02.02. LECTURE II ON PREACHING IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES.

LECTURE II ON PREACHING IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES. THE ascension of our Lord, according to the most probable Chronology, was in A. D. 30. Now in A. D. 430 was the death of Augustine, the last great preacher of the early centuries. We thus have a period of exactly four centuries. If we divide this, the year 230 will fairly represent the life and work of Origen (died 253), who forms the transition from the earlier to the later style of Christian preaching.

We have first to deal, then, with the two cen turies from 30 to 230, from the Ascension to tho time of Origen. For the greater part of this first period, we know very little of Christian preaching, after the close of the New Testament itself. The few work a that remain to us from the so-called Apostolic Fathers, are related to preaching just as were the Epistles of the inspired Apostles. They are letters, but designed to be read in public, and some of them showing oratorical feeling, though they have not the oratorical form. Still more is this true of Justin Martyr, particularly in his Apologies ; you feel that here is a thoroughly oratorical nature. Ignatius, Justin, Polycarp, must have been vigorous, impassioned, powerful preachers ; and so with some of the other "Apologists" (besides Justin), whose writings in defence of Christianity remain to us. But from none of them does anything re main that could be called a sermon, nor from any one else before Origen, except two small fragments of homilies from the famous Gnostic Yalentinus (preserved by Clement of Alexandria), which are of curious interest, but not homiletically instructive. Irenoeus was a man of great earnestness and force, but not even in the references to his lost writings is there any mention of sermons. The writings of Tertullian amply show that he was a born orator. His penetrating insight into subjects, his splendid imagination, his overpowering passion, the torrent-like movement of his style, heedless of elegance and of grammatical accuracy, his very exaggerations, and his fiery assaults upon his antagonists, all seem to show the man born to he a speaker. A lawyer in his youth, it is natural to suppose that he exercised himself much in oral Christian teaching, and his great familiarity with the Bible qualified him for the task. But none of his writings approach the form of a sermon. We should not even know from his own works, that he ever became a presbyter, though Jerome states that he did. For this almost entire want of sermons remaining from the first two centuries, there are several reasons, which we need not go far to seek. The preaching of the time was in general quite informal. The preacher did not make λόγος, discourses, but only ὀμιλίας, homilies, that is cοnversations, talks. Even in the fourth century, there was still retained, by some out of the way congregation, the practice of asking the preacher many questions, and answering questions asked by him, so as to make the homily to some extent a conversation. And in this period it was always a mere familiar talk, which of course might rise into dignity, and swell into passion, but only in an informal way. The general feeling appears also to have been that dependence on the promised blessing of the Paraclete forbade elaborate preparation of dis* courses. And this feeling would prevent many from writing out their discourses after they were spoken, as the same feeling appears to have pre vented the German Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, and many American Baptist ministers a century ago. But we must by no means imagine there was but little preaching during the two first centuries, because no sermons remain. In fact preaching was then very general, almost universal, among the Christians. Lay-preaching was not an exception, it was the rule. Like the first disciples the Christians still went everywhere preaching the word. The notion that the Christian minister corresponded to the Old Testament priest had not yet gained the ascendency. We find Irenaeus and Tertullian insisting that all Christians are priests. We learn from Eusebius (History VI. 19) that Origen, before he was ordained a presbyter, went to Pales* tine, and was invited by the bishops of Caesarea and Jerusalem to "expound the sacred Scriptures publicly in the church." The bishop of Alexandria, who was an enemy to Origen, condemned this, declaring it unheard of "that laymen should deliver discourses in the presence of the bishop." But the bishop of Jerusalem pronounced that notion a great mistake, appealing to various examples. It was still common in some regions, though now unknown in others, to invite laymen who could edify the brethren, to do so ; and this even when sacerdotal feeling was growing strong. In these first centuries, then, almost all the Christians preached. Thus, preaching was informal, and therefore unrecorded. Even of the presbyters at that time, few were educated or had much leisure for study. And when some able and scholarly man became a Christian, however he might occupy himself with profound studies, and the preparation of elaborate works, as Justin or Clement of Alexandria, Irenseus or Tertullian, yet when he stood up to preach, then like Faraday in the little Sandemanian chapel in London, he would lay his studies aside and speak impromptu, with the greatest simplicity. It is a favorite and just idea of recent writers on history, that the historian should not confine him self, as was so long common, to men in high places, and to single great events, but should try to re produce the life of the many, and the numerous forces affecting that life, and gradually preparing for the great events. This, however, can never be fully done, and the shortcoming is of necessity particularly great in the history of preaching. Yet let us at least bear in mind that the early progress of Christianity, that great and wonderful progress to which we still appeal as one of the proofs of its Divine origin, was due mainly to the labors of obscure men, who have left no sermons, and not even a name to history, but whose work remains plain before the all-seeing eye, and whose reward is sure. Hail, ye unknown, forgotten brethren! we celebrate the names of your leaders, but we will not forget that you fought the battles, and gained the victories. The Christian world feels your impress, though it has lost your names. And we likewise, if we cannot live in men’s memories, will rejoice at the thought that if we work for God, our work shall live, and we too shall lire in our work. And not only are these early laborers now un known, but most of them were in their own daj little cared for by the great and the learned, most of them were uneducated. Throughout the first two or three centuries, it continued to be true that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, were called to be Christian ministers or Christians at all. It was mainly the foolish things, weak things, base things, that God chose. And what power they had through the story of the cross, illuminated by earnest Christian living! There is a famous passage of Chrysostom (Homily xix. on the Statues), in which he bestows generous and exuberant eulogy on the country preachers around Antioch, many of whom were present that day in his church. He says, in his high-wrought fashion, that their presence beautified the city arid adorned the church, and describes them as different in dialect (for they were Syrians), but speaking the same language in respect of faith, a people free from cares, leading a sober and truly dignified life. He says they learn lessons of virtue and self-control, from tilling the soil. "You might see each of them now yoking oxen to the plough, and cutting a deep furrow in the ground, at another time with their word cleaning out sins from men’s souls. They are not ashamed of work, but ashamed of idleness, knowing that idleness is a teacher of all wickedness. And while the philosophers walk about with conspicuous cloak and staff and beard, these plain men are far truer philosophers, for they teach immortality and judgment to come, and conform all their life to these hopes, being instructed by the divine writings." Not only in the first centuries, then, but in Chrysostom’s day also, there were these uncultivated but good and useful men ; and such preachers have abounded from that day to this, in every period, country and persuasion in which Christianity was making any real and rapid progress. Our first period is divided from the second by the work of the celebrated Origen, probably A. D. 186 253. He was truly an epoch-making man, in Bible learning, in ministerial education, and in homiletics. Everybody knows what an impetus he gave to Biblical learning. All Christian scholars in the next two centuries, and many in every subsequent century, drew largely from the vast stores of learning gathered in his great works. The zealous studies of the present century in Text-criticism, present Origen as facile princeps among the Fathers in that respect, and give constantly new occasion to admire the scholarly accuracy and iron diligence of the Adamantine student. He was also the great educator among the early Christians. For nearly thirty years, beginning when a precocious youth of seventeen, he was chief Catechist in Alexandria, or as we should say, Theological professor, aided, after a time, by one of his distinguished pupils. And when banished from Alexandria, and living at Caesarea in Palestine, he there taught as a private instructor, but with students from distant lands, and with great éclat, for about twenty years more. During a great part of this time, from youth to age, he also preached every day, while at the same time laboring over his varied and immense works, so large a portion of which have long ago perished. Some glimpse of the subjects and methods of study in his theological school, we shall be able to get before we close. He was not only a teach er of preachers, but also a teacher of teachers. He had had predecessors in Alexandria, as Clement and his teacher Pantasnus, but it was Origen that made the Alexandrian school the chief seat of Christian learning for many generations to come. And his private teaching at Caesarea gave occasion for the founding of a public school there by the famous Pamphilus, the friend of Eusebius. But in respect to methods of preaching also, Origen made an epoch. As to interpretation of Scripture, he dignified and appeared to justify the practice of allegorizing. It is an utter mistake to say, though a mistake often repeated, that he was the father of this practice. His teacher, Clement, gives us instances of it; Justin Martyr has specimens as wild as anything in Origen, and the Epistle ascribed to Barnabas contains much allegorizing that seems to us absurd and contemptible. In fact, Origen’s great master in this respect was Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, who was a contemporary of our Lord. Origen did but apply to the New Testament, and to the Old Testament in a Christian sense, those methods of allegorizing by which Philo had made the Old Testament teach Platonic and Stoic Philosophy Celsus, the shrewd and vigorous unbeliever, made it an objection that the New Testament did not admit of allegorizing. Origen resented this as a slander, adducing several passages in which Paul himself had used allegory, and doubtless feeling all the more called on to show by his own allegorical interpretations that the Christian books did have those deep allegorical meanings which the Jews claimed for their books, and the Greeks for theirs. Allegorizing had long been the rage at Alexandria. Porphyry pre tended that Origen had only learned it from the Greek mysteries. Philo himself did but carry out more fully and ably the method of Aristobulus, his predecessor by a century and a half. Indeed, recent Egyptologists tell us that fifteen centuries before Christ, the Egyptian priests were disputing as to the true text, and allegorizing the statements, of their Book of the Dead, or Funeral Rites. But while Origen by no means originated allegorizing, he did do much to recommend it, by presenting the striking, though delusive, theory, that as man is composed of body, soul and spirit, so Scripture has a threefold sense, the grammatical, the moral, and the spiritual, and also by actually working out a spiritual sense for a great part of the Old and New Testaments, with perverse and absurd ingenuity. In this way he injured preaching. Men who held to a deep, esoteric sense, which only the few could understand, who, like the Gnostics, regarded themselves as a sort of spiritual aristocracy, would not only neglect to bring forth and apply the plain teachings of Scripture, but they habitually made light of these teachings, and cared mainly for such hearers as could soar with them into the "misty mid-regions" of allegorizing. Now it ia very well as a general principle that we should preach with some reference to the wants of the highly cultivated, and should deal in profound thought, but after all it is the plain truths of Scrip ture that do the chief good, to cultivated as well as uncultivated. One who begins to regard himself as distinctively a preacher for the intellectual or the learned, will spoil his preaching as rapidly as possible. At a later period, all Christians became accus tomed to the methods of allegorizing, and it ceased for the most part to be an esoteric affair, and became almost universal, with the exception of Chrysostom and his associates, in all the subsequent centuries till the Reformation. But Origen did good in teaching men to bring out the grammatical and the moral sense, though he understood these. In his early youth a teacher of grammar and rhetoric, he had a feeling for language, an exegetical sense, and his homilies and other works form the first examples of any pains-taking explanation of Scripture, or approach to accurate exegesis. As to the form of Christian discourses, he first, BO far as we know, made them discourses indeed, and not a mere string of loosely connected observations, dependent for their connection on accidental suggestion or the promptings of passion, and he first made series of homilies on entire books. This was a great advance, and prepared the way for future improvements. Yet still the homily was with out unity of structure. Origen does not take the fundamental thought of the passage, and treat every verse in relation to that, but he just takes clause after clause as they come, and remarks upon them in succession. Not till a century later was this fault corrected, and only partially then. In fact this lack of unity is still the commonest and gravest fault in ordinary attempts at expository preaching. But such feeling does not now prevail, and it ia more hurtful now than formerly, for the modern mind demands unity in all discourse. If you would succeed in expository preaching, let every such sermon have a genuine and marked unity.

Origen’s fame as a Biblical scholar, has over shadowed his merits as a preacher. And in general the exegetical element is more prominent in his homilies, than the oratorical. Yet he has occasional passages that are truly eloquent. Our second period of two centuries is from A. D. 230 to 430, or from Origen to Augustine. This again may be divided into two parts, for the year 330 will roughly represent to us the time of Constantine. Of the first half, from 230 to about 330, there is comparatively little to say, but the last of our four centuries is the time when Christian preaching springs into exuberant growth, and blossoms into glorious beauty. From the time of Origen, a much more considerable portion of Christian ministers must have been educated men, for there were now several theological schools, religious libraries began to be formed, sermons were taken down in short-hand and circulated, and (though the persecutions had not yet ended) there was an increasing number of intelligent people among the Christians, who would appreciate and desire an educated ministry. And yet almost no sermons of that period are now in existence. The celebrated controversial writer Hippolytus, a contemporary of Origen, is said to have been very eloquent. One homily and some fragments now remaining, are represented as showing considerable oratorical skill. Gregory, afterwards called Thaumaturgus, to distinguish him from the famous Gregories of later times, was a pupil of Origen, and a most enthusiastic admirer. His panegyric on Origen, delivered when leaving the theological school, is a really eloquent production, possessing much cu rious interest. But the few extant homilies ascribed to him are not probably genuine. It is evident that many sermons must have been written down during this period. It may be that most of them per ished during the great persecution under Diocletian, when so great an effort was made to destroy all Christian writings. In the "West, among the Latin” speaking Christians, we still find no sermons at all that have come down to modern times. Cyprian, in Carthage, while not an original thinker, but an avowed imitator of Tertullian, had yet very fine oratorical gifts, and spent his early life as a popular teacher of rhetoric. The style of his writings is very pleasing, but he left no sermons. Novatian, the heretic at Rome, (with whom some of our Baptist brethren are zealous to establish a denominational affinity,) is represented by Neander as " distinguished for clearness of Christian knowledge . . . and for a happy faculty of teaching," but the works now doubtfully ascribed to him, and even the list of his works given by Jerome, com prise no sermons. But now we approach a new period. The grand effort^ of Diocletian had failed, and it became evident that Christianity could not be destroyed by persecution. Constantine adopted Christianity as the main plank in his political platform. Being successful, becoming sole ruler of the world, and favoring the Christians in every way, he wrought a most sudden and complete change in their position, a change having the most varied and important results for that age and for the ages to come. Yea, all Christendom is agitated to-day, by the con sequences of Constantine’s grand stroke of policy. In no respect were the immediate results more important than in regard to preaching. The young men who were looking to the minis try of the gospel could now without difficulty avail themselves of all the best educational facilities in the great University cities, before attending their Christian theological schools. They could now en joy, not only undisturbed quiet in Christian life, study, and work, but the best social advantages. the power for good or evil, in every age and country, of social position, and social influences. Before this time Christians could scarcely anywhere be received into the best society, and if thus received they would be frequently met by heathen customs in which all were expected to take part. But now fashionable society smiled on Christians, and greatly courted those who were influential. It became the fashion to attend church. It was a passport to imperial favor, that one should be a very zealous Christian. And fashionable people in Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and hundreds of smaller towns, began to speak, (so Chrysostom intimates,) almost as enthusiastically about the favor ite preacher of the hour, as they spoke of the favorite horse in the races, or the reigning actor of the theatre. The number of real Christians who were intelligent rapidly increased ; and when to these was added the fashionable world, there arose a great demand for preachers who were literary, and eloquent. And if the preacher was a deeply pious man, his soul would be stirred by observing the crowds of professed Christians, many of whom had nothing of Christianity but the name, and he would be moved to the most earnest and passionate warnings and appeals.

Besides, all Christendom was rent by the great Arian controversy. Now that the outside pressure of persecution was removed, the Christians would not hesitate to throw their whole soul into controversy. While a skeptical modern historian may sneer at a world-shaking dispute over one letter, the difference between ὁμοιούσίον and ὀμοούσιον, yet such a subtle distinction was well suited to the genius of the Orientalized Greeks, and Hellenized Orientals. And although the controversy was largely carried on by political maneuvering, and courting favor with successive Emperors, favorites and governors, still much might be, much often was accomplished by able and eloquent sermons on the various aspects of this great question as to the Divinity of Christ, which touched the very heart of Christianity, and could be so presented as mightily to stir the souls of all susceptible hearers. Many of the Arian preach ers too, were very able, highly educated, acute in argument, and passionately earnest in advocating their ingenious and plausible theory. Such rivalry must have powerfully stimulated the orthodox preachers.

Moreover, Christian discourses could now be freely published, and widely circulated. Thus the sermons of the more eloquent preachers speedily became a model and a stimulus to other preachers every where, and also helped to create a demand for attractive and impressive discourse, on the part of such private Christians as read the publications.

These glimpses of the situation may give us some conception of the conditions under which Christian Preaching blazed out into such splendor, and such real power, in the century which began with Constantine and Eusebius, and ended with Chrysostom and Augustine.

Eusebius himself, the justly famous historian, had in certain respects good gifts for preaching, and has left some homilies, besides his extravagant and over wrought panegyric on Constantine ; but he occupied himself chiefly with his extensive historical and chronological studies and treatises. From Athanasius, the great Trinitarian leader, we have no genuine homilies remaining. His style of writing has directness, simplicity, and native force, a vigorous and manly eloquence, such as one seldom meets with in that age of stilted rhetoric. Gregory Nazianzen, his eulogist, declares that Athanaius had no literary culture. But this is probably like Ben Jonson’s saying that Shakspeare had small Latin and less Greek, because he had not been a life long student like himself. It is, however, worth notice that in his two remarkable treatises on the Incarnation, written in all probability when he was between twenty and twenty-five years old, Athanasius shows the same excellencies of style as in his later works, which seems to prove that these excellencies were mainly native. I think that the more Athana sius is read, the more it will be regretted that he has left us no sermons. As to Cyril of Jerusalem, it must suffice to remark, that his well-known sermons to those about to be baptized, and to those recently baptized, while not of remarkable ability, are suggestive examples of a practice which, with due modifications, might with great advantage be more largely pursued among us. The name of Ephraem the Syrian, who died in 378 (five years after Athanasius), has in a singular manner become familiar to all of us, though we may not have looked at his works. A MS. of the New Testament, written in the fifth century, was about the twelth century written over with some works translated from Ephraem, and is now known to critics of the Text as the MS. C, or the Codex of Ephraem the Syrian. His is the great name among the Syrian Christians, and he is represented as one of the lead ing Christian orators of the century of which we are speaking. As a rare peculiarity among those great preachers, he was what we call a self-made man. Yet like all such men who really accomplish much, he was educated by the ideas and influences of the age, by books, and by personal contact with gifted contemporaries. He knew little Greek, yet enough to correspond freely with Basil the Great. I have never yet found opportunity to read much of his writings, but I notice that he is very highly eulogized by Ville- main, and described, by him and others, as a highly emotional preacher, sometimes intensely solemn. The portions I have read also show a truly Oriental fond ness for imagery. He was at the same time a poet, the earliest Syriac hymns being from his pen. Shall we give a moment to Macarius, the Egyptian monk? His homilies are without text, desultory, familiar talks to the monks, and often to a considerable extent made up of answers to questions which they ask, thus being literally homilies. They are crazy with allegorizing, and wild with mysticism, but very sweet and engaging in tone, and urging to all the monastic virtues, prayer, silence, humility and self-mortification, in a very impressive manner. Certainly monasticism was a sadly one-sided thing, but its one side of Christianity has been beautifully exhibited by some of the earlier and medieval monks, both in precept and example. Are we not inclined to be one-sided too, caring only for thought and practical activity, and neglecting the cultivation religious sensibility, and of the passive virtues? It would do most of us good to read some of the best of the early monastic writers, as every body agrees is true of the (Imitation of Christ, and the medieval Latin Hymns.

I must mention one other of the less famous preachers of the time, one scarcely ever mentioned in works of Church History for we know almost nothing of his life, and his sermons take little part in the great controversies but who deserves a very warm commendation. It is Asterius, bishop of Amasea in Pontus. Of his copious writings, we have left about ten homilies believed to be genuine, and some fragments of others, but these are admirable, some of them really charming. The subjects are moral or historical; he has fine descriptive pow ers; the style is marked by exquisite richness of expression, and not overwrought. His allusions show that he was familiar with Demosthenes, and his style has something of the classic moderation and true elegance. Some of his sermons could be preached in our churches with little alteration, and would be well received. If some one of you would make himself thoroughly acquainted with them, and publish them in a small volume with introductions and notes, I am persuaded that many persons would read them with interest, partly because the name is unknown, and the volume would awaken curiosity. And now how can I speak of the great Greek preachers?

Basil the Great (A. D. 329-379) possessed all possible advantages. His family was rich and of high social position in Pontus, and from his grand parents down had been remarkable for piety. Two of his brothers became bishops, one of them famous (Gregory of Nyssa); and his older sister, who powerfully influenced him, founded and presided over a monastery. His father, a distinguished rhetorician, gave him careful instruction from childhood. At school he surpassed all his fellow-pupils. Then he studied at Constantinople, taught by Libanius, the most famous teacher of rhetoric in that age, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. After wards he went to Athens, where his fellow-students included Julian (afterwards Emperor and Apostate), and Gregory Nazianzen, his early friend. Gregory tells us in a well-known funeral eulogium,[1] that when he heard Basil was coming to Athens, he gave the students so high an opinion of his abilities and eloquence, that they consented, as a special distinction, to exempt Basil from the species of hazing to which new students were always subjected.

Thus he had every advantage, good- breeding, and all pious and inspiring home influences, careful early training, then life in the great capital city (giving knowledge of the world), and afterwards at the chief seat of learning in that age, Athens, with the ablest instructors and the most gifted fellow students his intellect disciplined, and his taste cultivated by the study of classic philosophy and oratory, and yet his Christian feeling ever warmed anew by the sympathy and example of his intelli gent and devout kindred at home.

He died when less than fifty years old (like the English Dr. Barrow), but his life was crowded with religious and literary labors. As a preacher, Basil shows greater skill in the construction of discourses than any Christian orator who had preceded him. He usually extemporized, but he knew how to put a sermon together, or to make it grow, in a natural manner. The chief excellency of his preaching is in the treatment of moral subjects. He had a rare knowledge of human nature, and you may notice that among all the changes of preaching in all the ages, two branches of knowledge possess a universal and indestructible interest, deep knowledge of human nature, and deep knowledge of Scripture. Basil shows wonder ful power in depicting the various virtues, and still more remarkable skill in tracing the growth and consequences of leading vices. Amid all the admir able temperance literature of our own age, I have seen no more just and vivid exhibition of many of the evils of drunkenness, than is given by Basil in his sermon on that subject. Yet this and some others of his discourses seem to me to have a fault still common in sermons on moral subjects, viz., that they do not make sufficiently prominent the Gospel view of the evil, and the Gospel motives to avoid it. The Christian moralist should be a Christian moralist. It is not strange that Basil’s old pagan instructor could enjoy this sermon on drunkenness If the letters [2] between them, on the occasion are genuine (and they possess great verisimilitude), we find that they praise each other in very extravagant terms. Libanius sends Basil an oration on the ill- humored man, of which Basil says in reply, te Muses, and letters, and Athens, what gifts ye be stow upon your lovers." Then Libanius asks to see Basil’s recent sermon on drunkenness, amd hav ing read it, says, "Surely, Basil, you live at Athens unawares, for the Caesarea people (Basil was bishop of Caesarea in Pontus) could not hear this discourse." Presently he adds, " I did not teach him. This man is Homer, yes Plato, yes Aristotle, yes Susarion, who knew everything." . . . And in conclusion. "I would, Basil, that you could give me such praises," etc. Compliments between a professor and his now famous and very grateful pupil are apt to be a trifle gushing, but in this case the thing does seem overdone.

Basil’s style has the faults of his age, and I would not advise your reading him very rapidly or freely, lest your taste be offended ; but taking just one dis course at a time, you feel that you are dealing with a great mind, a noble character, a deeply devout and truly eloquent preacher.

Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil, is among the Greek Fathers the profoundest thinker as to philosophy, as you may see brought out in Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy. As a preacher, he was and is overshadowed by the fame of his brother and of his namesake, but so far as a slender acquaintance enables one to judge, I think him really a more sat isfactory preacher than the other and more celebrated Gregory. This other, Gregory Nazianzen (A D. 329-389), the friend and fellow student of Basil, was doubtless at that time considered the most eloquent of all preachers until Chrysostom became known. Very ambitious, and enjoying the finest educational oppor tunities, Gregory was especially a student of elo quence, and was a man of imaginative and passionate nature. He was the first great hymn- writer ; and his hymns became exceedingly popular in the Greek Church. Yet it has been justly said that his poetry is too oratorical, and his oratory too poetical. You may notice that few great preachers have written even a single good hymn, and no great hymn-writer has been very eminent as a preac. ier, unless Gregory be the exception, or Ephraem the Syrian. So more gener ally as to oratory and poetry. The oratorical and the poetic temperament seem closely related, yet are they remarkably distinct. An orator may derive very great benefit from studying poets, but many a preacher is damaged by failing to understand the difference between the poet’s office and his own. Imagination is the poet’s mistress, his queen ; for the orator, she is a handmaid, highly useful, indeed absolutely needful, but only a handmaid. And splendor of diction, which for the poet is one chief end, is for the orator only a subordinate means. But the very faults of Gregory’s style, according to our taste, were high excellencies in the estimation of his contemporaries. His wildly extravagant hyper boles, perpetual effort to strike, and high-wrought splendor of imagery and diction, were accounted the most magnificent eloquence, and perhaps did really recommend the truth to some of his hearers. Thus while Patriarch of Constantinople, he preached five discourses (still extant), which are said to have done much in curing Arianism there, and which pro cured him the surname of Theologos, discourser on the Deity of Christ, but which you or I can stiW jely read with any patience. The career of John, afterward surnamed Ghry- sostom (A. D. 347-407), is doubtless somewhat familiar to you all, and is exceedingly well depicted in the life by Stephens. He was younger, by fif teen or twenty years, than Basil and the Gregories. He was of a distinguished and wealthy family in Antioch, and under the devoted care of a widowed mother, received every possible educational advan tage. The great teacher Llbanius had now returned to his native Antioch, and found in John a favorite pupil, whom he would have wished to make his successor as professor of rhetoric and kindred sub jects. In the great city John saw the world, and sharpened that (penetrating knowledge of human nature for which, like Basil, he was remarkable. For a short time he practiced law, and Libanius warmly commended some of his speeches at the bar. But he turned away, weary and disgusted, from the thousand corruptions of society and government, and when his mother’s death allowed he went into retirement with several friends, and spent several years in the close study of the Scrip tares. Among other and greater results, it is said that Chrysostom knew almost the whole Bible by heart. In these studies they were directed by Diodorus, the head of a neighboring monastery, and afterwards a bishop, and author of long famous commentaries and other works. Here was a turn ing-point of Chrysostom’s life. Diodorus, as we learn from various sources, founded what then appeared to be a new school of Biblical interpreta tion, a reaction from the well-known tendency of the older school of Alexandria. He shrank from allegorizing, and held closely to "the literal and historical meaning of the text." His copious writ ings, which had the honor to be specially attacked by the Emperor Julian, have perished, except a few fragments. But Diodorus lives forever in his theo logical pupil. It is among the greatest distinctions of Chrysostom, that his interpretation is almost entirely free from the wild allegorizing which had been nearly universal ever since Origen. It is a delightful contrast to turn from the other great preachers of the time (including Augustine), with their utterly loose interpretations, and fanciful ipiritualizing, to the straight-forward, careful and usually sober interpretations of Chrysostom. Hia works are not only models of eloquence, but a trea sury of exegesis. And for this the world is mainly indebted to Diodorus. Chrysostom had much na tive good sense, it is true, but so had Athanasius, Basil, Augustine. Nay, his early studies of Scrip ture were directed by a really wise and able instruct or ; and his good sense enabled him to seize the just principles of interpretation set before him, and to develop them still more ably, and recommend them far more widely than the instructor himself. Highly favored was such a student, and highly fortunate such a teacher. It is also believed (Forster) that Chrysosfom was greatly influenced as to interpretation, by his fellow student, Theodore, known afterwards as Theodore of Mopsuestia, and a commentator of great ability. It is among the advantages of study in company with others, that a man of susceptible nature will be powerfully influ enced by his associates, as well as by the instructors.

Chrysostom long shrank from the work of preaching, and the office of priest, the difficulties and responsibilities of which he has so impressively state in his little work on the Priesthood. He wrote this and other valuable works while holding inferior offices, but was ordained and began preach ing, only at the age of thirty-nine. He died at sixty, after three years of exile. Thus his actual career as a preacher lasted only eighteen years, twelve years at Antioch, and six at Constantinople. In these years he preached almost daily, filling the civilized world with his fame, and leaving about one thousand sermons (many of them reported by others) that have descended to us. From no other preacher have one thousand sermons been published, except Spurgeon, who has now gone considerably beyond that number. In our impatient age and country, when so many think time spent in preparation is time lost, it is well to remember that the two most celebrated preachers of the early Christian centuries began to preach, Chrysostom at thirty-nine, and Augustine at thirty-six.

I cannot fully discuss the characteristics of Chry- sostom’s preaching. It must be admitted that he is by no means always correct in his interpretations, particularly in the Old Testament, being ignorant of Hebrew, and often misled by the errors of the Septuagmt ; also that he shared many sad errors off his age, as to baptism and the Lord’s Sapper, asceti cism and virginity, saints and martyrs. It must also be conceded that his style often wearies us by excessive copiousness, minute and long-drawn de scriptions, multiplied comparisons, and piled-up imagery. But we must always remember that this did not look to excited throngs as it does to us. Under such circumstances a certain rhetorical exag geration and exuberance seems natural, as a statue placed high upon a pillar must be above life-size. But admit what you please, criticise as you please, and the fact remains that Chrysostom has never had a superior, and it may be gravely doubted whether he has had an equal, in the history of preach ing. "He shared the faults of his age," you say. Yes, and a man who does not, will scarcely impress his age, or any other. " He does not show such con summate art as Demosthenes." That is true. But the finish and repose of high art is scarcely possible, and scarcely desirable, in addressing the preacher’s heterogeneous audiences, comprising persons so dif ferent as to culture and interest in the subject. Demosthenes has everywhere a style as elegant and purely simple as the Venus del Medici or the Parthenon; Chrysostom approaches in exuberance of fancy, in multiplication of images and illustration s, and in curiously varied repetitions, to a Gothic cathedral. Demosthenes is like the Greek Tragic Drama, strictly conformed to the three Unities ; Chrysostom is more like the Romantic Drama. I cannot say like Shakspeare the Shakspeare of preachers has not yet appeared. But why should he not some day appear? One who can touch every chord of human feeling, treat every interest of human life, draw illustration from every object and relation of the known universe, and use all to gain acceptance and obedience for the gospel of salvation. No preacher has ever come nearer this than Chrysostom, perhaps none, on the whole, so near. A Syrian Greek, and a Christian Greek, he does in no small measure combine the Asiatic and the European, the ancient and the modern. The rich fancy and blazing passion of an Asiatic is united with the power of intellect and energy of will which mark Europeans ; while the finish and simplicity of Greek art are not so much wanting as lost in the manysidedness of Christian thought and Christian lentiment. As to style he certainly ranges the whole gamut of expression ; for while his style is generally elevated, often magnificent, and sometimes extravagant, it occasionally becomes homely and rough as he lays bare the follies and vices of men.[3] Chrysostom is undoubtedly the prince of expository preachers. And he has very rarely been equalled in the treatment of moral subjects, while two of the most successful preachers on moral subjects in the modern centuries, viz., Bourdaloue and Barrow, were both devoted students of Chrysostom.

Among the Latin preachers of the period there are but two great names, Ambrose and Augustine (for their famous contemporary Jerome, though eloquent in his writings, never preached). Of Ambrose (A. D. 340-97,) I can say but a word. Of very distinguished family, carefully educated at Rome, he practised law at Milan with much éclat for eloquence, became civil governor there, and then in a curious and well-known fashion, was suddenly forced by the vox populi into the office of bishop. Aware of his ignorance of Christian truth, he diligently studied Origen, Hippolytus, and Basil the Great, and Philo the Jew. From these he learned the wildest allegorizing, and from them is said to have in fact derived the greater part of his thought. This borrowing from the Greeks by wholesale had been the general practice of Pagan Roman writers also, as everybody knows. Ambrose must have been a man of striking appearance, and his style is fine and flowing, which fact must have been the excuse for naming him the Christian Cicero, which seems to me extravagant praise. But the influence of his preaching was greatly increased by his administrative talent. A true Roman, a born ruler of men, he made himself felt by emperor and people, by his own and by subsequent ages. He was a man of noble character, and his hymns (the first Latin hymns of much importance) have a manly vigor and directness which are truly Roman. His character and administrative achievements, and his eloquent deliveiy, gave prestige to hie writings, which would otherwise hardly have gained so great a reputation. But here is a lesson for preachers, who may so often add immensely to the influence of their preaching, whether it be good or not, by administrative tact and toil, and by personal dignity and worth. As to Augustine (A. D. 354-430,) you know that he has mainly impressed himself on the world as a theologian. The great theological authority of the Middle Ages, and nominally though one can hardly think really the great authority of the Romish Church to the present day, he is also the father of the theology of the Protestant Reformation. Luther avowedly put Augustine next to the Bible, as his chief source of religious knowledge. Calvin reduced Augustine’s doctrines to a religious form, aided by his own training in the scholastic works of the Middle Ages. What we call Calvinism is the doctrine of Paul, developed by Augustine and systematized by Calvin.

You know too that Augustine has written works of very high literary merit, apart from his theological and homiletical writings. His Confessions form one of the most unique and strangely impressive works in all literature one of the books that every body ought by all means to read. His City of God has been called a "prose Epic," and is a combination of history, philosophy and poetry that has a power and a charm all its own. Add that his work on Christian Teaching is the first treatise on Sacred Rhetoric and Homiletics, and after all that has followed, the last of its four books is still highly suggestive. But I think that if we had nothing else from Augustine than his Sermons, of which some three hundred and sixty remain that are reckoned genuine, we should recognize him as a great preacher, as a richly gifted man, and should feel , ourselves powerfully attracted and impressed by his genius, his mighty will and passionate heart and , deeply earnest piety. Our historian Paniel, in my opinion, wrongs Augustine by underestimating him as a preacher, because of bitter hostility to the doc trines of grace which Augustine taught. Bromel does him more justice, and Ebert. He is unsafe as an interpreter a good many of the great theologians have been rather too independent in their exegesis and wild with allegorizing, like every other great preacher of the age except Chrysostom. But his sermons are full of power. lie carefully, if not always correctly, explains his text, and repeats many times, in different ways, its substantial meaning. He deals much in dramatic question and answer, and in apostrophe ; also in digression, the use of familiar phrases, direct address to particular classes of persons present using in general great and notable freedom. Away with our prim and starch formalities and uniformities! Yet freedom must be controlled, as in Augustine it com monly is controlled, by sound judgment, right! feeling and good taste. The chief peculiarity of Augustine’s style is his fondness for, and skill in producing, pithy phrases. In the terse and vigorous Latin, these often have great power. The capacity for throwing off such phrases is mainly natural, but may be indefinitely cultivated. And it is a great element of power, es pecially in addressing the masses of men, if one can, after stating some truth, condense it into a single keen phrase that will penetrate the hearer’s mind and stick.

Hurried as this review has been, I have passed without mention a number of men who are more or less known to us as eminent preachers. An interesting topic for inquiry would be, Preaching among the early "heretics. The enthusiastic Montanism which won over Tertcullian in his prime, must have produced impassioned and stirring preachers. The Manichaeism to which Augustine was so attached in his youth, was in some respects well suited to eloquence; and Augustine declares that Faustus the Manichasan was more eloquent than Ambrose, whom he greatly admired and loved. I do not know anything as to the Donatist preachers, but the mighty Arian party, it has been already in passing intimated, comprised preachers as well as scholars of great ability, from most of whom, how ever, nothing remains bat a name.

I wish now to remark upon two or three of the many points of general instruction and suggestion which present themselves in connection with the preaching of the early Christian centuries.

1. As to entrance on the ministry. You have noticed that quite a number of the famous men who have passed rapidly before us, became presbyters or bishops against their will, e. g., Gregory Thaumaturgus (the pupil of Origen), and Gregory Nazianzen, who fled from ordination, and published as Apology for his flight, in which he set forth the responsible and difficult duties of the priesthood. So Chrysostom’s beautiful treatise on the Priest hood was written to show why he was not willing to become a priest. Ambrose also, and Augustine entered the sacred office unwillingly, and many others that we know of. Partly this was due to sacerdotal notions, as implied in the very name they used, priesthood ; partly it was a mere fashion ; but in the main we must believe that these men honestly shrank from a calling so solemnly responsible, as many others have done in every age, including our own. Nay, we remember the saying of Paul, "Who is sufficient for these things?" and the consolation he has handed down to us, "Our sufficiency is of God."

You doubtless observed also how many of these foremost preachers were of families having a high social position, as Ephraem, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine. This gives a preacher advantages of no slight importance, and we should not allow our more favored families to suppose that the ministry is to come only from the poor. Everybody notices too, the pious mothers of Gregory Nazianzen and Chrysostom, of Ambrose and Augustine, while in the case of Basil and his brother, the whole family were remarkable for piety, beginning with the grandparents.

2. As to Education, we have seen that after Constantine, in the blooming period of early Christian eloquence, these distinguished preachers had nearly all attended at the great centres of secular instruction, gaining the most thorough general education the age could afford. The pagan thought and taste had greatly degenerated, but the noble old Greek and Roman literature then existed in its entirety (not in fragments as we have it), and came to these students in their own tongues wherein they were born. Mr. Grote, in the preface to his Plato, very unfairly quotes Jerome to show that it was the tendency of what he calls "Hebrew studies" to make a man despise ani neglect the heathen classics. But Jerome had peculiar notions on this subject. Basil recommended the classic writers to a student, and Chrysostom and Augustine speak not so much as loving these writers less, but as loving the Scriptures more. Besides, their circumstances were very different from ours. We can admire the statues of deities, without thereby encouraging idolatry, but they could not ; and so as to the pagan literature, almost all intimately associated with idolatry, which was then rapidly declining, but by no means dead. These considerations will account for the terms of disparagement in which the great Christian writers of the time sometimes speak of classical studies. But Julian, the apostate emperor, doubtless understood the situation, and he forbade Christian teachers to teach rhetoric and grammar, and to lecture on the old classic authors. If Christian youth wished to study these, let them go, he said, to the pagan teachers. And we are told of distinguished Christian professors of rhetoric who gave up their positions, in obedience to Julian’s edict.

We have also seen that a singularly large number of these great preachers had studied the grand systems of Greek and Roman law, which must have given most important general discipline. Tertullian, Cyprian and Ambrose, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Basil and Chrysostom, all studied law, and most of {88} them for a while engaged in the practice. The same thing has been true of many eminent preachers in our own time. Let me remind you, too, of the great attention which nearly every one of these great preachers had paid to the study of Oratory, as a practical art. I will not discourse upon the importance to ourselves of this now so generally neglected study. I trust you all read the weighty words spoken last summer at Amherst College by an illustrious citizen, whose name recalls the whole history of American Liberty, and whose character and public services are worthy of the best days of the Republic, the Hon. Charles Francis Adams. He declared that in no country at the present day has public speaking such ample opportunities for exerting influence as in America, and in no civilized country is the art of public speaking so little studied. (I think that in this last respect he ought to have excepted England.) I would that his exhortations on that subject might sink into the hearts of our aspiring American youth. But besides general education, in all the really grand curriculum of the age, and at the great schools of Alexandria and Antioch, of Constantinople and Athens, of Rome and many lesser cities, these leading preachers nearly all pursued a long course of theological study, before entering upon the full work of the ministry. Going back to the times of Origen, we happen to have remaining a curious account of the studies in which he trained his pupils at Caesarea. Gregory, afterwards surnamed Thaumaturgus (the miracle-worker), on his way from Cappadocia to a law-school at Beyrout, met Origen at Caesarea, was converted by him to Christianity, and became his pupil there for eight years, though he had already studied at Alexandria and at Athens. When at last reluctantly leaving Caesarea, Gregory delivered a valedictory, commonly known as his Panegyric upon Origen, which is very interesting on many accounts, among others because it is the earliest Christian oration we have.

He tells in this valedictory how Origen at the outset urged upon him in many conversations, the advantages and delights of knowledge, as com pared with what men call practical pursuits, and soon fascinated him so that he could not leave. He eays that he and his brother were like uncultivated land full of briers and thistles, or like wild horses, when Origen took hold of them. That he taught them both in the Socratic manner and by di& courses that he corrected their errors, and taught them to distinguish between truth and error, to be critical both as to language and arguments. The subjects of their study, he says, were Physics (in the broad ancient sense of that term), especially Geometry, which he calls the solid basis of all knowledge, and Astronomy ; afterwards Ethics, Philosophy, in general, and Theology. Such was their eight years course. And now in sadly turning away from this worshipped teacher and these cherished studies, Gregory compares himself to Adam driven out of Paradise, to the prodigal son leaving his father (only without any portion of goods), and to the Jews when carried into the Babylonian captivity. Do we mourn thus in leaving a long course of study? If not, is it because our teachers are not Origens, or because we are not Gregories or is it that our students do not commonly expect to be life-long celibates, and that thoughts of a domestic Paradise do often allure them away from the Paradise of College and Theological school? In respect to their style, the great Greek and Latin Fathers are, in general, by no means good models, as I have before intimated in passing. They have the overwrought style of their age. We see this already in Josephus, and Plutarch’s Miscellaneous Writings, and the Dialogue on Oratory ascribed to Tacitus. We see it in Libanius and Julian. Even Chrysostom shows this tendency of his age, and often offends our taste. Here is a reason, from the point of view of Rhetoric, for objecting to the substitution of Christian Greek and Latin writers for the classics of the earlier time as text-books. Boys at school and college are always disappointed in Demosthenes at first, and they would think Gregory Nazianzen far more eloquent. These writers present precisely those faults of style which youth ful and untrained minds are too ready to admire and imitate.

Passing over many other topics, I simply direct your attention, in conclusion, to the striking fact, that the Christian preaching of these early centuries culminated in Chrysostom and Augustine, and then suddenly and entirely ceased to show any remarkable power. East or West, after Chrysostom and Augustine, there is not another really great preacher whose sermons remain to us, for seven centuries. The reasons for this would appear upon a little reflection. In the East, the despotism and worldliness of the Imperial Court left no room for independence of thought, or for high hope of doing good by eloquence. Court intrigue had forced Gregory Nazianzen to resign at Constantinople, and driven Chrysostom into exile, and the Greek bishops afterwards became mere courtiers or mere slaves. In the West, amid the destruction of the Western Empire, and the conflicts of the barbarians, the Roman genius for government showed itself, and the high Christian officials went on gathering power and making Rome in a new sense the mistress of the world, but this was done by administrative talents like those of Leo the Great, and Gregory the Great, and there was no demand for supreme efforts in preaching. And in both East and West, men’s minds were now turned towards impressive ritual, sacerdotal functions and sacramental efficacies, and these left little room, as they commonly do, for earnest and vigorous preaching.

FOOTNOTES [3] Gregory Nazianzen Or. 43, page 781-3 Bened.

[2] Basil, Epistles 3516, p. 1093 ff. M gne.

[3] "The orator must command the whole scale of the language, from the most eloquent to the most low and vile. . . . . The street must be one of his schools. Ought not the scholar to be able to convey his meaning in terms as short and strong as the porter or truckman uses to convey his? --Emerson’s Letters and Social Aims.