id not seek or perhaps desire, he
resolved to be true to himself and his master. Scarcely was he
consecrated by Theophilus of Alexandria before he launched out his
indignant invectives against the patron who had elevated him, the court
which admired him, and the imperial family which sustained him. Still
the preacher, when raised to the government of the Eastern church,
regarding his sphere in the pulpit as the loftiest which mortal genius
could fill. He feared no one, and he spared no one. None could rob a man
who had parted with a princely fortune for the sake of Christ; none
could bribe a man who had no favors to ask, and who could live on a
crust of bread; none could silence a man who felt himself to be the
minister of divine Omnipotence, and who scattered before his altar the
dust of worldly grandeur.

It seems that Chrysostom regarded his first duty, even as the
Metropolitan of the East, to preach the gospel. He subordinated the
bishop to the preacher. True, he was the almoner of his church and the
director of its revenues; but he felt that the church of Christ had a
higher vocation for a bishop to fill than to be a good business man.
Amid all the distractions of his great office he preached as often and
as fervently as he did at Antioch. Though possessed of enormous
revenues, he curtailed the expenses of his household, and surrounded
himself with the pious and the learned. He lived retired within his
palace; he dined alone on simple food, and always at home. The great
were displeased that he would not honor with his presence their
sumptuous banquets; but rich dinners did not agree with his weak
digestion, and perhaps he valued too highly his precious time to waste
himself, body and soul, for the enjoyment of even admiring courtiers.
His power was not at the dinner-table but in the pulpit, and he feared
to weaken the effects of his discourses by the exhibition of weaknesses
which nearly every man displays amid the excitements of social
intercourse.

Perhaps, however, Chrysostom was too ascetic. Christ dined with
publicans and sinners; and a man must unbend somewhere, or he loses the
elasticity of his mind, and becomes a formula or a mechanism. The
convivial enjoyments of Luther enabled him to bear his burden. Had
Thomas a Becket shown the same humanity as archbishop that he did as
chancellor, he might not have quarrelled with his royal master. So
Chrysostom might have retained his favor with the court and his se