This valuable and learned work closes with a very able summary, or general view, of the condition of the Greeks at the extinction of the Roman power in the East. We would gladly lay a portion of this able sketch before our readers; but having already quoted largely from the volume, we can only commend it, together with the remainder of Mr. Finlay's labors, to the attention of scholars.

ART. II. 1. Sancti Patris nostri Joannis Chrysostomi Opera Omnia. Operâ et Studio D. BERNARDI DE MONTFAUCON. Editio altera, emendata et aucta. Parisiis. 1839.

2. Homilies of St. Chrysostom. Translated by Members of the English Church. Oxford. 1839 - 44. 9 vols. 8vo.

It is obvious that within the last fifteen or twenty years there has been a remarkable revival of a taste for the study of the Christian Fathers. The conspicuous places and high prices assigned to copies of their works in catalogues of old books, and the many reprints of them in various forms, from the complete editions issued at Paris and Leipsic down to the popular selections made at Oxford and even at New York, must convince every one that the saints of old are by no means forgotten in our bustling nineteenth century. In some quarters, indeed, the passion for Patristic lore may be carried so far as to become an infirmity, and more than once of late, Milton's strong rebuke has been quoted by the zealous antagonists of tradition: "Whatever time or the heedless hand of blind chance hath drawn from old to this present, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shell or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, these are the Fathers." Allow that the drag-net has brought up much worthless trash, we will not complain so long as it "hath drawn from old to this present " one prize laden with such precious matter as the works of the golden-mouthed John of Antioch and Constantinople. He was the most brilliant preacher of the ancient church in its palmy days, a man whose life will al

ways have the interest of a romance, and whose eloquence, at once so characteristic in its tone and so universal in its spirit, must have a charm and power for every age.

In looking over the many books that have been written upon Chrysostom, the reader is struck with the almost constant strain of eulogium, and is fearful that the just limits of history have been overstepped, and that the brilliant aureole of the saint has blinded the eye to the features of the man. By popes and saints he has been called "Interpreter of the secrets of God," "The sun of the whole universe," "The lamp of virtue,"—" Brightest star of the earth." The polished and learned Erasmus, too judicious to use such fulsome phrases, gives Chrysostom far more honorable praise; after lauding his boldness, charity, and wisdom, he speaks of the eloquence that could impart "sweetness to things naturally bitter, and make one love even his rebukes, whilst the flatteries of other men are intolerable." Since the Protestant Reformation, Papists and Reformers have vied with each other in doing honor to this saint. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sir Henry Savile devoted a princely fortune to a splendid edition of the original Greek from the press of Eton, and the Jesuit Fronte Ducæus, at Paris, followed with an edition accompanied by a Latin version. In the early part of the last century, the Benedictine Montfaucon put forth the edition which has ever since been recognized by scholars as a classic, and which has recently been reprinted at Paris in a more convenient form, and with many valuable corrections. Availing ourselves of this reprint, with its rich notes and illustrations, and of the learned work of the independent Neander,* we have ample materials for forming an opinion of the great preacher and his age. The beauty of the Paris edition cannot well be surpassed; and the publishers of it deserve the more credit for their enterprise, as the first eleven parts were destroyed by fire in 1835, and the completion of the work was necessarily deferred two years beyond 1837, the time originally contemplated. We owe not a little to the scholars of Oxford for the assistance derived from their translation of the most important of Chrysostom's homilies. The work

Der Heilige Johannes Chrysostomus, und die Kirche besonders des Orients, in dessen Zeitalter. Von A. Neander, Dr. Berlin, 1821 - 22.

which the English antiquarian, Bingham, projected more than a century ago, and which Dr. Porter of Andover began a few years since, is now going on under the auspices of a party then unknown. By such a labor, Puseyism may atone for not a few of its sins.

We have said that Chrysostom lived in the palmy age of the ancient church. It was surely so, although not the purest. His ministry began in the reign of the Spaniard, Theodosius, to whom the church owed far more than to the wavering Constantine. By him the Roman empire was reunited, and, at the second general council, held in Constantinople, A. D. 381, one emperor and one creed seemed to rule the world. The church had come off triumphant in the struggle with the apostate Julian, who denied all her claims to authority, and with the fierce heretics who opposed her leading doctrines. Enjoying the patronage of the state, with creed, ritual, and government matured, in full possession of the riches of the Greek and Latin literature, little dreaming of the barbaric darkness that was impending, the church showed her greatest brilliancy just as her sun was going down. Four men were prominent above all others in that splendid age. The heroes of the great Athanasian struggle, Athanasius, Basil, and Hilary, had gone to their graves. Who was to take their place as defenders of the faith? In Italy, the spirit that was afterwards to animate a Gregory the First and a Hildebrand guided the measures of Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, who wielded a crosier stronger than the sceptre of Theodosius. Across the Mediterranean, at Carthage, the young Augustine was teaching rhetoric to refractory pupils, whom in disgust he was soon to leave for Italy, where in Ambrose he found a teacher who led him as an humble convert to the foot of the cross. Turning to the East, we find that at Constantinople the Roman monk Jerome was pursuing his Greek studies under the direction of the venerable Gregory, and preparing himself for the solitude of Bethlehem, where he became the great scholar of his time. John of Antioch had just left his hermitage in the mountains, and entered upon the ministry in the city of his birth. These four men were the great lights of their time, shining severally as the prelate, the theologian, the scholar, and the preacher of their age. Each of them will repay a

careful study of his life and labors. Our task is now with the most attractive of them all.

John of Antioch, surnamed two centuries after his death Chrysostom, or "Mouth of Gold," was placed by circumstances at an early period of his life in a school most favorable to the development of his oratorical powers. He passed the first twenty-seven years of his life at Antioch, where a picture of the whole world was before him in its heterogeneous collection of men, manners, and creeds. The Roman capital of Asia, with its two hundred thousand inhabitants, was at once Greek, Roman, and Oriental, Pagan, Jewish, and Christian. It exhibited all the phases of culture and condition, the greatest luxury and the most squalid poverty, the highest refinement and the grossest brutality, the most ascetic devotion and the most complete worldliness. For centuries after the apostles established a church there, and believers were there first called Christians, the gospel had been struggling for mastery over the worship of Baal and Astarte, Apollo and Venus. Now Antioch was nominally Christian. Still the church and the theatre were rivals, whilst pleasure and ambition bore such sway that religion had little place in the hearts of the leading men, and found its best votaries among devoted women, and the fervent recluses sheltered in the monasteries and hermitages of the neighbouring mountains.

Chrysostom saw every aspect of life, manners, and belief at Antioch. It was his school, and he learned all its lessons faithfully. His mother, who was left a widow at twenty years of age, devoted herself to his education, and although an earnest Christian, and desiring nothing for her son so much as a place in the church, procured for him the most liberal means of instruction, and conscientiously left him to the choice of his own profession. His teacher of rhetoric was the famous Libanius, whom Julian admired, and Gibbon has lauded as the last glory of expiring paganism. His teacher of philosophy was Androgathias, probably a Platonist. Under these men, he was taught to see the ancient forms of religion and morals under their most favorable aspects, and thus to understand the systems which he afterwards labored so eloquently to refute. His oratorical powers were so conspicuous that he was led to prepare for the bar, and Libanius had no small expectations of his pu

pil's renown in the courts of law, as well as in the schools of pagan philosophy. But his mother's Bible, with her devoted spirit, had more power than the sophist's enticements. The youth was evidently disgusted with the practice of the law at Antioch, as others have been in cities more decidedly Christian. He quitted this profession, and turned to the study of theology, first under the direction of the bishop Meletius, and afterwards by himself, in his mother's house. Still, his course of life was not at first very pure, not so much so even as that of some of his associates; but he soon abandoned his youthful follies, and his devotion to the church became so marked as to draw upon him the attention of the clergy, and to lead them to press upon him the office of bishop. But he was oppressed with a sense of his own unworthiness, and panted for retirement; and at last the death of his mother, combined with his indignation at the tyranny of the government, and the course of his religious convictions, led him to go out into the neighbouring mountains, and there to commune with God and his own soul.

This was no inappropriate education for a preacher. Six years of retirement and study, after twenty-seven years of life in a tumultuous city! Of these six years, four were spent under capable instructers in a monastery, and two in the solitude of a cave. Whether driven by the ill health induced by his ascetic practices, or by convictions of duty drawn from the Bible, which he never allowed to be laid aside for monkish legends, he returned to the city in the year 380, and was welcomed as a messenger from God to the church. Still he preferred privacy of life, and declined the honors which were offered him. For six years more he shrunk back from the position which his powers of eloquence entitled him to hold, and was content with fulfilling devotedly the lowest offices of the Christian ministry. He did not preach until his fortieth year. There is little reason to regret that the abilities of Chrysostom were so long in ripening; the fact explains his inexhaustible resources. He could preach every day, for weeks, without flagging in spirit or wanting material. He drew from a full fountain, unlike the many who are sorely tried by attempting to draw from cisterns that hold little or no water.

For twelve years he was the glory of the pulpit of Antioch. Here he produced his most valuable works, having