Scattered up and down the discourses of Chrysostom there are abundant references to the liturgical forms, and manner of using them, which were in vogue in his time. If we had no other authority, we could learn from him alone that the service consisted of two parts—the first, called Missa Catechumenorum, because the catechumens were permitted to be present at it, which included an opening salutation of “Peace be with you,” with the response, “And with thy spirit;” psalms sung antiphonally; appointed lessons according to the season or the day (as Genesis was read during Lent, the Acts of the Apostles in Pentecost, that is, during the fifty days between Easter and Whitsun Day); the sermon, frequently in Chrysostom’s case on the lesson for the day, the preacher usually sitting, and the people standing; then prayers, announced by the deacon, for the catechumens, the “possessed,” and the penitents; the benediction by the bishop, and dismissal by the deacon, who bade them “depart in peace.” The second part of the service then began, called Missa Fidelium, because the baptized only were permitted to be present. Chrysostom strongly denounces an increasing tendency on the part of many to remain during this second and more sacred portion without participating. He plainly declares that all those who were baptized should communicate, and tells them, if they were not worthy to receive the Eucharist, neither could they be worthy to join in the prayers which preceded the reception, and therefore they ought to quit the church, with the catechumens and penitents, when the deacon commanded all unbaptized, ungodly, and unbelieving persons to depart.740 The usual order of the Missa Fidelium was “the silent prayer” (εὐχὴ διὰ σιωπῆς), on part of the priest and people (which the latter too often abused, Chrysostom feared, to imprecate vengeance on their enemies741); then a prayer somewhat equivalent to our bidding prayer in form, and to our prayer for the Church Militant in substance, the deacon bidding or proclaiming the forms, and the people responding; then a prayer of invocation made by the bishop, which was also called “collecta,” because in it the prayers of the people were considered to be gathered or summed up; the oblations of the people presented by the deacons; the kiss of peace, the reading of the diptychs, the ablution of the priest’s hands, the bringing of the elements to the bishop at the altar, while the priests stood on each side, and deacons held large fans to drive away the flies; a secret prayer offered by the bishop; the benediction, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” etc., to which the people responded “And with thy spirit;” followed by “Lift up your hearts”—“We lift them up unto the Lord;” “Let us give thanks to our Lord God”—“It is meet and right so to do;” a long thanksgiving, terminating with the Ter Sanctus, in which the people joined; the consecration prayer, including the words of our Lord at the time of institution, and an invocation of the Holy Spirit to make the elements become the body and blood of Christ; a prayer for all members of the Church, living and dead; the doxology, the Creed; a prayer of the bishop for sanctification; the words pronounced by him, “Holy things for holy people” (τὰ ἅγια τοῖς ἁγίοις); the reception by the clergy and laity in both kinds, taking the elements into their hands; concluding prayers, and dismissal by the deacon proclaiming, “Go in peace.” Nearly all of the forms indicated in this sketch are more or less clearly referred to or quoted in Chrysostom’s works, and from these, with the aid of other contemporary writers and documents, we might construct a liturgy which would more nearly resemble that actually used by him than the liturgy called by his name resembles it.742 For in this, as in the so-called liturgy of Basil, it is impossible now to determine how much was actually composed by the Father who gave his name to it. It cannot be proved that Chrysostom actually corrected or improved at all the liturgy which he found in use at Constantinople. It may only have come to be called after him as being the greatest luminary who ever occupied the see. The statement, however, made in a tract ascribed to Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople in the fifth century, is not in itself improbable, that Chrysostom found the existing liturgy so long that many of the congregation, being men of business, and pressed for time, left before the service was concluded, or came in after it had begun, and therefore he abridged and otherwise altered it. In any case, many alterations were made by different churches and bishops in the course of time, as in other liturgies, so also in those which bear the name of Basil and Chrysostom; and hence, as Montfaucon, Savile, Cave, and others have remarked, you cannot find any two copies which are exactly alike.

A critical estimate of Chrysostom’s value as a commentator hardly falls within the scope of an essay on his life, but a few general observations on this head may not be deemed out of place here. The same fact was the cause in him of much excellence and some defect in this department. He was a preacher whose primary object was to convert souls. This earnest, practical aim, of which he never lost sight, helped to protect him from lapsing into idle, fanciful, mystical interpretations of Scripture; but, on the other hand, it hindered his entering so fully into all the historical, grammatical, or even doctrinal questions which might be raised about a passage as he would have done had he been exclusively a commentator. His dominant aim being to affect the heart and the moral practice of his hearers, he is content when he has elicited from the passage all that will be most useful for that purpose, and the continuity of the commentary is frequently marred by sudden digressions. His ignorance of Hebrew was of course fatal to his being an accurate interpreter of the Old Testament, since he was entirely dependent on the Septuagint translation. And even in Greek, though few would deny him the merit of fine scholarship on the whole, though his command of the language as an orator is masterly, his style luminous, his diction copious and rich without being offensively ornate or redundant, yet his hold upon the language for critical purposes is neither that of a man who spoke it when it was in its purest stage, nor that of a scholar who, living in a later age and speaking a different tongue, has made a careful, laborious study of it as a dead language.

But two invaluable qualifications for an interpreter Chrysostom did possess—a thorough love for the Sacred Book, and a thorough familiarity with every part of it. There is no topic on which he dwells more frequently and earnestly than on the duty of every Christian man and woman to study the Bible; and what he bade others do, that he did pre-eminently himself. He rebukes the silly vanity of rich people who prided themselves on possessing finely written and handsomely bound copies of the Bible, but who knew little about the contents. Study of the Bible was more necessary for the layman than the monk, because he was exposed to more constant and formidable temptations. The Christian without a knowledge of his Bible was like a workman without his tools. Like the tree planted by the water-side, the soul of the diligent reader would be continually nourished and refreshed. There were no difficulties which would not yield to a patient study of it. Neither earthly grandeur, nor friends, nor indeed any human thing, could afford in suffering such comfort as the reading of Holy Scripture, for this was the companionship of God.743

The honest, straightforward common sense which marks his practical exhortations was a useful quality to him also as an interpreter. One of his principles is, that sound doctrine could not be extracted from Holy Scripture but by a careful comparison of many passages not isolated from their context.744 Allegorical interpretations were by no means to be rejected, but to be used with caution; men too often made the mistake of dictating what Scripture should mean instead of submitting to be taught by it: they introduced a meaning instead of eliciting it.745 Thus, though he often accepts popular types—as Boaz and Ruth are figures of Christ and His bride the Church; and Noah, Joseph, Joshua, are all in different ways representative of our Lord; though sometimes particular expressions in Messianic prophecies are forced, for instance, in Isaiah’s description of Immanuel, the “butter and honey” there spoken of he supposes to be intended to indicate the reality of our Lord’s humanity746—yet his customary aim is to discover the literal sense and direct historical bearing of the passage. At the same time he fully recognises a general foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, and the complete fulfilment in Him ultimately of prophecies which immediately refer to persons and events nearly, if not quite, contemporaneous with the utterance. He fails not also to point out the moral aspect of prophecy as a system of teaching rather than prediction, as preparatory to the advent of Jesus Christ in the flesh, not only by informing men’s minds, but disciplining their hearts to receive Him.747 Hence the holy men who lived, under the Old Dispensation, in faith on God’s promises, knew Christ as it were by anticipation, and were to be reckoned as members of the one body.748

He had a clear conception of the essential coherence between the Old and New Testament. He observes that the very words “old” and “new” are relative terms: new implies an antecedent old, preparatory to it. The condition of the recipients, the circumstances and age in which they lived, being different, necessitated a difference in the treatment. A physician treated the same patient at different times by directly contrary methods; sometimes administering sweet, sometimes bitter medicines, sometimes using the lancet, sometimes cautery, but always with the same ultimate end in view—the health of his patient. So the Old and New Testaments were different, but not, as the Manichæans maintained, antagonistic. The commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” attacked the fruit and consequence of vice; the precept, “Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause,” etc., struck at the root. This was an illustration in a small instance of the general truth that the New Dispensation was only a completion and expansion of the Old. Those, therefore, who rejected the Old Testament dishonoured the New, which was based upon it, and presupposes it.749

He is equally rational in his manner of accounting for the variations in the Gospel narratives. That they differ in details, but agree in essential matters, he regards as a powerful evidence of veracity. Exact and verbal coincidence in every particular would have excited in the minds of opponents a suspicion of concerted agreement.750 Authors might write variously without being at variance; if there had been ten thousand evangelists, yet the Gospel itself would have been but one.751 Each evangelist tells substantially the same tale, but varied according to the readers for whom he wrote, and the special object which he had in view. So St. Matthew wrote in Hebrew for the Jews, St. Mark for the disciples in Egypt, St. John to set forth the divine aspect of our Lord’s life. Thus we have variety in unity, and unity in variety.752

In his commentaries on the Epistles he is careful to consider each as a connected whole; and, in order to impress this on his hearers, he frequently recapitulates at the beginning of a homily all the steps by which the part under consideration has been reached. In his introductions to each letter he generally makes useful observations on the author, the time, place, and style of composition, the readers for whom it was intended, the general character and arrangement of its contents. He regarded the Bible as in such a sense written under the inspiration of God, that no passage, no word even, was to be despised;753 that men wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, but not to the total deprivation of their own human understanding and personal character. The prophet was not like the seer who spoke under constraint, not knowing what he said; he retained his own faculties and style; only all his powers were quickened, energised by the Spirit to the utterance of words which unassisted he could not have uttered.754

Chrysostom’s influence as a preacher was not aided by any external advantages of person. Like so many men who have possessed great powers of command over the minds of others—like St. Paul, Athanasius, John Wesley—he was little of stature; his frame was attenuated by the austerities of his youth and his habitually ascetic mode of life; his cheeks were pale and hollow; his eyes deeply set, but bright and piercing; his broad and lofty forehead was furrowed by wrinkles; his head was bald. He frequently delivered his discourses sitting in the ambo, or high reading-desk, just inside the nave, in order to be near his hearers and well raised above them. But these physical disadvantages were more than compensated by other more important qualities. A power of exposition which unfolded in lucid order, passage by passage, the meaning of the book in hand; a rapid transition from clear exposition, or keen logical argument, to fervid exhortation, or pathetic appeal, or indignant denunciation; the versatile ease with which he could lay hold of any little incident of the moment, such as the lighting of the lamps in the church, and use it to illustrate his discourse; the mixture of plain common-sense, simple boldness, and tender affection, with which he would strike home to the hearts and consciences of his hearers—all these are not only general characteristics of the man, but are usually to be found manifested more or less in the compass of each discourse. It is this rare union of powers which constitutes his superiority to almost all the other Christian preachers with whom he might be, or has been, compared. Savonarola had all, and more than all, his fire and vehemence, but untempered by his sober, calm good sense, and wanting his rational method of interpretation. Chrysostom was eager and impetuous at times in speech as well as in action, but never fanatical. Jeremy Taylor combines, like Chrysostom, real earnestness of purpose with rhetorical forms of expression and florid imagery; but, on the whole, his style is far more artificial, and is overlaid with a multifarious learning from which Chrysostom’s was entirely free. Wesley is almost his match in simple, straightforward, practical exhortation, but does not rise into flights of eloquence like his. The great French preachers, again, resemble him in his more ornate and declamatory vein, but they lack that simpler common-sense style of address which equally distinguished him. Whether the sobriquet of Chrysostomos, “the golden mouth,” was given to him in his lifetime is extremely doubtful; at any rate, it seems not to have been commonly used till afterwards. John is the only name by which he is mentioned in the writings of historians who were most nearly contemporaneous, but the other was a well-known appellation before the end of the fifth century.755

The preservation of Chrysostom’s discourses we owe mainly to the custom, prevalent in the Eastern Church at that time, of having the sermons of famous preachers taken down by shorthand writers as they were spoken; but some of them Chrysostom published himself.756 To what extent they may have been written before preaching it is impossible to say. The expository parts were evidently the result of previous study and preparation; the actual diction of the practical portions he may have left to the suggestion of the moment, though the main subjects of his address had been always decided upon beforehand. Extempore remarks were frequently called forth by the behaviour of the congregation, or some passing incident. The discourse delivered after his return from exile we also know to have been purely impromptu; and Suidas observes that he “had a tongue which exceeded the cataracts of the Nile in fluency, so that he delivered many of his panegyrics on the martyrs extempore without the least hesitation.”757 His hearers were sometimes rapt in such profound attention that pickpockets took advantage of it:758 sometimes they were melted to tears, or beat their breasts and faces, and uttered groans and cries to Heaven for mercy; at other times they clapped their hands or shouted—marks of approbation frequently paid at that time to eloquent preachers, but always sternly reproved by Chrysostom.

Although his style is generally exuberantly rich, yet it is seldom offensively redundant, for every word is usually telling; and at times he is epigrammatically terse. A few instances will suffice:—“The fire of sin is large, but it is quenched by a few tears;” “Pain was given on account of sin, yet through pain sin is dissolved;” “Riches are called possessions (κτήματα) that we may possess them, not be possessed by them;” “You are master of much wealth, do not be a slave to that whereof God has made you master;” “Scripture relates the sins of saints, that we may fear; the conversion of sinners, that we may hope.” He refers to a visitation of Antioch by an earthquake, as God “shaking the city, but establishing your minds; making the city crumble, but consolidating your judgment.”

His familiarity with classical Greek authors is apparent sometimes in direct references. He speaks of “the smoothness of Isocrates, the weight of Demosthenes, the dignity of Thucydides, the sublimity of Plato.”759 He quotes the beginning of the “Apology,” to show that if Socrates did not put a high value on mere fine talking, how much less should the Christian.760 He illustrates the readiness of men to supply the wants of the monk by a passage from Plato, where Crito says that his money, and that of Cebes and many others, is at the disposal of Socrates; and, go where he will, he may rely on finding friends.761 Sometimes we detect a thought derived, it may have been unconsciously, from classical sources. When he compares the crowd of the congregation before him to the sea, and the play upon the surface of that sea of heads to the effect of a strong west wind stirring and bending the ears of corn,762 it is impossible not to think that the idea was suggested by the well-known simile in Homer (Il. ii. 147). Again, when, in speaking of David’s sin, he compares the body to a chariot and the soul to the charioteer, and says that, when the soul is intoxicated by passion, the chariot is dragged along at random, it can hardly be fanciful to see a reflection of Plato’s celebrated image of the charioteer and horses in the “Phædrus.”763

But whatever admiration Chrysostom may have retained of those authors whom he had studied in his youth, it was confined to their language, for with their ideas and modes of thought he had, so far as we can judge, abandoned all sympathy. Nor was this unnatural. Christianity existed in such close contact with Pagan corruption, and it had suffered so much from Pagan persecution, that the revulsion of earnest Christians from all things Pagan was total and indiscriminating. “The old order changeth, yielding place to new;” and the new, having fought a hard struggle with the old, is for a long time incapable of recognising merit in anything belonging to it. There are several allusions in Chrysostom to the “Republic” of Plato, but they are always depreciative. He fastens on a few points, such as the regulations about marriage and female work, and condemns it on these as absurd and childish, quite failing to consider the idea in its grandeur as a whole.764 Yet it is instructive to notice that he never hesitates to assign to Plato the first place among the heathen philosophers, dignifying him with the title of Coryphæus.765 He often compares the failure of Plato’s teaching to regenerate men in every rank with the successful labours of St. Paul and the other apostles; but while he rejoices that the writings and doctrine of the philosopher were eclipsed by the tentmaker and fisherman, and well-nigh forgotten, he evidently regarded it as the most signal triumph which Christianity had achieved.766

Unquestionable as the intellectual genius of Chrysostom was, yet it is rather in the purity of his moral character, his single-minded boldness of purpose, and the glowing piety which burns through all his writings, that we find the secret of his influence. If it was rather the mission of Augustine to mould the minds of men so as to take a firm grasp of certain great doctrines, it was the mission of Chrysostom to inflame the whole heart with a fervent love of God. Rightly has he been called the great teacher of consummate holiness, as Augustine was the great teacher of efficient grace;767 rightly has it been remarked that, like Fénélon, he is to be ranked among those who may be termed disciples of St. John, men who seem to have been pious without intermission from their childhood upwards, and of whose piety the leading characteristics are ease, cheerfulness, and elevation; while Augustine belongs to the disciples of St. Paul, those who have been converted from error to truth, or from sin to holiness, and whose characteristics are gravity, earnestness, depth.768 If Augustine has done more valuable service in building up the Church at large, Chrysostom is the more loveable to the individual, and speaks out of a heart overflowing with love to God and man, unconstrained by the fetters of a severe and rigid system. Yet it is precisely on this account that he has not been so generally appreciated as he deserves. His tone is too catholic for the Romanist, or for the sectarian partisan of any denomination. “It would be easy to produce abundant instances of his oratorical abilities; I wish it were in my power to record as many of his evangelical excellencies.” Such is the verdict of a narrow-minded historian,769 and the comparative estimation in which he held St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom may be inferred from the number of pages in his History given to each: St. Augustine is favoured with 187, Chrysostom with 20. But he whose judgment is not cramped by the shackles of some harsh and stiff theory of Gospel truth will surely allow that Chrysostom not only preached the Gospel but lived it. To the last moment of his life he exhibited that calm, cheerful faith, that patient resignation under affliction, and untiring perseverance for the good of others, which are pre-eminently the marks of a Christian saint. The cause for which he fought and died in a corrupt age was the cause of Christian holiness; and, therefore, by the great medieval poet of Christendom he is rightly placed in Paradise between two men who, widely different indeed in character and circumstances from him and from one another, yet resembled him in this, that they freely and courageously spoke of God’s “testimonies even before kings, and were not ashamed”—Nathan the Seer, and Anselm the Primate of all England:—

APPENDIX.

[Vide ante, p. 415 note.]

ON THE LETTER TO CÆSARIUS (Chrys. Op. vol. iii. p. 755).

The history of this letter, and the controversy connected with it, are curious and interesting. Peter Martyr transcribed a Latin translation of it, which he found in a manuscript at Florence, carried it with him to England, and deposited it in the library of Archbishop Cranmer. After Cranmer’s death, and the dispersion of his library, the letter disappeared. Peter Martyr had not stated the source from which he had derived it, and, therefore, when the assailants of the doctrine of Transubstantiation wished to make use of it, their opponents always maintained that it did not exist. In 1680, however, Emericus Bigotius discovered a copy in the library of St. Mark’s Convent, at Florence, probably the same which Peter Martyr, himself a Florentine, had transcribed. Emericus appended it to his edition of Palladius’s “Life of Chrysostom,” and in his preface endeavoured to vindicate its authenticity; but the Doctors of the Sorbonne suppressed the letter, and such portions of the preface as related to it. Emericus, however, had retained in his own possession some of the entire copies after they were printed, before they came into the licenser’s hands. The translation was published by Stephanus Le Moyne in 1685, by Jacob Basnage in 1687, and in 1689 by Harduin, a Jesuit, who strenuously maintained the Roman Catholic interpretation of the passage on the Eucharist. Montfaucon adopted Harduin’s version of it, annexing a few fragments in the Greek, picked out of Anastasius and John Damascene.

John Damascene, Anastasius, and Nicephorus refer to the letter as authentic, nor does Harduin venture to dispute it; but there are several points of evidence which seem to mark it as belonging to a later age than that of Chrysostom. It is not quoted before Leontius, in the latter part of the sixth century, although it might usefully have been employed against the Eutychians. There are expressions in it which were not in common use till after Cyril of Alexandria had employed them against Nestorius. The language generally is that of one who had lived in the midst of the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, and the style of the Greek fragments, as well as the tone of the Latin translation, are extremely unlike Chrysostom’s manner: the sentences are abrupt and rugged, and a kind of scholastic, dogmatic tone pervades the whole composition. The general scope of the letter is clear: it is to maintain the doctrine of the two natures under one person in Jesus Christ, against the heresy of the Apollinarians; or, if we accept the theory of Montfaucon, the intention of the author, living in the time of the Eutychian heresy, was to strike a blow at that by forging a letter supposed to be addressed by Chrysostom to a friend, warning him against Apollinarian errors, which had much in common with the Eutychian. The passage in which the writer illustrates his position by a reference to the Holy Eucharist has been construed by Roman Catholics and Protestants in a sense agreeable to their own views on the subject. The writer has been labouring to prove that there were two distinct natures in the one person of God the Son Incarnate, and he proceeds as follows:—“Just as the bread before consecration is called bread, but when the Divine grace sanctifies it through the agency of the priest it is liberated from the appellation of bread, and is regarded as worthy of the appellation of the Lord’s body, although the nature of bread remains in it, and we speak not of two bodies, but one body of the Son; so here, the Divine nature being seated in the human body, the two together make up but one Son, one Person.”

FOOTNOTES: