e all
in unison, in all the various churches--Catholic and Protestant,
Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist--which accept God
Almighty as the moral governor of the universe, the great master of our
destinies, whose eternal voice speaketh to the conscience of mankind.
And hence their teachings, if they are true to their calling, have
reference to interests and duties and aspirations and hopes as far
removed in importance from mere temporal matters as the heaven is
higher than the earth. Oh, what high treason to the deity whom the
preacher invokes, what stupidity, what frivolity, what insincerity, what
incapacity of realizing what is truly great, when he descends from the
lofty themes of salvation and moral accountability, to dwell on the
platitudes of aesthetic culture, the beauties and glories of Nature, or
the wonders of a material civilization, and then with not half the force
of those books and periodicals which are scattered in every hamlet of
civilized Europe and America!

Now it was to the glory of Chrysostom that he felt the dignity of his
calling and aspired to nothing higher, satisfied with his great
vocation,--a vocation which can never be measured by the lustre of a
church or the wealth of a congregation. Gregory Nazianzen, whether
preaching in his paternal village or in the cathedral of Constantinople,
was equally the creator of those opinion-makers who settle the verdicts
of men. Augustine, in a little African town, wielded ten times the
influence of a bishop of Rome, and his sermons to the people of the town
of Hippo furnished a thesaurus of divinity to the clergy for a
thousand years.

Nevertheless, Antioch was not great enough to hold such a preacher as
Chrysostom. He was summoned by imperial authority to the capital of the
Eastern Empire. One of the ministers of Arcadius, the son of the great
Theodosius, had heard him preach, and greatly admired his eloquence, and
perhaps craved the excitement of his discourses,--as the people of Rome
hankered after the eloquence of Cicero when he was sent into exile.
Chrysostom reluctantly resigned his post in a provincial city to become
the Patriarch of Constantinople. It was a great change in his outward
dignity. His situation as the highest prelate of the East was rarely
conferred except on the favorites of emperors, as the episcopal sees of
Mediaeval Europe were rarely given to men but of noble birth. Yet being
forced, as it were, to accept what he d