I confess to a delight in reading the lives, and
dwelling on the characters and actions, of the
Saints of the first ages, such as I receive from none
besides them; and for this reason, because we
know so much more about them than about most 5
of the Saints who come after them. People are
variously constituted; what influences one does
not influence another. There are persons of
warm imaginations, who can easily picture to
themselves what they never saw. They can at 10
will see Angels and Saints hovering over them
when they are in church; they see their
lineaments, their features, their motions, their
gestures, their smile or their grief. They can go
home and draw what they have seen, from the 15
vivid memory of what, while it lasted, was so
transporting. I am not one of such; I am touched
by my five senses, by what my eyes behold and
my ears hear. I am touched by what I read
about, not by what I myself create. As faith 20
need not lead to practice, so in me mere
imagination does not lead to devotion. I gain more
from the life of our Lord in the Gospels than from
a treatise _de Deo_. I gain more from three verses
of St. John than from the three points of a
meditation. I like a Spanish crucifix of painted wood
more than one from Italy, which is made of gold.
I am more touched by the Seven Dolors than by
the Immaculate Conception; I am more devout 5
to St. Gabriel than to one of Isaiah's seraphim.
I love St. Paul more than one of those first
Carmelites, his contemporaries, whose names and acts
no one ever heard of; I feel affectionately towards
the Alexandrian Dionysius, I do homage to St. 10
George. I do not say that my way is better than
another's; but it is my way, and an allowable
way. And it is the reason why I am so specially
attached to the Saints of the third and fourth
century, because we know so much about them. 15
This is why I feel a devout affection for St.
Chrysostom. He and the rest of them have
written autobiography on a large scale; they
have given us their own histories, their thoughts,
words, and actions, in a number of goodly folios, 20
productions which are in themselves some of their
meritorious works....
The Ancient Saints have left behind them just
that kind of literature which more than any other
represents the abundance of the heart, which 25
more than any other approaches to conversation;
I mean correspondence. Why is it that we feel
an interest in Cicero which we cannot feel in
Demosthenes or Plato? Plato is the very type
of soaring philosophy, and Demosthenes of 30
forcible eloquence; Cicero is something more than
an orator and a sage; he is not a mere ideality, he
is a man and a brother; he is one of ourselves.
We do not merely believe it, or infer it, but we
have the enduring and living evidence of
it--how? In his letters. He can be studied, 5
criticised if you will; but still dwelt upon and
sympathized with also. Now the case of the Ancient
Saints is parallel to that of Cicero. We have their
letters in a marvelous profusion. We have
above 400 letters of St. Basil's; above 200 of 10
St. Augustine's. St. Chrysostom has left us
about 240; St. Gregory Nazianzen the same
number; Pope St. Gregory as many as 840....
A Saint's writings are to me his real "Life;"
and what _is called_ his "Life" is not the outline 15
of an individual, but either of the _auto-saint_ or
of a myth. Perhaps I shall be asked what I
mean by "Life." I mean a narrative which
impresses the reader with the idea of moral unity,
identity, growth, continuity, personality. When 20
a Saint converses with me, I am conscious of the
presence of one active principle of thought, one
individual character, flowing on and into the
various matters which he discusses, and the
different transactions in which he mixes. It is 25
what no memorials can reach, however skillfully
elaborated, however free from effort or study,
however conscientiously faithful, however
guaranteed by the veracity of the writers. Why
cannot art rival the lily or the rose? Because the 30
colors of the flower are developed and blended
by the force of an inward life; while on the other
hand, the lights and shades of the painter are
diligently laid on from without. A magnifying
glass will show the difference. Nor will it
improve matters, though not one only, but a dozen 5
good artists successively take part in the picture;
even if the outline is unbroken, the coloring is
muddy. Commonly, what is called "the Life,"
is little more than a collection of anecdotes brought
together from a number of independent quarters; 10
anecdotes striking, indeed, and edifying, but
valuable in themselves rather than valuable as parts
of a biography; valuable whoever was the
subject of them, not valuable as illustrating a
particular Saint. It would be difficult to mistake 15
for each other a paragraph of St. Ambrose, or of
St. Jerome, or of St. Augustine; it would be very
easy to mistake a chapter in the life of one holy
missionary or nun for a chapter in the life of
another. 20
An almsgiving here, an instance of meekness
there, a severity of penance, a round of religious
duties,--all these things humble me, instruct
me, improve me; I cannot desire anything
better of their kind; but they do not necessarily 25
coalesce into the image of a person. From such
works I do but learn to pay devotion to an
abstract and typical perfection under a certain
particular name; I do not know more of the real
Saint who bore it than before. Saints, as other 30
men, differ from each other in this, that the
multitude of qualities which they have in
common are differently combined in each of them.
This forms one great part of their personality.
One Saint is remarkable for fortitude; not that
he has not other heroic virtues by _concomitance_, 5
as it may be called, but by virtue of that one gift
in particular he has won his crown. Another is
remarkable for patient hope, another for
renunciation of the world. Such a particular virtue
may be said to give form to all the rest which are 10
grouped round it, and are molded and modified
by means of it. Thus it is that often what is
right in one would be wrong in another; and, in
fact, the very same action is allowed or chosen
by one, and shunned by another, as being 15
consistent or inconsistent with their respective
characters,--pretty much as in the combination of
colors, each separate tint takes a shade from
the rest, and is good or bad from its company.
The whole gives a meaning to the parts; but it 20
is difficult to rise from the parts to the whole.
When I read St. Augustine or St. Basil, I hold
converse with a beautiful grace-illumined soul,
looking out into this world of sense, and leavening
it with itself; when I read a professed life of him, 25
I am wandering in a labyrinth of which I cannot
find the center and heart, and am but conducted
out of doors again when I do my best to penetrate
within.
This seems to me, to tell the truth, a sort of 30
pantheistic treatment of the Saints. I ask something
more than to stumble upon the _disjecta
membra_ of what ought to be a living whole. I
take but a secondary interest in books which
chop up a Saint into chapters of faith, hope,
charity, and the cardinal virtues. They are too 5
scientific to be devotional. They have their
great utility, but it is not the utility which they
profess. They do not manifest a Saint, they
mince him into spiritual lessons. They are
rightly called spiritual reading, that is just what 10
they are, and they cannot possibly be anything
better; but they are not anything else. They
contain a series of points of meditation on
particular virtues, made easier because those points
are put under the patronage and the invocation 15
of a Saint. With a view to learning real
devotion to him, I prefer (speaking for myself) to have
any one action or event of his life drawn out
minutely, with his own comments upon it, than
a score of virtues, or of acts of one virtue, strung 20
together in as many sentences. Now, in the
ancient writings I have spoken of, certain
transactions are thoroughly worked out. We know all
that happened to a Saint on such or such an
occasion, all that was done by him. We have a view 25
of his character, his tastes, his natural infirmities,
his struggles and victories over them, which in
no other way can be attained. And therefore it
is that, without quarreling with the devotion of
others, I give the preference to my own. 30
Here another great subject opens upon us,
when I ought to be bringing these remarks to
an end; I mean the endemic perennial fidget
which possesses us about giving scandal; facts
are omitted in great histories, or glosses are put
upon memorable acts, because they are thought 5
not edifying, whereas of all scandals such
omissions, such glosses, are the greatest. But I am
getting far more argumentative than I thought
to be when I began; so I lay my pen down, and
retire into myself. 10
I
John of Antioch, from his sanctity and his
eloquence called Chrysostom, was approaching
sixty years of age, when he had to deliver himself
up to the imperial officers, and to leave
Constantinople for a distant exile. He had been the great 15
preacher of the day now for nearly twenty years;
first at Antioch, then in the metropolis of the
East; and his gift of speech, as in the instance of
the two great classical orators before him, was to
be his ruin. He had made an Empress his enemy, 20
more powerful than Antipater,--as passionate,
if not so vindictive, as Fulvia. Nor was this all;
a zealous Christian preacher offends not
individuals merely, but classes of men, and much more
so when he is pastor and ruler too, and has to 25
punish as well as to denounce. Eudoxia, the
Empress, might be taken off suddenly,--as
indeed she was taken off a few weeks after the
Saint arrived at the place of exile, which she personally, 30
in spite of his entreaties, had marked out
for him; but her death did but serve to increase
the violence of the persecution directed against
him. She had done her part in it, perhaps she
might have even changed her mind in his favor; 5
probably the agitation of a bad conscience was,
in her critical condition, the cause of her death.
She was taken out of the way; but her partisans,
who had made use of her, went on vigorously
with the evil work which she had begun. When 10
Cucusus would not kill him, they sent him on his
travels anew, across a far wilder country than he
had already traversed, to a remote town on the
eastern coast of the Euxine; and he sank under
this fresh trial. 15
The Euxine! that strange mysterious sea,
which typifies the abyss of outer darkness, as
the blue Mediterranean basks under the smile of
heaven in the center of civilization and religion.
The awful, yet splendid drama of man's history 20
has mainly been carried on upon the
Mediterranean shores; while the Black Sea has ever been
on the very outskirts of the habitable world,
and the scene of wild unnatural portents; with
legends of Prometheus on the savage Caucasus, 25
of Medea gathering witch herbs in the moist
meadows of the Phasis, and of Iphigenia
sacrificing the shipwrecked stranger in Taurica; and
then again, with the more historical, yet not more
grateful visions of barbarous tribes, Goths, Huns, 30
Scythians, Tartars, flitting over the steppes and
wastes which encircle its inhospitable waters.
To be driven from the bright cities and sunny
clime of Italy or Greece to such a region, was
worse than death; and the luxurious Roman
actually preferred death to exile. The suicide 5
of Gallus, under this dread doom, is well known;
Ovid, too cowardly to be desperate, drained out
the dregs of a vicious life on the cold marshes
between the Danube and the sea. I need scarcely
allude to the heroic Popes who patiently lived on 10
in the Crimea, till a martyrdom, in which they
had not part but the suffering, released them.
But banishment was an immense evil in itself.
Cicero, even though he had liberty of person, the
choice of a home, and the prospect of a return, 15
roamed disconsolate through the cities of Greece,
because he was debarred access to the
senate-house and forum. Chrysostom had his own
_rostra_, his own _curia_; it was the Holy Temple,
where his eloquence gained for him victories not 20
less real, and more momentous, than the
detection and overthrow of Catiline. Great as was
his gift of oratory, it was not by the fertility of
his imagination, or the splendor of his diction
that he gained the surname of "Mouth of Gold." 25
We shall be very wrong if we suppose that fine
expressions, or rounded periods, or figures of
speech, were the credentials by which he claimed
to be the first doctor of the East. His oratorical
power was but the instrument by which he 30
readily, gracefully, adequately expressed--expressed
without effort and with felicity--the
keen feelings, the living ideas, the earnest
practical lessons which he had to communicate to his
hearers. He spoke, because his heart, his head,
were brimful of things to speak about. His 5
elocution corresponded to that strength and
flexibility of limb, that quickness of eye, hand, and
foot, by which a man excels in manly games or
in mechanical skill. It would be a great mistake,
in speaking of it, to ask whether it was Attic or 10
Asiatic, terse or flowing, when its distinctive
praise was that it was natural. His unrivaled
charm, as that of every really eloquent man, lies
in his singleness of purpose, his fixed grasp of his
aim, his noble earnestness. 15
A bright, cheerful, gentle soul; a sensitive
heart, a temperament open to emotion and
impulse; and all this elevated, refined, transformed
by the touch of heaven,--such was St. John
Chrysostom; winning followers, riveting 20
affections, by his sweetness, frankness, and neglect
of self. In his labors, in his preaching, he
thought of others only. "I am always in
admiration of that thrice-blessed man," says an able
critic,[29] "because he ever in all his writings puts 25
before him as his object, to be useful to his
hearers; and as to all other matters, he either
simply put them aside, or took the least possible
notice of them. Nay, as to his seeming ignorant
of some of the thoughts of Scripture, or careless of 30
entering into its depths, and similar defects, all
this he utterly disregarded in comparison of the
profit of his hearers."
[29] Photius, p. 387.
There was as little affectation of sanctity in his
dress or living as there was effort in his eloquence. 5
In his youth he had been one of the most austere
of men; at the age of twenty-one, renouncing
bright prospects of the world, he had devoted
himself to prayer and study of the Scriptures.
He had retired to the mountains near Antioch, 10
his native place, and had lived among the monks.
This had been his home for six years, and he had
chosen it in order to subdue the daintiness of his
natural appetite. "Lately," he wrote to a friend
at the time,--"lately, when I had made up my 15
mind to leave the city and betake myself to the
tabernacle of the monks, I was forever
inquiring and busying myself how I was to get a
supply of provisions; whether it would be possible
to procure fresh bread for my eating, whether 20
I should be ordered to use the same oil for my
lamp and for my food, to undergo the hardship
of peas and beans, or of severe toil, such as
digging, carrying wood or water, and the like; in
a word, I made much account of bodily comfort."[30] 25
Such was the nervous anxiety and fidget of mind
with which he had begun: but this rough
discipline soon effected its object, and at length, even
by preference, he took upon him mortifications
which at first were a trouble to him. For the 30
last two years of his monastic exercise, he lived
by himself in a cave; he slept, when he did sleep,
without lying down; he exposed himself to the
extremities of cold. At length he found he was
passing the bounds of discretion, nature would 5
bear no more; he fell ill, and returned to the
city.
[30] Ad Demetrium, i. 6.
A course of ascetic practice such as this would
leave its spiritual effects upon him for life. It
sank deep into him, though the surface might 10
not show it. His duty at Constantinople was to
mix with the world; and he lived as others,
except as regards such restraints as his sacred
office and archiepiscopal station demanded of
him. He wore shoes, and an under garment; 15
but his stomach was ever delicate, and at meals
he was obliged to have his own dish, such as it
was, to himself. However, he mixed freely with
all ranks of men; and he made friends,
affectionate friends, of young and old, men and women, 20
rich and poor, by condescending to all of every
degree. How he was loved at Antioch, is shown
by the expedient used to transfer him thence to
Constantinople. Asterius, count of the East, had
orders to send for him, and ask his company to a 25
church without the city. Having got him into
his carriage, he drove off with him to the first
station on the highroad to Constantinople, where
imperial officers were in readiness to convey him
thither. Thus he was brought upon the scene of 30
those trials which have given him a name in history,
and a place in the catalogue of the Saints.
At the imperial city he was as much followed, if
not as popular, as at Antioch. "The people
flocked to him," says Sozomen, "as often as he
preached; some of them to hear what would 5
profit them, others to make trial of him. He
carried them away, one and all, and persuaded
them to think as he did about the Divine Nature.
They hung upon his words, and could not have
enough of them; so that, when they thrust and 10
jammed themselves together in an alarming way,
every one making an effort to get nearer to him,
and to hear him more perfectly, he took his seat
in the midst of them, and taught from the pulpit
of the Reader."[31] He was, indeed, a man to make 15
both friends and enemies; to inspire affection,
and to kindle resentment; but his friends loved
him with a love "stronger" than "death," and
more burning than "hell;" and it was well to be
so hated, if he was so beloved. 20
[31] Hist. viii. 5.
Here he differs, as far as I can judge, from his
brother saints and doctors of the Greek Church,
St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen. They were
scholars, shy perhaps and reserved; and though
they had not given up the secular state, they were 25
essentially monks. There is no evidence, that I
remember, to show that they attached men to
their persons. They, as well as John, had a
multitude of enemies; and were regarded, the
one with dislike, the other perhaps with contempt; 30
but they had not, on the other hand,
warm, eager, sympathetic, indignant, agonized
friends. There is another characteristic in
Chrysostom, which perhaps gained for him this great
blessing. He had, as it would seem, a vigor, 5
elasticity, and, what may be called, sunniness of
mind, all his own. He was ever sanguine,
seldom sad. Basil had a life-long malady, involving
continual gnawing pain and a weight of physical
dejection. He bore his burden well and 10
gracefully, like the great Saint he was, as Job bore his;
but it was a burden like Job's. He was a calm, mild,
grave, autumnal day; St. John Chrysostom was
a day in spring-time, bright and rainy, and
glittering through its rain. Gregory was the full 15
summer, with a long spell of pleasant stillness, its
monotony relieved by thunder and lightning.
And St. Athanasius figures to us the stern
persecuting winter, with its wild winds, its dreary
wastes, its sleep of the great mother, and the 20
bright stars shining overhead. He and
Chrysostom have no points in common; but Gregory was
a dethroned Archbishop of Constantinople, like
Chrysostom, and, again, dethroned by his
brethren the Bishops. Like Basil, too, Chrysostom was 25
bowed with infirmities of body; he was often ill;
he was thin and wizened; cold was a misery to
him; heat affected his head; he scarcely dare
touch wine; he was obliged to use the bath;
obliged to take exercise, or rather to be 30
continually on the move. Whether from a nervous or
febrile complexion, he was warm in temper; or
at least, at certain times, his emotion struggled
hard with his reason. But he had that noble
spirit which complains as little as possible; which
makes the best of things; which soon recovers 5
its equanimity, and hopes on in circumstances
when others sink down in despair....