ostom the pride and the glory of the
ancient Church,--the doctrines which he did not hesitate to proclaim to
unwilling ears, and the matchless manner in which he enforced
them,--perhaps the most remarkable preacher, on the whole, that ever
swayed an audience; uniting all things,--voice, language, figure,
passion, learning, taste, art, piety, occasion, motive, prestige, and
material to work upon. He left to posterity more than a thousand
sermons, and the printed edition of all his works numbers twelve folio
volumes. Much as we are inclined to underrate the genius and learning of
other days in this our age of more advanced utilities, of progressive
and ever-developing civilization,--when Sabbath-school children know
more than sages knew two thousand years ago, and socialistic
philanthropists and scientific _savans_ could put to blush Moses and
Solomon and David, to say nothing of Paul and Peter, and other reputed
oracles of the ancient world, inasmuch as they were so weak and
credulous as to believe in miracles, and a special Providence, and a
personal God,--yet we find in the sermons of Chrysostom, preached even
to voluptuous Syrians, no commonplace exhortations, such as we sometimes
hear addressed to the thinkers of this generation, when poverty of
thought is hidden in pretty expressions, and the waters of life are
measured out in tiny gill cups, and even then diluted by weak platitudes
to suit the taste of the languid and bedizened and frivolous slaves of
society, whose only intellectual struggle is to reconcile the pleasures
of material and sensual life with the joys and glories of the world to
come. He dwelt, boldly and earnestly, and with masculine power, on the
majesty of God and the comparative littleness of man, on moral
accountability to Him, on human degeneracy, on the mysterious power of
evil, by force of which good people in this dispensation are in a small
minority, on the certainty of future retribution; yet also on the
never-fading glories of immortality which Christ has brought to light by
his sufferings and death, his glorious resurrection and ascension, and
the promised influences of the Holy Spirit. These truths, so solemn and
so grand, he preached, not with tricks of rhetoric, but simply and
urgently, as an ambassador of Heaven to lost and guilty man. And can you
wonder at the effect? When preachers throw themselves on the cardinal
truths of Christianity, and preach with earnestness as if they believed