliest and best of Chrysostom's works, "On the Priesthood" (Tepi iepwoúvns, De Sacerdotio, libri vi). With acuteness, skill, sympathy, and largeness of view, he traverses the whole field of the sacred office, describes its duties, difficulties, honors, and burdens, and gives the qualifications of the preacher. The lapse of fifteen hundred years has not lessened the interest, freshness,and appropriateness of this earnest and comprehensive survey of the ministry. To avoid election to a position of which he felt himself so unworthy, and to escape the seductions and tumults of city life, Chrysostom fled to the monasteries south of Antioch, where he spent six years in meditation, prayer, and 1 |