schools. Jeremy Taylor, not less than Bossuet, acknowledged his
matchless services. One of his prayers has entered into the beautiful
liturgy of Cranmer. He was a Bernard, a Bourdaloue, and a Whitefield
combined, speaking in the language of Pericles, and on themes which
Paganism never comprehended and the Middle Ages but imperfectly
discussed.

The permanent influence of such a man can only be measured by the
dignity and power of the pulpit itself in all countries and in all
ages. So far as pulpit eloquence is an art, its greatest master still
speaketh. But greater than his art was the truth which he unfolded and
adorned. It is not because he held the most cultivated audiences of his
age spell-bound by his eloquence, but because he did not fear to deliver
his message, and because he magnified his office, and preached to
emperors and princes as if they were ordinary men, and regarded himself
as the bearer of most momentous truth, and soared beyond human praises,
and forgot himself in his cause, and that cause the salvation of
souls,--it is for these things that I most honor him, and believe that
his name will be held more and more in reverence, as Christianity
becomes more and more the mighty power of the world.

AUTHORITIES.

Theodoret; Socrates; Sozomen; Gregory Nazianzen's Orations; the Works of
Chrysostom; Baronius's Annals; Epistle of Saint Jerome; Tillemont's
Ecclesiastical History; Mabillon; Fleury's Ecclesiastical History; Life
of Chrysostom by Monard,--also a Life, by Frederic M. Perthes,
translated by Professor Hovey; Neander's Church History; Gibbon; Milman;
Du Pin; Stanley's Lectures on the Eastern Church. The Lives of the
Fathers have been best written by Frenchmen, and by Catholic historians.

SAINT AMBROSE.

* * * * *

A.D. 340-397.

EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY.

Of the great Fathers, few are dearer to the Church than Ambrose,
Archbishop of Milan, both on account of his virtues and the dignity he
gave to the episcopal office.

Nearly all the great Fathers were bishops, but I select Ambrose as the
representative of their order, because he was more illustrious as a
prelate than as a theologian or orator, although he stood high as both.
He contributed more than any man who preceded him to raise the power of
bishops as one of the controlling agencies of society for more than a
thousand years.

The episcopal office, aside from its spiritual aspects, had become a
great w