patriarch of Alexandria first; that they had forty bishops on their side, and he but thirty-six; that theirs, moreover, were collected from divers provinces, including seven metropolitans, whereas those of Theophilus were only from a single province; and that further, they entertained against him no less than seventy heads of accusation. Chrysostom confined himself to protesting against the jurisdiction of Theophilus's synod, declaring himself ready all the time to meet the charges in their presence, if only they would exclude from their council the persons whom he named to them, who were unfavourable to his cause. Even the emperor's rescript commanding his attendance, gained no other answer. At last, the crafty and unscrupulous Theophilus secured the deposition of his antagonist, having first sought a politic reconciliation with his own injured monks. The emperor, led by the faction about him, and frightened by the violence of the enemies of Chrysostom, yielded to the clamour of priests, women, and nobles, and signed the decree for the exile of the uncompromising patriarch. As soon as the people of the city knew of the outrage aimed at their chief pastor, they ran tumultuously from all quarters, surrounded the church and the palace, demanded a general council to decide the fate of the patriarch so unjustly dealt with in the packed synod, and drove away the imperial officers sent to apprehend Chrysostom. For some days and nights this state of things continued. The conflict at last ended by Chrysostom secretly surrendering himself to the soldiers sent to apprehend him, fearful lest loss of life should ensue if his followers came into collision with the troops. He was hurried off to the sea, and as he crossed the Bosphorus in the galley, the weeping pastor quoted the words of the bereaved patriarch of Uz, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" But this was not the end of the affair. It was not simply an imperial sentence and summary execution. Thus it was as far as the royal will availed, and the machinations of the prelate's foes; but thus it was not with the agitated populace, nor thus with the round world on which they stood. When the people ascertained that their pastor was gone, their affliction and indignation knew no bounds; their hands could scarcely be kept off Theophilus and his guilty partners; and they rushed in frantic wise to the forum, the church, and the palace, with loud requests and impassioned cries. On the ensuing night, too, there occurred an earthquake, which shook the city to its centre, and awoke superstitious fears in every breast. The powers of nature were expressing their sympathy with Chrysostom, and he must be recalled. The intriguing empress con fessed herself baffled by the attachment of the people to their priest, and by the singular coincidence of the earthquake. The banishment was revoked by order of the emperor, and Eudoxia, with her own deceitful hand, implored the patriarch to return. He came, and his return was an ovation. The waters once hidden beneath the keels of the invading Xerxes, were now concealed by barque and barge of exulting myriads, their songshosannas, and the grateful comment of Chrysostom, "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad." In that procession across Homer's "ocean-stream" music did its best with trumpet and oboe, with tabor and song, and "the loud-sounding cymbals ;" and mirth laughed its loudest peals in unison with the beat of happy hearts; and the waters flashed their brightness back upon the shining faces of the multitude, while the oars kept time with their musical chime to all that was sweet and tuneful in that holiday pomp. But this was only a rehearsal of a drama of expulsion: the drama itself was to be enacted in serious earnest thereafter. The interval was spent in perfecting the parts, and in maturing the catastrophe. The storm the good man bowed under was lulled, not spent. The fire of hate was smouldering, not extinguished, and Chrysostom, consciously or unconsciously, walked cineri doloso. Nevertheless, of the confidence and love of his people, the acclaim which attended his return is ample proof. He wished to decline the performance of the divine offices till his ecclesiastical attainder was revoked by a conciliar authority superior to that which deposed him, but the congregation of his metropolitan church would not hear of it. They dragged him by a gentle force up the steps and into the tribune, and listened once more to the voice of exhortation and thanksgiving from his golden mouth: with the ardour of orientalism, and in obedience to the custom of the day, they so loudly applauded and testified their approval of his harangue, that Chrysostom burst into tears, and abruptly closed his address. The immediate occasion of the ultimate expulsion of the patriarch from his see was the erection of a silver statue of the Empress Eudoxia on a porphyry pillar in front of the senate house, close by the entrance of the metropolitan church. All the usages of heathenism, including its vices, were indulged in at the inauguration of the statue-play, dance, farce, pantomime-a noisy and impure revel, offensive to good manners, and totally unchristian. In name Christian, the capital teemed with pagans. The mob, the multitude, was greatly made up of bad women and worse men. The dregs of Asia and Europe met in this common sink, and their united corruption was intolerable. Christianity did its best to sweeten it, but Christianity itself, between court patronage which was thraldom, and incorporated heathenism and natural deterioration, had itself become a degenerate thing, and was incapable of coping successfully with the giant evils around it. It still retained fine principles, and produced noble characters, for the worst Christianity was many grades superior to the best paganism, but it was sorely altered for the worse. The gold was become dim, the most fine gold changed. Yet men of piety and zeal, even under that tarnished system, were too enlightened to endure the gross licentiousness of the lingering idolatry, and protested by word and example against these enormities. Chrysostom was too plain-spoken to cloak his detestation of such things in silken phrases, and too frank not to express his indignation. He had evidently no liking for statues of crowned personages: it was Christians who had warred against them at Antioch. They were too often the offering of idolatrous veneration, not civil respect; and it seemed a duty to Heaven to throw them down. Eudoxia was his personal enemy; and the celebration of fixing her statue disturbed the devotions of the church. These were sufficient motives to call him into opposition again, and the excited prophet launched his invections against the abuses attending the ceremony, not sparing, we may be assured, those who had given occasion for those abuses to appear. All this was reported with tenfold exaggeration to the court, and it sealed the patriarch's doom. Arcadius and his wife refused to receive the sacrament any longer from his hands; and sought his formal deposition, in conjunction with the enemies of Chrysostom, in another council. This was summoned: Chrysostom had many friends in it, but his defence would not be heard, on the point of order that he had resumed his episcopal functions without reinstatement by a competent authority. The patriarch was deposed, and exile was his doom. Thus his second tenure of the see was confined to two months; but he did not leave Constantinople at once. Stout-hearted to the last, animated by a conviction of right, by the fidelity of many of his clergy, by the support of upwards of forty bishops, and by the strong affection of his Christian people, Chrysostom would not give way, but bade defiance to imperial power, queenly hate, the decrees of councils, and the machinations of foreign prelates. At length, outrage apprehended and done upon his people, the peace of the city disturbed, bloodshed and conflagration in prospect, he yielded to the force of circumstances in the Midsummer of A.D. 404, and left his church by the eastern door, having ordered his horse to the western, lest he should be intercepted on his way. His departure was the signal for the most cruel treatment of his adherents male and female, the lector Eutropius and the priest Tigrius, with others, being cruelly tortured to make them confess that they had set fire to his church. Chrysostom went to Nicea, in Bithynia, and thence in due time proceeded to Cucusus, a miserable village seated amongst the Taurus mountains, in a cold and barren region, eighty days' journey from Constantinople. He was more than two months on the road, and suffered humiliations and chagrins from the clerics and the civil authorities of the places which he traversed that must have been inexpressibly painful to his soul; while his body alternately burned with fever and shivered with cold. But he solaced his sorrows and the tedium of his way with correspondence with his most pious and trusted friends, especially the widows and deaconesses of his church. But the rigid clime of Cucusus was too much for the already shattered health of Chrysostom. Snow covered the mountains of that region early in autumn, and the exile was almost confined to his chamber. Perpetual headaches, stomach derangements, and want of sleep were his dismal ailments, and prostrated the powers both of mind and body. Famine, pestilence, and mountain brigands were daily companions in that ungenial district, and added the perils of a campaign to the weariness of exile. But even this was considered not sufficiently severe by his implacable persecutors. Those who made Constantinople a place of torment to that whole party which Chrysostom represented, a jail to some, a shambles for the butchery of others, had influence enough with the emperor to have the bishop removed from Cucusus to a place more rugged, inhospitable, and inaccesssible still, Pityus, beyond the Euxine. After leaving Cucusus, where he had abode for three years till 407, Chrysostom was hurried along by cruel guards under every variety of weather, whether he was well or ill, without compassion or consideration. He was nearly done to death. With difficulty he reached Cumana in Pontus, and there lay down to die. It is true that next day his guards forced him on about three miles farther, without his having tasted food; but they were obliged to return; and there, preparing for death, the worn-out prelate assumed his priestly robes of spotless white, received the emblems of the Saviour's dying love, and with the words so familiar to his soul upon his lips, "God be glorified for all things, amen!" passed on to the presence of that Maker and Judge to whose glory he had consecrated his great talents. He consummated his career on the 14th of September, 407, happy amid misfortune, glorious amid shame. His persecutor, Eudoxia, died three weeks afterwards in the pangs of childbirth-a miserable caitiff amid the 21 1 splendours of loyalty. His clerical foes pursued him with their Deposited at last in an honourable grave, the younger Theodosius presiding at the ceremonial, which was a virtual revocation of his deposition, and a justification of his character from criminal blemish, the reputation, the influence of the great patriarch became greater than ever; his reputation, in fact, wide as the world, his influence lasting as time itself. His influence, we venture to predict, will extend itself with the enlargement of liberal studies in the Church. The rush of exegetical comment into our literature will necessitate this, and even now we often find appeal made to the expository works of the great Greek Father, but this will certainly become more common as our attention is increasingly directed to the original text and language of the New Testament Scriptures. But the widest extension to the influence of Chrysostom we expect in another direction,-as an invaluable aid to the oratory of the pulpit. For this purpose his works have never been sufficiently studied, and yet here they present an inexhaustible mine of wealth. And this is the key to our estimate of the man, that he was beyond all dispute the greatest sacred Orator who has ever existed; nay, we go further, and place him at the head of all public speakers, whether they be " of Grecian or of Roman fame." Demosthenes was undoubtedly a great politician-of doubtful honesty, we may subjoin; and Cicero a wonderful pleader and patriot, and a man of profound and varied attainments, but neither the one nor the other bears a moment's comparison with the copious, creative, torrent-like flow of Chrysostom's eloquence. It never ceased; it never stinted; it never shallowed or ran dry. Picturesque and varied as the scenery of his native Orontes, it was broad, majestic, and deep as his adopted Hellespont. No one that we can think of comes near him in his peculiar eloquence, except Jeremy Taylor; but the English divine is more designedly fanciful, quaint, and affected than the great Grecian. Taylor is that in |