Part 7

Here another great subject opens upon us, when I ought to be bringing these remarks to an end; I mean the endemic perennial fidget which possesses us about giving scandal; facts are omitted in great histories, or glosses are put upon memorable acts, because they are thought 5 not edifying, whereas of all scandals such omissions, such glosses, are the greatest. But I am getting far more argumentative than I thought to be when I began; so I lay my pen down, and retire into myself. 10

I

John of Antioch, from his sanctity and his eloquence called Chrysostom, was approaching sixty years of age, when he had to deliver himself up to the imperial officers, and to leave Constantinople for a distant exile. He had been the great 15 preacher of the day now for nearly twenty years; first at Antioch, then in the metropolis of the East; and his gift of speech, as in the instance of the two great classical orators before him, was to be his ruin. He had made an Empress his enemy, 20 more powerful than Antipater,--as passionate, if not so vindictive, as Fulvia. Nor was this all; a zealous Christian preacher offends not individuals merely, but classes of men, and much more so when he is pastor and ruler too, and has to 25 punish as well as to denounce. Eudoxia, the Empress, might be taken off suddenly,--as indeed she was taken off a few weeks after the Saint arrived at the place of exile, which she personally, 30 in spite of his entreaties, had marked out for him; but her death did but serve to increase the violence of the persecution directed against him. She had done her part in it, perhaps she might have even changed her mind in his favor; 5 probably the agitation of a bad conscience was, in her critical condition, the cause of her death. She was taken out of the way; but her partisans, who had made use of her, went on vigorously with the evil work which she had begun. When 10 Cucusus would not kill him, they sent him on his travels anew, across a far wilder country than he had already traversed, to a remote town on the eastern coast of the Euxine; and he sank under this fresh trial. 15

The Euxine! that strange mysterious sea, which typifies the abyss of outer darkness, as the blue Mediterranean basks under the smile of heaven in the center of civilization and religion. The awful, yet splendid drama of man's history 20 has mainly been carried on upon the Mediterranean shores; while the Black Sea has ever been on the very outskirts of the habitable world, and the scene of wild unnatural portents; with legends of Prometheus on the savage Caucasus, 25 of Medea gathering witch herbs in the moist meadows of the Phasis, and of Iphigenia sacrificing the shipwrecked stranger in Taurica; and then again, with the more historical, yet not more grateful visions of barbarous tribes, Goths, Huns, 30 Scythians, Tartars, flitting over the steppes and wastes which encircle its inhospitable waters. To be driven from the bright cities and sunny clime of Italy or Greece to such a region, was worse than death; and the luxurious Roman actually preferred death to exile. The suicide 5 of Gallus, under this dread doom, is well known; Ovid, too cowardly to be desperate, drained out the dregs of a vicious life on the cold marshes between the Danube and the sea. I need scarcely allude to the heroic Popes who patiently lived on 10 in the Crimea, till a martyrdom, in which they had not part but the suffering, released them.

But banishment was an immense evil in itself. Cicero, even though he had liberty of person, the choice of a home, and the prospect of a return, 15 roamed disconsolate through the cities of Greece, because he was debarred access to the senate-house and forum. Chrysostom had his own _rostra_, his own _curia_; it was the Holy Temple, where his eloquence gained for him victories not 20 less real, and more momentous, than the detection and overthrow of Catiline. Great as was his gift of oratory, it was not by the fertility of his imagination, or the splendor of his diction that he gained the surname of "Mouth of Gold." 25 We shall be very wrong if we suppose that fine expressions, or rounded periods, or figures of speech, were the credentials by which he claimed to be the first doctor of the East. His oratorical power was but the instrument by which he 30 readily, gracefully, adequately expressed--expressed without effort and with felicity--the keen feelings, the living ideas, the earnest practical lessons which he had to communicate to his hearers. He spoke, because his heart, his head, were brimful of things to speak about. His 5 elocution corresponded to that strength and flexibility of limb, that quickness of eye, hand, and foot, by which a man excels in manly games or in mechanical skill. It would be a great mistake, in speaking of it, to ask whether it was Attic or 10 Asiatic, terse or flowing, when its distinctive praise was that it was natural. His unrivaled charm, as that of every really eloquent man, lies in his singleness of purpose, his fixed grasp of his aim, his noble earnestness. 15

A bright, cheerful, gentle soul; a sensitive heart, a temperament open to emotion and impulse; and all this elevated, refined, transformed by the touch of heaven,--such was St. John Chrysostom; winning followers, riveting 20 affections, by his sweetness, frankness, and neglect of self. In his labors, in his preaching, he thought of others only. "I am always in admiration of that thrice-blessed man," says an able critic,[29] "because he ever in all his writings puts 25 before him as his object, to be useful to his hearers; and as to all other matters, he either simply put them aside, or took the least possible notice of them. Nay, as to his seeming ignorant of some of the thoughts of Scripture, or careless of 30 entering into its depths, and similar defects, all this he utterly disregarded in comparison of the profit of his hearers."

[29] Photius, p. 387.

There was as little affectation of sanctity in his dress or living as there was effort in his eloquence. 5 In his youth he had been one of the most austere of men; at the age of twenty-one, renouncing bright prospects of the world, he had devoted himself to prayer and study of the Scriptures. He had retired to the mountains near Antioch, 10 his native place, and had lived among the monks. This had been his home for six years, and he had chosen it in order to subdue the daintiness of his natural appetite. "Lately," he wrote to a friend at the time,--"lately, when I had made up my 15 mind to leave the city and betake myself to the tabernacle of the monks, I was forever inquiring and busying myself how I was to get a supply of provisions; whether it would be possible to procure fresh bread for my eating, whether 20 I should be ordered to use the same oil for my lamp and for my food, to undergo the hardship of peas and beans, or of severe toil, such as digging, carrying wood or water, and the like; in a word, I made much account of bodily comfort."[30] 25 Such was the nervous anxiety and fidget of mind with which he had begun: but this rough discipline soon effected its object, and at length, even by preference, he took upon him mortifications which at first were a trouble to him. For the 30 last two years of his monastic exercise, he lived by himself in a cave; he slept, when he did sleep, without lying down; he exposed himself to the extremities of cold. At length he found he was passing the bounds of discretion, nature would 5 bear no more; he fell ill, and returned to the city.

[30] Ad Demetrium, i. 6.

A course of ascetic practice such as this would leave its spiritual effects upon him for life. It sank deep into him, though the surface might 10 not show it. His duty at Constantinople was to mix with the world; and he lived as others, except as regards such restraints as his sacred office and archiepiscopal station demanded of him. He wore shoes, and an under garment; 15 but his stomach was ever delicate, and at meals he was obliged to have his own dish, such as it was, to himself. However, he mixed freely with all ranks of men; and he made friends, affectionate friends, of young and old, men and women, 20 rich and poor, by condescending to all of every degree. How he was loved at Antioch, is shown by the expedient used to transfer him thence to Constantinople. Asterius, count of the East, had orders to send for him, and ask his company to a 25 church without the city. Having got him into his carriage, he drove off with him to the first station on the highroad to Constantinople, where imperial officers were in readiness to convey him thither. Thus he was brought upon the scene of 30 those trials which have given him a name in history, and a place in the catalogue of the Saints. At the imperial city he was as much followed, if not as popular, as at Antioch. "The people flocked to him," says Sozomen, "as often as he preached; some of them to hear what would 5 profit them, others to make trial of him. He carried them away, one and all, and persuaded them to think as he did about the Divine Nature. They hung upon his words, and could not have enough of them; so that, when they thrust and 10 jammed themselves together in an alarming way, every one making an effort to get nearer to him, and to hear him more perfectly, he took his seat in the midst of them, and taught from the pulpit of the Reader."[31] He was, indeed, a man to make 15 both friends and enemies; to inspire affection, and to kindle resentment; but his friends loved him with a love "stronger" than "death," and more burning than "hell;" and it was well to be so hated, if he was so beloved. 20

[31] Hist. viii. 5.

Here he differs, as far as I can judge, from his brother saints and doctors of the Greek Church, St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen. They were scholars, shy perhaps and reserved; and though they had not given up the secular state, they were 25 essentially monks. There is no evidence, that I remember, to show that they attached men to their persons. They, as well as John, had a multitude of enemies; and were regarded, the one with dislike, the other perhaps with contempt; 30 but they had not, on the other hand, warm, eager, sympathetic, indignant, agonized friends. There is another characteristic in Chrysostom, which perhaps gained for him this great blessing. He had, as it would seem, a vigor, 5 elasticity, and, what may be called, sunniness of mind, all his own. He was ever sanguine, seldom sad. Basil had a life-long malady, involving continual gnawing pain and a weight of physical dejection. He bore his burden well and 10 gracefully, like the great Saint he was, as Job bore his; but it was a burden like Job's. He was a calm, mild, grave, autumnal day; St. John Chrysostom was a day in spring-time, bright and rainy, and glittering through its rain. Gregory was the full 15 summer, with a long spell of pleasant stillness, its monotony relieved by thunder and lightning. And St. Athanasius figures to us the stern persecuting winter, with its wild winds, its dreary wastes, its sleep of the great mother, and the 20 bright stars shining overhead. He and Chrysostom have no points in common; but Gregory was a dethroned Archbishop of Constantinople, like Chrysostom, and, again, dethroned by his brethren the Bishops. Like Basil, too, Chrysostom was 25 bowed with infirmities of body; he was often ill; he was thin and wizened; cold was a misery to him; heat affected his head; he scarcely dare touch wine; he was obliged to use the bath; obliged to take exercise, or rather to be 30 continually on the move. Whether from a nervous or febrile complexion, he was warm in temper; or at least, at certain times, his emotion struggled hard with his reason. But he had that noble spirit which complains as little as possible; which makes the best of things; which soon recovers 5 its equanimity, and hopes on in circumstances when others sink down in despair....

II

Whence is this devotion to St. John Chrysostom, which leads me to dwell upon the thought of him, and makes me kindle at his name, when so 10 many other great Saints, as the year brings round their festivals, command indeed my veneration, but exert no personal claim upon my heart? Many holy men have died in exile, many holy men have been successful preachers; and what 15 more can we write upon St. Chrysostom's monument than this, that he was eloquent and that he suffered persecution? He is not an Athanasius, expounding a sacred dogma with a luminousness which is almost an inspiration; nor is he 20 Athanasius, again, in his romantic life-long adventures, in his sublime solitariness, in his ascendency over all classes of men, in his series of triumphs over material force and civil tyranny. Nor, except by the contrast, does he remind us of that 25 Ambrose who kept his ground obstinately in an imperial city, and fortified himself against the heresy of a court by the living rampart of a devoted population. Nor is he Gregory or Basil, rich in the literature and philosophy of Greece, and embellishing the Church with the spoils of heathenism. Again, he is not an Augustine, devoting long years to one masterpiece of thought, 5 and laying, in successive controversies, the foundations of theology. Nor is he a Jerome, so dead to the world that he can imitate the point and wit of its writers without danger to himself or scandal to his brethren. He has not trampled upon 10 heresy, nor smitten emperors, nor beautified the house or the service of God, nor knit together the portions of Christendom, nor founded a religious order, nor built up the framework of doctrine, nor expounded the science of the Saints; yet I love 15 him, as I love David or St. Paul.

How am I to account for it? It has not happened to me, as it might happen to many a man, that I have devoted time and toil to the study of his writings or of his history, and cry up that 20 upon which I have made an outlay, or love what has become familiar to me. Cases may occur when our admiration for an author is only admiration of our own comments on him, and when our love of an old acquaintance is only our love 25 of old times. For me, I have not written the life of Chrysostom, nor translated his works, nor studied Scripture in his exposition, nor forged weapons of controversy out of his sayings or his doings. Nor is his eloquence of a kind to carry 30 any one away who has ever so little knowledge of the oratory of Greece and Rome. It is not force of words, nor cogency of argument, nor harmony of composition, nor depth or richness of thought, which constitute his power,--whence, then, has he this influence, so mysterious, yet so 5 strong?

I consider St. Chrysostom's charm to lie in his intimate sympathy and compassionateness for the whole world, not only in its strength, but in its weakness; in the lively regard with which he 10 views everything that comes before him, taken in the concrete, whether as made after its own kind or as gifted with a nature higher than its own. Not that any religious man--above all, not that any Saint--could possibly contrive to 15 abstract the love of the work from the love of its Maker, or could feel a tenderness for earth which did not spring from devotion to heaven; or as if he would not love everything just in that degree in which the Creator loves it, and 20 according to the measure of gifts which the Creator has bestowed upon it, and preëminently for the Creator's sake. But this is the characteristic of all Saints; and I am speaking, not of what St. Chrysostom had in common with others, but what 25 he had special to himself; and this specialty, I conceive, is the interest which he takes in all things, not so far as God has made them alike, but as He has made them different from each other. I speak of the discriminating 30 affectionateness with which he accepts every one for what is personal in him and unlike others. I speak of his versatile recognition of men, one by one, for the sake of that portion of good, be it more or less, of a lower order or a higher, which has severally been lodged in them; his eager contemplation of 5 the many things they do, effect, or produce, of all their great works, as nations or as states; nay, even as they are corrupted or disguised by evil, so far as that evil may in imagination be disjoined from their proper nature, or may be 10 regarded as a mere material disorder apart from its formal character of guilt. I speak of the kindly spirit and the genial temper with which he looks round at all things which this wonderful world contains; of the graphic fidelity with 15 which he notes them down upon the tablets of his mind, and of the promptitude and propriety with which he calls them up as arguments or illustrations in the course of his teaching as the occasion requires. Possessed though he be by 20 the fire of Divine charity, he has not lost one fiber, he does not miss one vibration, of the complicated whole of human sentiment and affection; like the miraculous bush in the desert, which, for all the flame that wrapt it round, was not thereby 25 consumed.

Such, in a transcendent perfection, was the gaze, as we may reverently suppose, with which the loving Father of all surveyed in eternity that universe even in its minutest details which He 30 had decreed to create, such the loving pity with which He spoke the word when the due moment came, and began to mold the finite, as He created it, in His infinite hands; such the watchful solicitude with which he now keeps His catalogue of the innumerable birds of heaven, and 5 counts day by day the very hairs of our head and the alternations of our breathing. Such, much more, is the awful contemplation with which He encompasses incessantly every one of those souls on whom He heaps His mercies here, in order 10 to make them the intimate associates of His own eternity hereafter. And we too, in our measure, are bound to imitate Him in our exact and vivid apprehension of Himself and of His works. As to Himself, we love Him, not simply in His nature, 15 but in His triple personality, lest we become mere pantheists. And so, again, we choose our patron Saints, not for what they have in common with each other (else there could be no room for choice at all), but for what is peculiar to them severally. 20 That which is my warrant, therefore, for particular devotions at all, becomes itself my reason for devotion to St. John Chrysostom. In him I recognize a special pattern of that very gift of discrimination. He may indeed be said in some sense to 25 have a devotion of his own for every one who comes across him,--for persons, ranks, classes, callings, societies, considered as Divine works and the subjects of his good offices or good will, and therefore I have a devotion for him. 30

It is this observant benevolence which gives to his exposition of Scripture its chief characteristic. He is known in ecclesiastical literature as the expounder, above all others, of its literal sense. Now in mystical comments the direct object which the writer sets before him is the Divine Author 5 Himself of the written Word. Such a writer sees in Scripture, not so much the works of God, as His nature and attributes; the Teacher more than the definite teaching, or its human instruments, with their drifts and motives, their courses 10 of thought, their circumstances and personal peculiarities. He loses the creature in the glory which surrounds the Creator. The problem before him is not what the inspired writer directly meant, and why, but, out of the myriad of 15 meanings present to the Infinite Being who inspired him, which it is that is most illustrative of that Great Being's all-holy attributes and solemn dispositions. Thus, in the Psalter, he will drop David and Israel and the Temple together, and will recognize 20 nothing there but the shadows of those greater truths which remain forever. Accordingly, the mystical comment will be of an objective character; whereas a writer who delights to ponder human nature and human affairs, to analyze the 25 workings of the mind, and to contemplate what is subjective to it, is naturally drawn to investigate the sense of the sacred writer himself, who was the organ of the revelation, that is, he will investigate the literal sense. Now, in the instance of St. 30 Chrysostom, it so happens that literal exposition is the historical characteristic of the school in which he was brought up; so that if he commented on Scripture at all, he anyhow would have adopted that method; still, there have been many literal expositors, but only one 5 Chrysostom. It is St. Chrysostom who is the charm of the method, not the method that is the charm of St. Chrysostom.