jects, he had little taste for abstractions. His great power lies in the number and richness of his illustrations. Every truth is covered, sometimes burdened, with imagery. Every duty is brought home to particular cases and consciences. He does not disdain the simplest comparisons that will help him in his work, and sometimes uses a redundancy of gorgeous figures, as if nature were taking her revenge on the ascetic for his contempt of her riches, and kindling in his literary taste a passion for splendor that was so sternly denied in his way of life. More frequently, however, he presents common truths in plain language, with the most obvious illustrations. He had evidently been a constant observer of nature, as well as a close student of the Bible. He was alike familiar with the beauties and the adaptations of creation, and, fond as he is of discoursing floridly of roses and lilies, the sea, mountains, and stars, he sometimes enters into minute statements of natural laws and of the wonderful anatomy of the human frame, that almost make us believe that we are reading an Oriental version of Paley, in spite of the occasional mistakes in the principles of science. The force and frequency with which he introduces passages of Scripture, or alludes to the personages of the Bible, their circumstances and characters, are enough to astound the most gifted of the old Scotch Covenanters. His quick perception of resemblances and rich fancy made him the unconscious master of a science of correspondences between things spiritual and natural, that throws the theoretic system of Swedenborg far into the shade. If he speaks of an irritable and of a peaceful spirit, he compares the one to a noisy street, and the other to a rural solitude, and gives a graphic picture of the two scenes. When he distinguishes the prayer of importunate selfishness from that of gospel meekness, the one, he says, is like a brawling scold, against whom the gate of heaven is shut; the other is an angel form that seraphs welcome to the throne of God. To care for riches and to neglect the soul is to be like children who laugh when the thief comes in and steals the real valuables of the house, and yet cry if he touches the least of their jingling trinkets. To neglect the soul and pamper the body is to clothe the mistress in sackcloth, and array the servant-maid in gold and jewels.

The drift of his discourses was eminently practical. He was not fond either of metaphysics or of dogmatic theology.

He enforced the cardinal Christian virtues, especially charity, and denounced the cardinal sins, especially covetousness. Profane swearing he could not tolerate, and even advises his hearers to strike the blasphemer, if words were of no avail. This advice, however, was given during the panic at Antioch, and may not be a fair instance of his preaching. The superiority of the gospel over every other system, especially the Platonic, is a favorite theme with him. His views of the divine nature were very broad and exalted, and are constantly brought forward in his discourses. He also insists much upon the freedom of the human will, and says, again and again, that no man can be hurt but by himself. He was very free in his censures, and declaimed eloquently against slavery, priestcraft, and formalism. Neander's learning and love for free thought have enabled him to collect passages from Chrysostom that would not shame the least shackled of our Protestant divines.

He has frequently been compared to Jeremy Taylor, but unjustly. They are alike only in an exuberant fancy and a liberal creed. Chrysostom is not pedantic or scholastic like Taylor, whose sermons, although decked with incomparable beauties, are tedious as a whole, and to a popular assembly would be uninteresting. Chrysostom is direct, pointed, glowing, preaching less on a given subject than with reference to the particular wants of the audience before him. He has much of Latimer's boldness and simplicity, and something of his humor. Take some ingredients from Latimer and some from Taylor, and we might form a compound not unlike Chrysostom. In his extemporaneous style he is much like the former. As he seems generally to have spoken extemporaneously, even his more elaborate discourses have an air of being prompted by the occason. He was as hearty and outright as honest Hugh, and as little disposed to be mealy-mouthed in dealing with sin in high places. He was quite as bold in facing Eudoxia as Latimer was in braving Henry the Eighth. Both were men of free spirit; both drew their freedom from the Bible; and what his Saxon manhood did for the one, his study of the generous literature of Greece did for the other.

The homilies and sermons of Chrysostom are rich in historical interest, showing, as they do, the form and color of his times. In reading them, we are carried back to another

age. We find no dry discussion of theological doctrines, no dull parade of formalisms, but a fresh, free, colloquial address, which brings the audience at once before us by its constant reference to them. The customs of the ancient church favored such a mode of address, and are singularly at variance with our modern notions of propriety. Preacher and people felt at liberty to express themselves just as they felt in church. The doctors at Oxford would be astounded at the difference between the ways of a congregation in that supposed golden age of church dignity, and their own dainty notions of cathedral quietude. The ancient audiences applauded freely whatever they liked in the preacher, and of course felt at liberty to show their disapprobation of what they disliked. Clapping, stamping, shouting, leaping, and the waving of light garments were no unusual signs of applause; whilst tears, groans, and smiting the breast indicated the compunction of the hearers. When Cyril was happy in an appeal, they cried, "O orthodox Cyril! Gift of God!" When Chrysostom was unusually eloquent, waving their garments and plumes, and laying hands upon their swords, the people shouted, "Worthy the priesthood! Thirteenth Apostle! Christ hath sent thee!" The preachers seem to have liked these plaudits, as showing the interested attention of the audience. In one case, a grave bishop speaks of being applauded as a matter of course, and invites his friend, with whom he is arguing, to come and hear him while receiving the honor, and be convinced of the truth of his doctrine. Chrysostom evidently had so many of these favors as to be at times weary of them, and often tells his hearers that he should much prefer their penitence to their plaudits, and that they must take good care lest they violate the principles which they receive with such acclamation.

The preachers, who in the cities were generally bishops, and less frequently presbyters, appear commonly to have spoken without notes, and to have trusted to reporters for the preservation of their discourses. This fact, and the peculiar relation in which they stood to the audience, tended to make their addresses very colloquial, and quite different from modern sermons. They spoke either from the steps of the altar, or from the ambo, a platform with a reading-desk in the middle of the church, and sitting or standing, as they chose. Frequently the preacher sat, and the people stood, throughout

the sermon. The church had not then learned to box its orators up, and raise them high in mid air, with a position as far from the countenance of the hearer as the sermon is apt to be from his sympathies. The speaker had no fear of being rebuked for flippancy, or of hearing rebellious imitations of his freedom on the part of the audience, so established was the distinction between clergy and laity, and so fixed were the authority and dignity of the clerical office. Often several addresses were made during the same meeting, but always by the clergy, the bishop closing and summing up what his presbyters had said. Chrysostom sometimes ends his discourse by stating, that he now leaves it to his superior to do better justice to the topic.

Of course, the ancient pulpit was in every respect different from the modern. Chrysostom was, indeed, a great reformer, yet he changed the moral character, rather than the external manner, of preaching. He avoided the frequent dogmatic invectives against heretics, and the as frequent vapid allegorical interpretations of Scripture. His preaching was practical, aimed at the life; it was rational, avoiding both the materialistic views of Tertullian's followers and the transcendental sublimations of the school of Origen. He was eminently a common sense interpreter of the Bible, and duly appreciated the letter and the spirit too.

After all, though free from many of the errors prevalent among his contemporaries, Chrysostom shows the peculiarities of the taste of his age; and there is not one of his thousand discourses, so far as we can judge, which would be considered as a regular sermon according to our modern standard, not one that reminds us of Massillon or South, Edwards or Buckminster. He never adopts a logical arrangement, although his elaborate work on the priesthood shows that he was perfectly competent to write a consecutive treatise, or sustain a continued argument, whenever he chose. In his homilies, or expository discourses, he closes not so frequently with a lesson taught by the general sense of the passage he has been expounding, as with one suggested by some of the wants of his people, no matter how incongruous the suggestion might be with what had gone before. Among his sermons, his master-pieces on the Statues for instance, so well translated by Mr. Budge, in the Oxford Library, there is not one that is from beginning to end devoted to

the consecutive treatment of a single topic. Each has its strict unity, undoubtedly; but the unity is in the object, not in the subject; for he thinks less of the systematic exposition of a text or topic than of meeting with a single purpose the state of mind of his hearers. He preached these sermons whilst Antioch was in an agony of anxiety, those of her citizens who had as yet escaped the emperor's vengeance fearing the dungeon, the scourge, or the axe. The preacher shows great skill in suiting his discourse to them, and it is hypercriticism to blame him for sudden transitions, although he may so far violate ordinary rules as to break off an enraptured description of the benignity of God in creation as shown in the book of nature, and end abruptly with a strong rebuke to the people for their habit of profane swearing. At another time, while preaching on the apostle's advice to Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach's sake, he dwells first upon the apostle's kindness, and the folly of interpreting his advice as a plea for wine-bibbing, and then glances off to another topic, and closes with stating ten reasons why good men like Timothy are allowed to suffer sickness and affliction, and why the afflicted should not despair, and commit or tolerate blasphemy. Yet he always came to the point. He never ended a sermon without saying at the close what the moral state of the audience most needed.

Rhetorician as he was by education under the sophist Libanius, he was never so careful of his literary reputation as to disdain to be useful. He was willing to dwell continually upon one topic, so long as the one besetting sin continued. He ends more than half of his sermons on the Statues by denouncing the sin of profanity. We cannot say how often he preaches against theatre-going and money-loving. All his sermons were occasional, and in all of them he seems as much at liberty as in conversation to say just what circumstances required or the people needed. Sometimes he is ludicrously familiar. He speaks to the people about.coming to church after dinner, complaining of long sermons, talking and laughing in church, and in one instance calls attention to a pickpocket who was busy at his work among the congre

For an excellent critique upon Chrysostom's method of preaching, and statement of the difference between the ancient homily and the modern sermon, see the work of Dr. Philip Mayer upon Chrysostom, especially the introduction. The volume is dated Nuremburg, 1830.