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Additional comments:/ Commantairas supplAmantairas: L'Inatltut a m to rof Hm i to moiNaur axamptoba quH Nil a AtA posslbto da sa proeuror. Las dAtaito da aat aiwm p tolr a qui sont pout-Atro uniquaa du point da vua MbHographlqua, qui pauvant modiftor uno bnaga raproduito, ou qui pouvont ONlgar una modlficatton dans to mAthoda normato da fHmaga sont IndiquAs d-daasous. D D D E3 D D n D D Colourod pag aa / Pagaa da coutour Pagas damaged/ Pages ondommagAas Pagas restored and/or Iamin«>t4d/ Pagas restaurAes at/ou paSiieulAas Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ Pagas dAcolorAes, tachetAes ou piquAes Pages deteched/ Peges dAtachAes Showthrough/ Transparence Quality of print varies/ QualitA inAigato da I'imprassion Includes supptomentary material/ Comprand du metAriel supplAmenteire Only edition avaitoble/ Seuto Adition disponibto Pages wholly or psrttolly obscured by errata slips, tissuss. etc., have been refilmed to ensure the best posslbto image/ Les peges totalement ou partiellement obscurcies per un feuillet d'erreta, una pelure. etc., ont AtA filmAes A nouveau da fttpon A obtenir to meiltoure imege possibls. Tb to Th po of Or sto oti •iol or Th shi Tl^ Ma difl em bet rigl req me This item is filmed at tha reduction ratio checked below/ Co document est filmA au taux da rAductton todkiuA ci-de ss ous. 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Un daa aymbolaa suhrants apparattra sur la darnMra imaga da chaqua microfficha. salon la cas: la symbola ^ slgnHIa "A 8UIVRE". la symbolo y signifia "FIN". IMaps. piatas. charts, ate., may ba fllmad at difffarant raduction ratios. Those too large to bo entirely included in one expoeura era filmed beginning in the upper lefft hand comer, left to right and top to bottom, as many framae as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Lee cartas, planches. taMaauK. etc.. peuvem Atra fllmie A dee taux da rMuctlon diffirents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Atra reproduit en un soul cllchA. il eet filmA A partir da i'angia supArleur gauche, do gauche A droite. et do haut en bas. en prenant la nombra d'Imagas nAcessalra. Lee diagrammes suhrants iiiustrant le mAthode. errata I to t • peiure. !on A 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 OEEAT PREACHERS, ANCIENT AND MODERN. BT THE REV. W. H. WITHROW, M.A. ) > » Sv}ox«o«v • Otof im ms fAVfMs Tov xn^vyfutres trxjven revs mtvrwoitras, -1 OOB. L n. TORONTO: WILLIAM BBIOOS, MXTHODiai BOOK BOOIL 1880. w? \ TO THE REV. GEORGE DOUGLAS, LL.D., WHOSE ELOQUENCE AND LEARNING ENROLL HIM WITH THE GREAT PREACHERS OF THE AGE, Wt$ 300k, AS A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION AND RESPECT, IB DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. 96167 PREFACE. ** I HAVE passed through many places of honour and trust/' writes Archbishop Williams, " both in Church and State, more than any of my order in England these seventy years before. But were I assured that by my preaching I had converted but one soul unto God, I should take therein more spiritual joy and comfort than in all the honours and offices which have been bestowed on me." This, too, was the joy and comfort of the great men whose lives and labours are herein recorded, as it is of every man who is worthy to walk in their footsteps. It is hoped that x,h-^ study of these heroic lives will lead all who read these pages to an emulation of their passionate zeal, of their dauntless daring, and of their whole- souled consecration to their labour of love for the glory of God and the welfare of their fellow-men. W. H. W. Toronto, March ist, i88a CONTENTS. I. Park Obioen 5 11. Athanasius 23 III. CHftTSOSTOM 43 IV. Augustine 8S V. Frakcis Xavier 107 VI. John Knox 136 VII. Richard Baxter 166 VIII. Georoe Whitfield 19S GEEAT PEEACHEES, ANCIBNT AND MODBRN. OEIGEN.* .cWN every ago God has raised up wise and ^ holy men to be witnesses for the truth and the champions of His Church. Even in the darkest days of persecution, there have not been wanting heroic souls to become the confessors and, it needs be, the martyrs of Jesus. In the study of their characters we may catch the inspiration of their holy lives and be enbraved to emulate their hallowed zeal. Of this noble fellowship, none, since the days of the Apostles, surpass in moral grandeur the early Fathers and Apologists of the Christian faith. There were indeed giants * The principal authorities employed in the prepftration of hit aketch have been the eccle«iastioal hiatoriea of Eaaebiiu, Moeheim, Neander, Milman, Killen, and, espeoially, of Presienai. GESAT PREACBEB8, in the earth in those days — giants of evfl as well as of good, — men of renown in wickedness, prodigies of persecuting cruelty and colossal vice, as well as men of the most exalted Christian character who greatly dared and nohly died for the gloiy of God and the welfare of man. The battles for and bgainst the truth were wars of the Titans ; and in the massy works they left behind them, we have evidence of the prowess of the Christian champions, — "the noble lyrestlers of religion," whose naincs live imperishably in the history of the Church. Their conflicts and con- troversies were oftentimes the counterparts of those now waging in the world, and are full of instruction to the modern reader. Without some acquaintance with their lives, it is impossible to understand the spirit of the time and the moral and social environment of that primitive Chris- tianity to which they so largely gave the impress of their own character. They blanched not at death or danger, counting not their lives dear unto them for the testimony of Jesus, ^ge after age these soldiers of Christ rallied to the conflict whose highest reward was the guerdon of death. They bound persecution like a wreath about their brows, and exulted in the "glorious infamy" of suffering for their Lord. The brand oi shame bewame for them the badge of highest honour. ANCIENT AND MODERN. Impatient to obtain the prize, these candidates for death often pressed with eager haste to seize the palm of victory and the mortyr*s starry ond un withering crown. They went to the staka as joyfully as to a marriage feast, " and their fetters," says Eusebius, " seemed like the golden ornaments of a bride." Yet these were men of like passions with ourselves, often touched with human error and infirmity, claiming our sympathy and making us feel their kinship to our souls. Pre-eminent in this holy brotherhood is Origen; "One of tho greatest theologians," says Pressense, " and one of the greatest saints the Church has ever pos- sessed." The heroic son of a martyred sire, ho fought valiantly, by tongue and p«n, the battles of the faith, and won at last the martyr's crown. To the zeal of Paul he united the tenderness of John. His whole life was a perfumed altar-fire of love, never dimmed by obloquy, nor fanned into flames of hate by opposition or persecution, but glowing brighter and brighter till his frail and emaciated body was consumed. Origen was born in the city of Alexandria in the year of our Lord 185. His parents, though Christians, out of conformity to a comm «n custom, gave him a nnuie derived from Orus, an ancient deity of Egypt. He lived in an age of 8 GREAT PBEACHEBS, intense intellectual activity and at the very heart of the world's intellectual life. Alexandria was a sort of newer Athens or older Paris — a city of blended luxury and learning, folly and philosophy, heathen vice and Christian virtue. In this atmo- sphere so deeply infected with moral malaria, the youthful Origen grew up, like the snow-white lily in virgin purity from the ooze of the Nile, untainted by its deadly contagion. For he bore in his soul a moral antiseptic that kept it pure amid corruption. Like Timothy, he was instructed in the Scriptures from his youth, and learned by heart every day a portion of the holy oracles. His deep questionings as to the inner meaning of the sacred text often perplexed his father Leonides who, nevertheless, greatly rejoiced in the manifes- tation of the grace of God in his child. The his- torian Eusebius records, in words which touch our hearts with human sympathy across the centuries, that frequently the pious Leonides, standing by the couch of his sleeping boy, would reverently kiss his bare breast as the shrine, he felt, of the Divine Spirit, and with grateful heart would thank God that He had given him such a son.* « While Origen was yet a youth the persecuting edicts of the Emperor Severus were enforced in * Euseb. Hid. Eccl. Lib. vi. cap. 2. ANCIENT AND MODERN. 9 Alexandria. Here, as in a mighty theatre of God, says Eusehius, the heroic wrestlers of religion exhibited their invincible patience under various tortures and modes of death, and many thousands won the crown of martyrdom. Among these was Leonides, the father of Origen, who was beheaded as a witness for Jesus. As he lay in prison under sentence of execution, his soul was rent by the pangs of parting from his wife and seven children, who would be left beggars by his death. " Know- ing the tenderness of his fatherly heart," we quote the words of Pressense, ''and fearing lest his courage should give way in the struggle, Origen addressed to the captive in his cell those heroic words, over which, doubtless, the hot tears fell fast : ' My father, flinch not because of us.' Pas- sionately he longed to be with him, and to die at his side, confessing the faith. A yearning for martyrdom took possession of his souL In vain his mother with tears entreated him to have pity on her; nothing could move him. The young Christian soldier could not rest on his arms while the battle was raging around. His mother was obliged to hide his clothes to prevent his rushing upon death." The martyrdom of his father, with the confisca- tbn of his goods, left Origen, at the age of seven- teen, the head and sole support of the household. 10 GREAT PBEACHEBS» And bravely he addressed himself to the task. He was befriended by a rich and noble lady, but found that unhappily she was an adherent of the Gnostic heresy, then rife in that seething alembic of conflicting doctrines. " In conniving at heresy," continues Pressense, " he would have felt he was denying the God for whom his father had died, and he shrunk with horror from apostasy in all its forms, whether open before the tribunal of the magistrates, or lurking latent at the table of a rich and benevolent lady.** He therefore renounced her patronage, and endeavoured to earn bread for the household dependent on hia care by giving lessons in the grammar and litera- ture of the Greek language. We can imagine the stripling in his snowy toga, with its scarlet hem, pacing with sandalled feet the corridors of the great library of Alexandria, and hastening with his manuscript scrolls of Pindar and Plato, through the hot sunlit streets, to the cool atria of his patrons, to instruct the inquisitive youth in that peerless literature which for six hundred years before and sixteen hundred years since has nourished the highest thought of the world. Moved by the constancy of the martyrs under persecution, some young pagan students sought to learn from Origen the secret of that high philosophy which thus enbraved the soul with ANCIENT AND MODBRN. 11 a confidence unknown to Socrates in the hour of death. Persecution had reyived, and every day cruel tortures were inflicted on the Christians. But although to teach the religion of Jesus in such a time was to place his life in jeopardy every hour, Origen eagerly emhraced the oppor- tunity of communicating this sacred lore wiser than that of the Porch or the Academy. "The heart glows with admiration/' exclaims Pressense, " for those young adherents of the new faith who, under a master even younger than themselves, pursued in the face of such daunting difficulties that wisdom which they loved well enough to die for it Over the heads of master and disciples was perpetually suspended the glittering sword, and it was with the dungeon and with the stake fall in view that they discoursed of the great questions of religion, and always exposed to the danger of being surprised and led away to death. The school of martyr-theologians witnessed con- stant breaches in its ranks ; between two meet- ings, between two chapters of the same study one and another catechist was seized and sacri- ficed." . . But the example of the master sustained the courage of his disciples. He visited them in bonds and imprisonment. He stood by them in the hour of trial, and gave them his parting kisa 12 GREAT PREACHERS, on the very threshold of the arena or at the foot of the stake. " More than once," says Eusebios, " the infuriate mob almost overwhelmed him with stones. So intense was the hatred of the pagans, on account of the numbers whom he instructed in the Christian faith, that they stirred up the soldiers to violence against him. No house in Alexandria was a safe refuge, and he was con- stantly pursued by the persecutors from place to place."* One day, narrates Epiphanes, he was seized and dragged to the temple of Serapis, where palms were thrust into his hands, which he was commanded to place in homage on the altar of the pagan god. Brandishing the boughs aloft, he exclaimed, "Here are the triumphal palms, not of the idol but of Christ!" The contemporary historians do not record how he escaped so long the doom of martyrdom, but allege that ho was saved by a miracle. Qod had yet greater things to accomplish through his means, and he was immortal till his work was dona Meanwhile Origen was thoroughly equipping himself for his dialectic controversy with Chris- tian heretics and pagan sophists. He mastered all the writings of either sect, and, above all became tkoroughly versed in the Scriptures in, • EoMb. Hia. EccL Lib. vL cap. iii \ AVCIENT AMD MODEBIT. 13 their original tongues. With a lofty eclecticism he culled the fairest flowers from the garden of heathen philosophy, and distilled healing simples from its often poisonous fruit He sifted the golden grains of truth and pearls of thought (rom the ancient religions of paganism to adorn the brow of Christianity. Novertheloss he ceased not to strive after his ideal of moral perfection. In this ideal was a strong tinge of asceticism — an (Jmost inevitable recoil of his intensely earnest soul from the social corruptions of the guy Alexandrian city and, indeed, of the whole Eoman world, hasting to its overthrow. That he might devote himself exclu ivcly to higher studies and instructions, he sol i his fine classical library, much of it copied with his own ^and, for the pittance of four oholi* a day, to supply his bare necessities. He drank no wine, ate only what was sufficient to sustain life, and often fasted from food for days. He burned the midnight oil in the study of the Scriptures, and during the few hours allotted to slumber, he lay upon the bare ground. He interpreted literally the precepts of Christ to take neither two coats nor shoes for his feet, and to take no thought for the morrow. His threadbare garb and attenuated features, which gleamed like an alabaster lamp * An obdw was equal to about one penny. 14 GREAT PREACHERS^ mth the light of the fiery soul within, bore witness to the austerity of his lif& He walked barefoot like the poorest mendicant in the great city where his learning might have brought him wealth. He accepted no payment from his pupils; freely he had received, he said, and freely would he give. "Pharaoh," he wrote, "gives lands to hia priests, but God says to His servants, ' I am your portion.' Having nothing, they possess all things." In this, was he not the follower of Him, who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor that we through His poverty might become rich? This was the spell of his power upon the hearts of men — "As is his teaching," they said| "so is his lifa'' He pierced through the outward shows and semblances of things, and walked ever as in the light of the eternal. The sages and the sophists of the Museum of Alex- andria, with their chariots, their wealth, and their renown, are now unremembered shadows. The serge-clad, barefoot Origen, who, wasted with toil and fasting, taught in secret chambers, confuted forever their vain philosophy, and is a living power throughout the world to-day. During a cessation of persecution, Origen ful- fille'd a long-cherished purpose of visiting the Church at Home, the great Babylon of the West, which had made all nations drink of the cup of ANCIENT AND MODERN. 10 her sorceries. Here paganism was seen in all its glory and in all its shame ; in its marhle temples, its goigeous ritual, its fasces and its lictors, and in its unspeakable moral degradation, its vast slave population writhing in wretchedness, and its odious emperors flaunting their vices in the high places of the earth. Yet even here a Christian Church, fertilized with the blood of an Apostle, had enriched the roll of the martyrs with some of its noblest names, and in the Catacombs* dim labyrinths had left a testimony of the faith which still abides, when the " Grolden House " of Nero and the marbles of Caracalla have crumbled into ruin. The fame of Origen was now widely known. On his return to Alexandria, there arrived one day a messenger from the depths of Arabia, requesting him to visit the Boman pro-consul and expound to him the Christian faith. And later he was summoned to Antioch to explain to the Emperor Elagabalus and to Mammaea, the mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus, this strange doctrine tljat was turning the world upside down. His learning and piety made such an impression that the persecution against the Christians for a time declined. He now employed his leisure and his learning in preparing the first Christian commentary on 10 GREAT PREAC0EB8, Holy Scripture. He was, says Pressense, the creator of scientific exegesis. He was furnishedt through the liberality of a friend, with seven amanuenses, and prepared his Hexapla and Ootopla editions of the Scriptures, with the original text and best versions in parallel columns. His familiarity with Bible lands—he travelled widely and lived long in Palestine — enhanced the value of his commentary ; but he was led into serious error by his allegorical mode ot interpretation. The literal sense is always secondary, and he never fails, when possible, to find in the simplest fact or plainest exhortation some hidden meaning. Christian theology had not yet been formulated into a system, and the exuberant fancy of the commentator led him into statements of doctrine which were denounced as heretical. He was, through the intrigues of his enemies, condemned by a synod of Egyptian bishops, and excluded from the communion of the Church of Alexandria^ of which he had been such a devoted son. " It was a time," says Pressense, ** of poignant suffering, for a man like Origen, who lived more intensely in the affections than the intellect, and who had cherished the most tender attachment to the Church which thus cast him out He detested heresy as deeply as any, and he knew ANCIENT AND MODKBN. 17 woU that his peculiar views were not each as to exclude him from the Christian communion, to which he clung with every fibre of his soul. There was keen anguish in this violent severance of a tie so dear. He felt himself m the right, but that could not blunt the edge of the blow which fell upon him. No angry word, however, escaped with his expressions of sorrow, and he was greater in the day of shame and desolation than he had ever been in the day of prosperity " Fearing, above all things, to create a division in the Church, he voluntarily departed, wandering in exile from land to land. He found a solace for his soul in following the footsteps of the Saviour through the scenes of His toils and sufiferings, and strengthened his drooping courage by meditating on the site of Calvary on tlio world's reward of its Divine Benefactor. Ex- pounding the words of Jesus, like a later Apostle, in the towns and villages of Galilee, at Jerusalem, and especially at Csesarea, he gathered around him again a number of eager disciples. But the virulent outburst of the persecution of Maximin scattered the little company, and Origen sought refuge among the mountains of Cappadocia. To this period belongs one of his noblest books, his treatise on Prayer, in which he grapples witli 18 GREAT PBEACnERS, that problem of the ages — the harmony of Divine grace and human freedom. On the death of the persecutor, Origen came forth from his hiding and we soon find him at Athens, rich in so many memories which stir men's hearts to-day with an imperishable spell. In this city of the Violet Crown, the city of the Porch and the Academy, of Pluto and of Paul, Origen wrote the most poetical of bis works, "The Commentary on the Song of Songs," in which his allegorizing mind discerns the yearn- ings of the human soul for the heavenly Bride- groom. His treatment of the erring, so different from that which he himself received, is shown in his discussion with the heretic Beryl. "After a free conversation, so as to understand his views,'' says Eusebius, "he convinced him by argument, and by fair discussion took him, as it were, by the hand and led him back into the way of truth." With the infidel and the gainsayer, he has, however, a sterner method. His great book, "Contra Celsum," refutes all the arguments against Christianity, whether coming from Juda- ism or paganism. " It remains," says Pressense, " the masterpiece of ancient apology, for solidity of basis, vigour of argument, and breadth of eloquent exposition. The apologists of every age ANCIRNT AKD MODERN. 19 were to find in it an incxhaiiiitil>le luino. at well U an incomparable tU(A>i\ ut tliat moral royal method inaugurufced by St. Paul and Hi. John, which alone can answer its end, because it alone carries the conflict into the heart and conscience, to the very centre, that is, of the higher life in man." It is not merely a dialectic victory Origen desires, but a moral renovation of his antagonist. "May it please God," he says, " that I may with my word penetrate the conscience of those who have read Celsus, and draw forth the dart with which every one is wounded who is not armed with the love of God, and pour into the wound the balm which is able to heal" The secret of his spiritual insight into the Scriptures was his intimate fellowship with their inspirer and author. He leaned, like John, upon the breast of Jesus that he might drink of His Spirit and fathom the mysteries of His wisdom and love. " Study," he says, " will not suffice for the learn- ing of Holy Scripture : we must entreat God day and night that the Lion of the tribe of Judah may come to us and deign to open the seal of the Book." This holy life was now nearing its close. Under the Emperor Philip, to whom Origen wrote a letter of religious counsel, the Christians enjoyed a season of peace. It was, however, but 20 GREAT PUEACHER8, the lull before the storm. At this time the veteran Apologist writes, as if in anticipation of his fate : " We are ready to undergo persecution whenever God shall permit the adversary to stir it up against us. So long as God allows us to enjoy exemption from such trial, and to lead a life of tranquillity, strange in the midst of a world tliat hates us, we will commit ourselves to Him who has said, * Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.' But if it is His will that we should have to fight and suffer for the cause of piety, we will meet all the assaults of the enemy with these words - * I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me.' " And soon this serene and lofty courage was put to the test. On the accession of Decius, A.D. 249, a violent persecution broke out, aggravated by every refinement of torture that human in- genuity could devise. We enrich our pages with a final paragraph from Pressense, describing the close of this heroic life : "Origen retired to Tyre as soon as the decree was promulgated throughout the cities and villages. This was a last concession to Christian prudence, for he was too well known at Csesarea not to be at once marked out as the first victim for the new sacrifice. It was impossible that he should escape a persecution so general and so ANCIENT AND MODERN. 21 : the cree and stian area ctini t he li so violent The desire of his youth was at length granted ; it wa^ given him to suffer for the cause ol Christ, "without the possibility of his incurring the charge of temerity. He had scrupulously conformed to the will of the Master, who counselled flight where it was possible. He now welcomed with pure and holy joy the ignominies and tortures laid upon him for his faith. The persecutors spent all their fury upon the vener- able man, whose body was worn and wasted by asceticism, and by the vast and incessant labours of his life. He was not only loaded with chains, but exposed to divers tortures. He was cast into the deepest dungeon, an iron collar was hung around his neck, and his feet were crushed for four days in the stocks. He was constantly reminded of the fiery death awaiting him, but he stood firm under all agonies and threats. His persecutors, however, by a last refinement of cruelty, did not send him to the stake, imagining that they could thus deprive him of the crown of martyrdom. Spent as he was by so much suffer- ing, Origen had still strength to address words of consolation to his brethren. His last thought was for them, and he died as he had lived, as ardent for the cross of Christ under his crown o£ hoary hairs, as he had been in his early youth. ilis tomb was long preserved at Tyre. His name 22 GBEAT PREACHERS. was graven on a monument more durable than marble — in the hearts of his disciples ; and in cpite of the controversies to which his system was to give occasion, and the passionate party spirit it was to excite, he has left the memory of one of the greatest theologians and greatest saints the Church has ever possessed. One of his own words strikes the key-note of his life. * Love/ he says again and again, 'is an agony, a passion: Caritas est passio* To love the truth so as to suffer for it in the world and in the Church ; to love mankind with a tender sympathy ; to extend the arms of compassion hver more widely, so as to overpass all bariieis of dogmatic difference, under the far-reaching impulse of this pitying love; to realize that the essence of love is sacrifice, and to make self the unreserved and willing victim, — such was the creed, such was the life of Origen." \^ IL ATHANASIUS, ^T the genial season of Whitsuntide, in the ^ leafy month of June in the year of our Lor4 325, a notable assembly met in the ancient city of Nicsea, nestling in a lovely valley among the mountains of Bithynia. At the summons of Ihe Emperor Constantine, now acknowledged as supreme potentate in both the East and West, on the twentieth anniversary of his elevation on the shields of his soldiers at the town of York, in tlio far-off island of Britain,* to the throne of tho world, was held the first CEcumenical Council of the Church. Three hundred and eighteen bishops and a crowd of presbyters and deacons were assembled from all parts of the far-exienocit empire — from Eg3^t, from Syria, from Meso- * The pleasing legend that the first Chritttian emperor and liis illustrious mother, the Empress Helena, were natives of (^•ivat Britain will not stand the test of modem criticism. See Stanley, Milauun, and Gibbon in loco. 24 CHEAT pREAcn: ^s. potaraia, from Curtliage, from Spain, from Gaul, from Rome, from far-off Scythia. The great question to be settled, it was hoped, by their decision was the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity By the heresy of Arius, the esseitial divinity of our Lord had been assailed by the assertion of His inferior and derived existence. " There was " — the Arian doctrine did not van- ture to say " a time " — but, " there was when He was not." The controversy on this subject had shaken the world. It was, says Eusebius, like the collision of the Symphlegades. From distant Eritain to the Cataracts of the Nile, society was agitated by the discussion of this august theme. Every corner, every alley of Constantinople — it was said — the streets and the market-places, were full ot the controversy. " Ask a man * how many oboli,* " says Gregory of Nyssa, " and you are told * The Son is subordinate to the Father ; * ask the price of bread, and you are answered) * The Son arose out of nothing.' " The last of the ten great persecutions was over. From prison, from exile, from the mines, from the catacombs' dim labyrinths, the bishops and teachers who shepherded the flock of Christ in those troublous times came to this great conclave to defend the orthodox faith for which they had suffered, and for which they would willingl; have ANCIENT AKD MODEBN. 25 died. Many of tbem still bore in the body, like Paul, the marks of the Lord Jesus — the bnmd of persecution — the wounds inflicted by the in- struuents of torture. Some halted in their gait> dragging a shrivelled limb whose sinews had been seared to prevent their escape from toiling in the mines. Some with sightless eyeball or empty eye-socket lifted a pathetic face, which bore evidence of the atrocious cruelty of pagan- ism in its dying struggle for the mastery of the world. The voices of these confessors for Jesus were heard almost as the voice of an oracle* Not like nmny a subsequent great council was that first (Ecumenical Assembly. Not in pomp and splendour — with golden mitres and em« broidered palls — came those primitive bishops. Some wore a rough goat-hair cloak ; one appeared in a simple shepherd's garb, for by the care of sheep he earned his bread ; f and all were men . whose chief dignity was a pre-eminence in sufTex^ ing and toil. The council met first in tlie great basilica of Nicsea, but afterwards in the more secular pre- cincts of the imperial palace. The great emperor * An ancient tradition states that only eleven were without some bodily mutilation through persecution. + His relics are still revtrenccd at Corfu, and hundreds of lonians still Lear his name " .Spiro." At Moscow is preserved the simple scarf worn by the Bi*hop of Alexandria. 2G GBLAT PREACDEnS, himself, clad in purple robe and jewelled diadem, presided during the sessions. The world beheld the strange spectacle of a man stained with the blood of his son, his nephew, and his wife, and ^vho was not himself baptized till he lay upon ] is deathbed, convening and presiding over the 1 rst great council of the Church, styling himself Jiishop of bishops, and discussing the profoundest ])roblems of theology. But his remorse for his crime had been intense and sincere. He seems to have sought in the religion of Christ that expiation for his guilt which paganism could npt offer, and he postponed baptism till the day of Ills death that he might pass into the unseen >vith the lustral influence it was supposed to impart fresh upon his soul Next to the emperor, one of the most striking figures of the council is the arch'-heretic Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, a tall, spare, fiery-eyed man, worn by sixty years of arduous toil and v/asted by the most rigid asceticism. Prominent^ not from his of&ce, for his is but a deacon, nor irom his person, which is but slight, but from his pious zee}, his mental grasp, his dialectic skill, is ihe ardent antagonist of Arius and the great champion of orthodoxy, Athanasius of Alexan- dria. He is small of stature, — a dwarf rather than a man, sneers the apostate Julian, — but^ ANCIENT AND MODERN. 27 to sajs Gregory of Nnzianzen, of almost angelic beauty of face and expression. This judgment is modified by the tradition, which ascribes to him a stooped fif^ure, a hooked nose, a short beard, and light auburn hair. But, since the days of the apostles, no man has 80 profoundly influenced the theology of Christendom. "The immortal name of Athan- asius," says Gibbon, "will never be separated from the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, to whose defence he consecrated every moment and every faculty of his being." To him the Nicene Creed — through the ages the touchstone of ortho- doxy in all the Churches of Christendom — owes largely its form ; * and to his subtle intellect has been ascribed that wonderful creed, " Quicunque vult," which so definitely expounds the mysteries of the Trinity and Inoarnatiou, and which, although erroneously, bears his name. The life- Htory of this remarkable man can not fail to well repay our careful study. Although only in his twenty-fifth year at the time of the Council of Nicsea, Athauasius played thereat a very prominent part. By his vehement arguments and passionate invectives^ he closely riveted, we are told, the attention of the assembly. And a stormy arena of conflict it was ; the rival factions "brandishing their arguments,'' says 23 GBEAT FREACIIERS, Theodoret, "like spears." Indeed, one of tlio Nicene fathers is said to have been so carried away by righteous indignation as to deal the heretic Arius a tremendous box on the ear ; but for this intemperate act, the tradition records, lie was deprived of his mitre and pall. This august council was not exempt from some of the more virulent fonus of the odium thcolo- gicum. On its assembly the emperor found himself overwhelmed by a number of parchment rolls, containing complaints and petitions against each other from many of the mitred polemics. These, says the iiistoiian Rufinus, he produced, before the council, from the purple folds of his mantle, bound up and settled Arith the imperial ring. Having solemnly declared that he had not read one of them, he cast them upon a brazier of burning coals As they shrivelled in the flames, he uttered this scathing rebuke : " It is the com- mand of Christ that he who desires to be himself forgiven must first forgive his brother." By the quaint humour and shrewd wisdom of the act, the emperor proved his ability to rule the some- what turbulent assembly. For two montiis the sessions of the council contjinued. An Avian form of creed was first « submitted but it was received wiLii tumultuous disapprobation, and the obnoxious document was ANCIENT AND MODERN. 29 torn in pieces. A compromise was proposed by Eusebius, bishop of Ceesarea and father of eccles- iastical history, which the Arians were willing to accept ; but that very fact caused its rejection by the orthodox, who were determined to condemn their opponents. "The Niceue Creed," says Milman, " was the result of the solumn deliberation of the assembly. It was conceived with some degree of Oriental indefiniteness, harmonized with Grecian subtlety of expression. The vague and somewhat im- agination fulness of its original Eastern terms was not too severely limited by the fine precision of its definitions. One fatal word broke the harmony of assent with which it was received by the whole council. Christ was declared Homoousios, of the same substance with the Father, and the undeniable, if perliaps inevitable, ambiguity of this single term involved Chris- tianity in centuries of hostility. To one party it implied absolute identity, to the other it was left essential to the co-equal and co-eval dignity of the three persons in the Godhead. To some of the Syrian bishops it implied or countenanced the material notion of the Deity. It wass, it is said by one ecclesiasticnl historian, a battle in the night, in which neither party could see the meaning of the other." 30 GREAT PREACHEBS, The dissentients from this creed were willing to admit that the Son was of like substance, but not the same substance with the Father — Homoiousion not Homoousion — and the profane of every age, says Gibbon, have derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited for centuries between the rival factions of Christendom. But he justly adds the reflection that the sounds and character which accidentally come the nearest to each other frequently represent the most opposite ideas ; and often the difference between truth and error is one marked not by broad contrast but by minute difference. " The solemn anathema of this Christian senate was pronounced against Arius and his adherents ; they were banished by the civil power, and they were especially interdicted from disturbing the peace of Alexandria by their presence."* For the remaining forty-six years of his life, it was the task of Athanasius to withstand^ confute, and strive to overthrow the pernicious heresy of Arius. On the death of the Bishop of Alexan- dria, five months after the council of Nicsea, Athanasius became the almost unanimous choice of the people and of the neighbouring clergy as his successor. He vigorously protested, "Nolo * Milman. Histoiy of Christianity. Book III., chap, ir. ANCIENT AND MODERN. 81 ep'sjopari,** and attempted by flight or conceal- ment to escape the uncoveted dignity. In com- memoration of this circumstance, to this day the Patriarch elect of Egypt is brought to Cairo loaded with chains and strictly guarded, as if to prevent the possibility of flight The city of Alexandria was, at this time, next to Rome, the foremost in Ihe empire ; its see was the most important in Christendom, and "its bishop," says Nazianzen, " was the head of the world." And right worthily the young bishop discharged the dangerous duties of his o£Bce. With pious zeal he diligently visited his vast diocese from the mouths of the Nile to the mountains of Ethiopia — conversing with the meanest fellahin, and seeking the hospitality, in their rocky cells, of the solitary hermits of the desert The banished heretic Arius had powerful friends in the household of Constantino. Through their influence he was recalled from exile, and an im- perial mandate was issued for hij restoration to his position in the Alexandrian Church. To his astonishment the haughty monarch found that his edict, which was wont to be obeyed in trembling submission throughout the Roman world, was set at naught by the late deacon of Alexandria. It waa determined that the unob- 32 GREAT PBEACIIEB8, Hequious prelate must be humbled or removed. The Arian faction, therefore, began by evil rumours and false accusations to calumniate the character of the faithful bishop who had lost the favour of the emperor. Charges of personal immorality were alleged against him ; but they were triumphantly refuted, and recoiled like a boomerang upon the false accusers. Charges of treasonable correspondence with the enemies of Constantino and of the abuse of his high office were also made; but these were dismissed as frivolous by the emperor himself. A graver accusation was now made — that of the double crime of murder and witchcraft, which in those days was held in equal abhorrence. His enemies produced a humau hand, which they alleged to be that of Arsenius, a bishop attached to the heretical views against which Athanasius waged implacable war. Arsenius, they affirmed, had been murdered by the Bishop of Alexandria, who had employed the dissevered member for magical incantations. The accused bishop was arraigned before a hostile synod at Tyre. The mummied hand was produced as a damning evidence of guilt. Athanasius had prepared a dramatic refutation of the charge. Arsenius had been discovered hidden in a monastery and com- pelled to be present, concealed beneath a mantle. A!tCIFNT AND MOlVf.UK. 33 At the critical moment the mnntle was pluckeil off, and the man r1 leered to have hecu murdered was produced alive in the council. * God has j»iven two hands to man," said the accused with calm sarcasm, " how then has Arsenins a third ?"• But inveterate malice lacks not the skill to find or feign grounds for accusation. For alleged profination of the sacred vessels of a church by Miic;\rius, a presbyter of Athanasius, although it was shown that neither vessels, altar, or church could exist at tlie alleged scene of the sacrilege, the Bishop of Alexandria was deposed from his see and exiled from the city. But his was not the nature meekly to bow before a storm. Throwing himself into a baik about to sail to Constantinople, he soon reached the imperial city. The request for a formal audience, would probably have been denied. The deposed bishop, therefore, boldly accosted the angry emperor as he rode through the principal street of his capital. Constantine urged his horse forward and ordered his guards to remove the importunate suitor. '*God shall judge be- * Many of the sayings of Athanasius are characterised by a shrewd humoar. As his enemies were pursuing him up the Nile, in one of his flights, he ordered the boat to be pat about, and boldly confronted them. " Where is the fugitive bishop?" they demanded. "Not far off," he replied with ojolest assuravuce, and, doubling on his track, eludvd prranitto 34 GREAT PREACHERS, tween tLee and me," cried the dauntless bishop ; and he demanded a hearing of his case before the imperial tribunal. The appeal touched the con- science, or the pride, of the emperor, and the demand was granted. A dangerous charge of having detained the corn fleet of Alexandria, whereby the capital was threatened with famine, W83 now trumped up» and the bishop was exiled to the far-off city of Treves, in GauL The victory of the Arians seemed complete. Secure in the favour of the emperor, their heresy was sustained by a pliant council at Constanti- nople, and they threatened to invade even the sacred precincts of St. Sophia. The orthodox betook themselves to prayer while the arch- heretic Arius was borne with shouts of triumph through the streets. But like Herod, who was smitten because he gave not God the glory, the hour of his exultation was the hour of his doom. He died suddenly by an awful death, akin to the fate of Judas; aud the orthodox tailed not to point out the judgment of Heaven, in the doom which had bet alien the traitor to the co-equal dignity of the Son. The intrepid spirit of Athanasius was not to be bowed by depobitiou and banishment In his distant exile he bated not a jot of his rigid ortho- doxy to gain the favour of the master oi the ANCIENT AND MODERN. 3.' i> taster oi the world. On the death of Constantine he was restored to his see. His return to his beloved Alexandria was like the triumphal procession of a monarch. A mighty stream of people, "like the Nile at its flood," says the narrator, came forth to meet him. Palm branches were waved aloft, the richest textures of the Egyptian looms V ere strewn beneath his feet, the air was fragrant with perfumes and vocal with the hosannahs of the people, and the night was brilliant with illuminations of joy. llival councils condemned and acquitted the champion of the orthodox faith* On the death of the younger Constantine his enemies again obtained the ascendant, and a foreign bisliop was forced upon the Church and people of Alexandria. " Scenes of savage conflict ensued ; the churches were taken, as it were, by storm ; the presbyters of the Athanasian party were treated with the utmost indignity ; virgins scourged ; every atro- city perpetrated by unbridled multitudes, em- bittered by every shade of religious faction. The Alexandrian populace were always ripe for tumult and bloodshed. The pagans and the Jews mingled in the fray, and seized the opportunity, no doubt, of showing their impartial animosity to both parties, though the Arians were loaded with the unpopularity of this odious alliance." * * Milman, Hist, of ChriHtianity. Book IV., chap. v. rr 3G CUEAT PREACHERS, Athanasius took refurje from this storm of l)er3ecution at the great rival see of Home. His ^Jloquence, liis force of character, and his un- flinching steadfastness in the oithodox faith com- manded the support of Constans, the emperor of tlie West and of the Roman Church. Rival councils in the East and West hurled their anathemas at one another ; and at Constantinople so violent was the conflict between Arian and orthodox sects that the whole city was in arms, St. Sophia became the scene of bloodshed, and the tumult spread from street to street, resulting in the defeat of the imperial soldiery. Such were the unhappy results of the union of a degenerate Christianity with the civil power. The Eastern emperor, Constantius, repenting his persecution of so valiant a soldier of God, implored a reconciliation with Athanasius and his return to the see of Alexfindria. But the fickle potentate soon relapsed to Arianism, and by bribery, by intimidation, by personal invec- tive, and by military power, obtained a condem- nation of Athanasius by the councils of Aries and of Milan. The time had now come to crush the bulwark of the orthodox faith. A force of five thousand soldiers was thought necessary to capture one frail old man. The scene as described by Milman was highly dramatic. ANCIKN'T AND MODERN. 37 *• It was midni<^ht ; and the archltishop, sur- rounded by the more devout of his flock, was performing the solemn service in the Church of St. Theonas. Suddenly the sound of trumpets, the trampling of steeds, the clash of arms, the bursting the bolts of the doors, interrupted the silent devotions of the assembly. The bishop on his throne, in the depth of the choir, on which fell the dim liglit of the lamps, beheld the gleaming arms of the soldiery as tliey burst into the nave of the church. As the ominous sounds grew louder, he commanded the chanting of the 136th Psalm. Tlie choristers* voices swelled into the solemn strain, " Oh give thanks . untu the Lord, foi lie is good;" the pr.ofle took up the burden, "For His mercy eadureth forever!" The clear, full voices of the congregation rose over the wild tumult, now without and now within the church. A discharge of arrows com- menced the conflict ; a^d Athanasius calmly exhorted his people to continue their only defen- sive measures, their prayers to their Almighty Protector. The soldiers at the same time ad- vanced. The cries of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the sliouts of the assailants mingled in wild and melancholy uproar. But, before the soldiers had reached the end of the sanctuary, the pious disobedience of his clergy and of a If 38 GREAT PKFACIIERS, body of monks hurried the arclibishop by some secret passage out of the tumult. His escap® appeared little less than miraculous to his faithful followers." The church was piled with dead, and its treasures were left to the pillage of the exas- perated soldiery. For six years Athanasius remained in hiding, impenetrably concealed from the search of his august persecutor. The story of his adventures is stranger than fiction. The despotic power of his enemy filled the world ; and whole armies were employed in hunting down the fugitive bishop. Imperial edicts offered large rewards for the apprehension of the frail old man, dead or alive, and the most severe penalties were denounced on any who should grant him any aid or refuge. But multitudes of the faithful min- istered to his necessities, scorning alike the bribes and the threats of the lord of the world. In the inaccessible recesses of the Thebaid, in the rocky cells of the desert-hermits with whom he had dwelt in his youth, the aged exile found an inviolable sanctuary. Once he was hidden in a dry cistern, and escaped just before his hiding- place was discovered. Again he was rescued, at the peril of her life, by a heroic Alexandrian maiden, and concealed and supplied with books and food till he could reappear among his friends. ANCIENT AND MODERN. 39 From the depths of the desert the wandering bishop waged incessant war with the Arian heresy, which it was his life-work to oppose and confute. His polemic epistles — whose words were half battles — continued to appear, no one knew whence, and the edicts of the emperor were answered by vehement invectives, like those o' an Elijah, in which the lord of the Roman world was denounced as a weak and wicked prince, the tyrant of the State, the antichrist of the Church. In his golden palace the master of a hundred legions received from an invisible hand a wound which he could neither Tieal nor revenge.* A new spirit was astir in the world — the spirit, like that of a Luther or a Knox, which in the might of truth defies the civil power and, unarmed, wins the victory over the sword. Indeed, there is evidence that, issuing from his desert fastnesses, the intrepid prelate traversed the Mediterranean to confer with the leaders of the orthodox faith in the great councils of Rimini and Seleucia, in both the West and East. On the amnesty offered by the Emperor Julian to the banished bishop, Athanasius returned, amid the rejoicings of Alexandria, to hia episcopal throne. But he had not learned what the world calls prudence during his long ezila His oppoai- * Gibbon, ohap. zzi 40 GREAT PREACnERS, tion to paganism and heresy was more strrnnom than ever. The imperial apostate, says Gibbon, honoured Athanasius with his sincere and peculiar hatred, and commanded his banishment as the enemy of the gods. On tlio death of Julian, he returned to his see, A.D. 363, but, under the persecution of the Arian emperor Valens, he was compelled for the fifth time to retire from his post of dignity and danger. In the seventy-first year of his age, he sought refuge in the tomb of his father, witliout the gates of the city, in which he was at last to find rest from life's stormy scenes, and there he remained in hiding four months. The indignant clamours of the Alex- andrian populace procured his lesicration, and the venerable bishop was permitted to end his days, at the age of seventy-seven, in the zealous discharge of his pastoral toil. Athanasius, for his potent influence on the thought and creed of Christendom, was probably the greatest man of the early Church. Of the forty-six years of his episcopate, twenty were spent as an exile or a fugitive. Five times he was driven from his post of danger, only to return again with unabated zeal when the peril for a time was overpast. Yet none the less he I'uled the souls of men from the depths of the Thebaid desert than froui his episcopal throne. AKCIENT AND MODKRy. 41 He braved the power of successive emperors, lio calmly endured persecution, calumny, and exile, and unflinchingly confronted martyrdom, not, as Milman has remarked, for the broad and palpable difference between Christianity and heathenism, but for fine and subtle distinctions of the Chris- tian creed, which distinctions he, nevertheless, considered of vital importance to the orthodox faith. He reared an obstacle to arbitrary power which sceptered tyrants have sought in vain to overcome. A mighty spiritual influence was in the world greater tlum the armies of despots or the headsman's sword. The emancipation of tlio peoples, the birth of the civil and religious free- dom of the race was heralded and hastened by the life and labours of the bishop of Alexandria. When almost every other great ecclesiastic in the East and West was swept away by the Ariaii heresy, supported and enforced by all the power of the empire, he, "faithful found among the faithless," stood staunch and true — Athanasiiis contra mundum — alone against the world. " It is by its solitary protest," says Stanley, "against subservience to the religious spirit of the a<;o that the life of Athanasius has acquired a pro- verbial significance," and that it now, we may add, wields such a power. We conclude our brief study of this heroic lifj 42 r.REAT PREACriERS, by an eloquent passage from the "judicious Hooker": "Athanaaius, by the space of forty-six years, from the time of his consecration till the last hour of his life in this world, they never suffered to enjoy a peaceable day. Crimes there were laid to his charge, many. His judges were evermore the self-same men by whom his accusers were suborned. Such was the stream of those times that all men gave place unto it, saving that some fell away sooner and some later. Only of Athanasius there was nothing observed during that long tragedy, other than such as very well became a wise man to do, a righteous to suffer. So that this was the plain condition of those times. The whole world against Athanasius, and Athanasius against it. Half a hundred years spent in doubtful trial, which of the two in the end would prevail ; the side which had all, or else the part which had no friend but God and death ; the one a defender of his innocency, tho other a linisher of his troubles."* * Ecclesiastical Policy, v, 4S, m. JOHN OF THE GOLDEN MOUTH. 'HE world owes an immeasurable debt to the mothers of its greatest men. Without the noble characters and hallowed influence of Monica, the mother of Augustine ; of Emilia, the mother of Basil; of Osburga, the mother of Alfred ; of Susannah, the mother of Wesley ; of Mary, the mother of Washington, the current of history might have flowed through very different channels and with very different results. There is no more illustrious name in the honoured roll of noble mothers than that of Arethusa, the mother of Chrysostom. Left a widow at the age of twenty, beautiful in person, exalted in rank, opulent in estate, she remained for sixty years "a widow indeed." She devoted herself with unremitting tenderness and care to the training of her infant son, imbuing his mind with the loftiest lessons of religion, living to rejoice over his career of distinguished usefulness, — a sword 44 GBEAT PRKACUEim, at last piercing through her own soul, also, on account of his persecutions and sulTerings. In admiration of her devotion to the memory of her dead husband and to the pious nurture of her living child, even a pagan philosopher exclaimed, " What wives these Christians have ! " John Chrysostom, or, John of the Golden Mouth, as the name means, was born in Antioch in the year a.d. 347. His father, Secundus, was of noble family, and hold an office of high dignity on the staff of the military governor of Syria. The boy was educated in all the learning of the age at the school of Libaiiius, the rhetorician. In the master, something of the old Stoic philosophy still lived. When the emperor Julian ascended the throne of the world, he desired to reward the Syiian sophist who had continued faithful to the pagan religion which almost all others had for- saken. But the sage declined to become the pensioner of the emperor, and deemed it a higher distinction to imitate the simplicity of life of the old philosophers of Greece. Chrysostom was his most promising pupil. When asked who should succeed himself in the school of rhetoric, Libanius answered, " John, if the Christians had not stolen him." He seems to have inspired his disciple, a^ will shortly appear, with his own scorn oi luxury and rugged independence of character. ANCIENT AND MODERN. 45 But Chrysostom was destined to learn a loftier lore than that of th e Porch or the Academy, and to find a nobler theme for his matchless eloquenco thun the empty sophistries and barren litigations of the schools and courts of Antioch. The sublime te ichin;,'s of the Holy Scriptures took possession of his soul with a spell beyond that of Socrates or Plato. They fired his youthful imagination and led his yearning heart to Him in whom is all beauty and all truth. The Church gladly recog- nized and employed the ability of the young rhetorician, and at the age of eighteen he was appointed lector, or reader, in the great basilica ot Antioch. It was the duty of his office to read to the assembled multitudes the Holy Scriptures, and thus he became at once more familiar with the sacred text and with the practice of appearing before the great congregation. With characteristic enthusiasm, Chrysostom longed to devote himself to a life of meditation and prayer, in monastic retirement, amid the solitudes of the Syrian deserts. The superior wisdom of the pious Arethusa prevented that pelfish isolation. The wilderness was peopled with lonely eremites, who sought to save their own souls alive by fleeing alike from the tempta- tions and the duties of life. The golden-mouthed preaciiex was destined to learn that superior moral 46 GRKAT PRKACIIEKS, s 1 1 coura<;e is developed in confronting danger and performing life's duties than in ignoble flight. It is Chrysostom himself who tells the touch* ing story which forms a companion picture to that of the communings of Augustine and Monica. His long-wiebwed mother, when she learned his cherished purpose, took him by the hand and led him to the chamber in which he was born. As she sat beside him on the couch, she burst into tears, and into words that were sadder than tears. She spoke of the cares and troubles of her widow- hood and of the one consolation of her life — to gaze upon his face and behold in him the image of his departed sire. Before he could speak, she said he had thus been the joy and comfort of her heart "Think not," she continued, "that I would reproach you with these things. I have but one favour to entreat : make me not a second time a widow ; awaken not again my flluiubering sorrows. Wait at least for my death ; perhaps I shall depart before long. When you have laid me in the earth and reunited my bones to those of your father, then travel wherever thou wilt, even beyond the sea ; but, as long as I live, endure to dwell in my hous^, and offend not God by afflict- ing your mother, who is at least blameless towards thee." Such an appeal from such a mothT his filiV ANCIENT AND MODKBN. 47 heart eonid not resist. lie socms to have at once abaudoiied his purpose of becoming a monk. Nevertheless, wo find at a later period that he retired for a time to a monastic retruat among the mountains, a lew miles from Antioch. The^e cccuobitic communities seem, like the ancient schools of the prophets, to have been seminaries for theological instruction, under wise and expe- rienced religious teachers. We catch interesting glimpses in his later homilies of that piou? brotherhood in those early centuries so long ago. " They rise in the morning," he says, " wakeful and sober; and, joining together in a choir, they sing with joyful faces and cheerful consciences hymns to the praise of God. After prayer, each goes to his work, by which they earn much to distribute to the poor. When they have finished their daily toil, they partake of their frugal re- past; and truly they have not many dishes. Some eat only bread and salt, others add a little oil ; the weaker use herbs and vegetables. Hav- ing ended their meal with hymns, they lie down on beds of straw. No complaints are heard among them. They accompany the departevl with songs, and say not * he is dead,* but ' he is perfected.' " He magnifies elsewhere the advan- tages of this free and unencumbered life : There is uo gold or silver, no chests or storehouse, no 48 GREAT rRKACIlERS, I superfluous garments, no worldly an'oganee, no magistrates or slaves, no guards or sentiucls." It was a loving fellowship like that of the first Christians, who had all things in common. The growth of this cccuohitic system led to the promulgation of an edict of the emperor Yalens against it, or rather against those who ibrsook their civil duties for the solitude of the 'losert The intrepid John of Antioch did not scruple, even in his youth, to take up the gauntlet I lirown down by the lord of the world, and to challenge his statements and endeavour to refute his charges. He eloquently defends what he considers the "true philosophy" of life "He alone is free,** he say^, " who liveth for Christ** In this busy, bustling, modern life, we are too little alone — The world is too mneh with ns ; late and soon. Getting and spending we lay waste cor powers. Great deeds and noble heroisms often demand solitude for their conception and development. Moses feeding his flock on Horeb, Elijah by the I trook Cherith, John in the duu^^eon of Machaerus* Paul in the Maraertine prison, the seer of the Apocalypse in the isle of Patmos, Dante in his wandering exile, Luther in the Wartburg castle, * MacGilvray, Life of Chrysustom, p. 34. ANCIENT AND UODERN. 49 Knox chained to the oar in the French galley?, Milton in his lonely blindness, Bunyan in Bed- ford gaol, Pascal on his couch of pain, Grotius in his prison cell — these all, to themselvet* ami to others, might seem to waste their lives — like water spilt upon the ground that cannot be gathered up again. But to these exiles and solitaries, while they communed with their own hearts and were still, God spoke His word of power, and that word became a fire in their bones — the inspiration of their lives — and made them His kings and priests forever. So Chrysostom, in the silence and solitude of the desert, heard, like Elijah, the still small voice of God, and, like him, was enbraved to declare in the courts of kings the whole counsel of the Most High, and to encounter to the uttermost the wrath of the mighty. The providence of God now called him from the mountain solitude to the populous city of his birth. Antioch, at the time of Chrysostom, had a population of about 200,000 souls. Six hundred years before, it had been founded by Seleucus Nicator. As the metro- polis of Syria and residence of the Seleucian kings, it was the third city of the empire, though now yielding to the growing greatness of the New Home of the East — the city of Constantine. Its situation was one of great beauty, on the slopes 50 GREAT PREACHERS, of Mount Silpeus, watered by the rapid Orontes. whose silver-flashing stream divided the town. Its whole length was traversed by a "street with marble colonnades, and its palace, citadel, public baths, csesarium, walls, and gates were renowned, even in an age of architectural splendour, for their magnificence.* The glory and, alas ! the shame of Antioch was the grove of Daphne — a suburb of fountains and streams, where a forest oi laurels and cypresses made, even in the sultry summertide, an impene- trable shade. A magnificent temple rose to the honour of the glorious sun-god, Phcebus Apollo, and under the pagan kings a revenue of fifteen golden talents, — equal to 8150,000, — was annu- ally expended on public pleasures. But this grove of fairy loveliness was polluted by sensual orgies, which made the worship of Apollo to be most fittingly symbolized by one of the self- divining types of the Greeks — "the head of a god combined with the extremities of a satyr." * Antiooh derives undying interest in ecolesiasticsl his- tory as the place where the name of Christians was first applied to the disciples of the Nazarene. (Acts xi. 26.) Tradition also records that here the Evangelist Luke was born, and that in the neighbouring waters of the Orontes St Paul was baptized. lu commemoration of this event, to this day one ( ' its gates is called Bab Boolus, the gate of St PauL Thu. city has now a population of some sight thousand souls. ANCIKNT AND MODEUX. 61 But even here, where Satan's seat was, a Chris- tian Church was estahlisheil. The winsome loveliness and purity of the religion of Jesus supplanted the foulness of heathen orgies. The grove of Daphne was cut down, the shrine of Apollo was consumed with fire, and its licentious rites were abolished. But the worship of the crucified Nazarene has filled the world. The brand of infamy has become the badj^e of highest honour. The name of reproach and contempt, here first given to the disciples of Christ, has been ennobled as the highest dignity of man. The imperial apostate, Julian, who had been in his yoi'i ■ o lay reader in the Christian Church, was greci n.grined, on visiting Antioch, to find paganism almost superseded by Christianity. At the festival of Apollo, in the Grove of Daphne, the emperor complains that instead of hecatombs of fat oxen, he found only a single goose and solitary priest in the decayed and deserted shrine. The classic grove had also been desecrated by a Christian Church and Christian tombs. Julian commanded the demolition of the church and the removal of the martyrs* bones which it covered The relics were conveyed to Antioch by a trium phal procession of Christians, "who chanted,' says Gibbon, " with thundering acclamations the Fsalms of David most expressive of their con- 53 GREAT PREACHERS, tempt for idols and idolaters." That night the temple of Apollo was consumed by fire, and never was rebuilt. Well nii«^ht the dying apostate exclaim, " Galilean, thou hast conquered ! " In the time of Chrysostom, the Christian religion was the predominant faith of Antioch, although it had lost much of its primitive purity and had been corrupted by the pleasure-loving disposition of the luxurious Syrian populace, liut not as a man clothed in soft raiment came the golden-mouthed preacher, but in rugged majesty, like John the Baptist from the wilder- ness, or like Elijah from the mountains of Gilead. For a year he discharged the laborious duties of the humble office of deacon, ministering to the necessities of the poor, three tliousand of whom were maintained by the Church at Antioch. Then, declining the dignity of bishop, which was almost thrust upon him, he became, in the twenty- sixth year of his age, a simple presbyter and preacher. From various accounts of his preaching which have been preserved, we can form a pretty clear conception of its general character. It was chiefly in the " old church " of Antioch, a large octagonal building, dating probably from primitive times, and so named to distinguish it from the more tat ely and ornate structures of later days, when ANCIENT AND MODERN. 53 Christianity had become the religion of the empire. " Various circumstances," says a historian of his life, " combined to lend additional interest to Chrysostom's first appearance as a preacher in the principal congregation of Antioch. The church was crowded to excess. Men of all ranks and parties, Christian and pagan, were present. Libauius, with some of his heathen friends and fellow-rhetoricians, were grouped together in a retired corner of the house ; and it was whispered that Eutropius the eunuch, the confidential advi- ser of the emperor Theodosius, was sitting behind the curtains in the imperial gallery. The preacher appeared, a thin, sickly-looking man, who walked in with languid step and absorbed* air, and took his seat in the reader's desk. He was of low stature ; his head, big, but bold ; his brow, large and lined with wrinkles. His eyes were deeply sunk, but withal quick and amiable ; his cheeks, lank and hollow ; his beard, short and thin. " The tones of his voice were rich and sonorous, with a metallic distinctness of utterance, which arrested at once the attention of the audience. As he advanced from exposition to illustration, from Scriptural principles to practical appeals, his delivery became gradually more rapid, his coun- tenance more animated, his voice more vivid and intense. As he rose in his fervour, he rose also 54 GREAT PRKACHEIUI^ to his feet * The people began to hold their breath ; and when the discourse came to an end, the great mass of that spell-bound audience could only hold down their heads and give vent to their ^motion in tears. For awhile they looked at each other with wonder, and then clapped their hands in ecstasy.^ But the preacher rushed on, and bore down their attempts at applause, till their admiration was lost in intense emotion. The speaker himself was lost in the splendour and power of his speech.^ The zealous preacher took no delight in the applause of his hearers. "The Church/' he said, "is not a theatre, that we should listen for pleasure. Of what use to me are these shouts and tumult ? My praise only is that by your works you show forth what is said, and perform with alacrity what ye hear of me. The pleasure-loving populace forsook the theatre and stadium to stand trembling and awe- struck beneath the bema or pulpit of the stem * It WM frequently the custom to sit while preaching oi teaching. t Interruptions of applause, either spoken or by clapping, were common. " These praises," says St. Augustine, " are but the leaves of the tree, I desire its fruit." He desired not the applause of evil-livers. He would rather, he said, have their tears. t Condensed from MaoGilvray. AUCIEST AND MODERN. 65 f the stem r by clappinf?, igustine, "are preacher of righteonflness. Snch was the spell of his eloquence that often at the dawn of day a multitude was assemhied to listen to his words. His was no soft and silken discourse. He uttered words of bold reri-oof of wickedness in high places. He rebukes with scathing sarcasm the rich, who think they confer a favour upon God by coming to His house, but he comforts the poor with the consolations of a practical beneficence. But, above all, he insists on tlie living testimony of believers before the ungodly and the worldling. "Let us by our example and conversation," he exclaims, " convert the heathen. Le^ us build up the Church with their souls and enrich it with this treasure. Though thou givest a thousandfold to the poor, thou hast not done as much as he who converts a single souL" The logical coherence and literary polish of his homilies give evidence of their careful prepara- tion, but their utterance was unfettered by notes or manuscript. Many of them, however, were taken down by takugrajfihoi or shorthand-writers ~not a modem invention at all, but one prac- tised in the Eoman courts and public assemblies two thousand years ago — or they were afterwards written by himselt He possessed the happy art of compelling even interruptions and distr actions to barb a truth or 56 GREAT PRRACIIER8, infix it in the soul. Observing the interest of his congregation diverted toward the luminariua who was lighting the lamps, he exclaimed, "Awake from your inattention. I also kindle for you a light — the light of the Sacred Word. On my tongue burns the flame of spiritual instruction — a better and greater light than that on which you are all so intently gazing." His speech sparkles with illustration and figure, and is pungent with sarcasms of the fashionable fop who is anxiously solicitous about his silken shoe-tie and his lady's perfumes and unguents, and is heedless of the eternal verities of the un- seen world. Certain public events now took place which brought Chrysostom into greater prominence in his native city. By one of those popular insur- rections, of which we find in modern times no parallel, save in the history of France, Antioch defied the authority of the emperor, and fell under his ban. In the year of our Lord 387, an exor- bitant tax was imposed on the city to meet the exigencies of the Gothic war. The assessment was oppressive, and the citizens were driven to despair. In an outbreak of exasperation, a mob of the servile class hastened to the forum and hurled from their pedestals the statues of tlie emperor and empress, and of their sons Aicadius ▲NCIEKT AND MODERN. 67 and Honorius. These they dracged through the streets with the utmost contumely, and order was only restored by the appearance of a body of archers. The whole city was involved in the conse- quences of this ** flat rebellion." A stern retribu- tion was expected. The venerable Bishop Flavian hastened to the metropolis, a rugged journey of eight hundred miles, to deprecate the wrath of Theodosius. " While he is gone on an embassy to the emperor," said Chrysostom, as he led the devotions of the multitude who thronged the churches, " let us go an embassy to the Majesty of heaven." Two officers of state had already been des- pached to inflict a heavy-handed punishment on the rebellious city. As they rode in military pomp up the colonnaded streets of Antioch, a serge-clad monk, as if clothed with the power of an Elijah, summoned them to stop. "Tell the emperor," he exclaimed, with a moral heroism that compelled their awe, " that if he is emperor he is also man. Let him not command that the image of God be cruelly and unmercifully de- stroyed. Let him reflect that in place of the brazen images,* referring to ihe mutilated sta- tues, '' we can easily fabricate many. But that C8 GREAT PKfiACUERS, it is forever beyond his power to restore a single hair to the heads of his murdered victims." In those early days of rapine and of wrong, of cruelty and of blood, the Church, in the person of its ministers, became the champion of the poor and the oppressed. The lords of the legions, the masters of the Koman Empire, were taught that there was a mightier power than theirs — a kingdom that was not of this world, to whose behests they must submit. Theodosius granted to the intercession of a priest what he would have refused to the menace of an army. He rejoiced more, he said, in being a member of the Christian Church than in being ruler of the world, — " Ecclesise de membrum esse magis qaam in terris regnare gaudebat"* Three years later the emperor of the Boman world himself knelt a suppliant at the threshold of the Church of Milan, from which he was excluded for his crime of the massacre of Thes- salonica. For eight mouths he submitted to the ignominious exclusion. On the feast of the Nativity he implored in vain admittance to those sacred precincts which were open to the beggar and tlie slave. "The emperor may kill me, and pass over my body," said the intrepid Ambrose, " but not other- * Au£. OivUa* Dn. AVCIEMT AND MOOEBN. 59 wise shall he enter the sanctuary without repen- tance and absolution." Theodosius remonstrated that King David had also been guilty of the crime of homicide, and yet had been pardoned. ** You have imitated David in his sin," retorted the undaunted prelate, " so imitate him also in his penitence." At length, stripped of his insignia of royalty, prostrate on the earth, and imploring with tears the pardon of God, the lord of the world received the absolution of the bishop of Milan. But in later days this spiritual power became a priestly despotism. Popes spurned with their feet the crowns of kings who humbly held their stirrup or their bridle rein, and a haughty Hilde- brand kept the proud Emperor, Henry IV., kneel- ing, half naked, in mid- winter's snow, a suppliant for the grudgingly-granted pardon of the pope. Himself driven from his throne, Hildebrand died a refugee at Salerno with the words, which may still be seen upon his tomb, upon his lips : Dilexi justitiam, et odivi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio, — " I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore do I die an exile." But in the days of Chrysostom, the power of the Church was employed only in ministrations of mercy — in averting the sword of persecution, and withstanding the oppression of tyrants. CO GREAT PBEACIIERS, Only six years after the monk Maccdonius pro- cured the amnesty of Antioch, another Kustcrn monk, Telemaclius, leaped into the arena of the Ilomau Coliseum, between the swords of the gladiators, and, becoming a martyr to humanity, abolished for ever the human sacrifices of the amphitheatre.* A great religious awakening and revival, such as it had not known since the days of St. Paul, followed the "lleign of Terror," in Antioch. " If the forum is empty," says Chrysostom, " the church is full. Tears have succeeded boisterous mirth. On all sides are heard supplications and benedictions. The shops are closed ; the city is become a church, and all as with a common voice are calling upon God." Instead of thronging the baths and the hippodrome, the multitude sat at the feet of the golden-mouthed preacher, and obeyed with chastened hearts his solemn admoni- tions. Chrysostom was now to be called to a wider field than the city of Antioch, and to a loftier eminence than the benia of its ancient church. The episcopal see of Constantinople, scarce in- ferior in dignity, if at all, to that of Eome itself, was vacant. Eutropius, the imperial chamberlain, Vfho ruled alike the palace and the court, had * Gibbon. Chap xzz. ANCIEM AKD MODERN. 61 heard the sacred oratory of the presbyter of Antiucli and selected him as the new primate of the imperial diocese. In order to forestall op- position, either his own or that of his admirers, be was enticed out of the city under a false pre- text, and conveyed with speed and secrecy to Constantinople. At the capital of the empire, the strife of Arians and Orthodox had been virulent, but under the Emperor Theodosius and the primate, Gregory Nazianzen, the true C ttholic faith had been re-established. The emperors had despoiled old Rome to adorn with porphyry and marble the new Rome on the Bosphorus. The Eastern capital soon exceeded in population and splen- dour the mother city, though barren of its storied memories and heroic traditions. In beauty of situation it far surpassed the ancient capital. Its engirdling amphitheatre of hills was classic ground — the abodes of heroes and the gods. Olympus, Ida, the Trojan plain and Scamander's stream invested its vicinage with thrilling associ- ations. The magnificence of the Golden Horn, even under Turkish degradation, still calls forth the raptures of the tourist, though he may have beheld the fairest scenes on earth. The sceptre of the world had fallen from the vigorous grasp of Theodosius into the jewelled 62 GREAT PHEACHERS, fingers of the effeminate Arcadius, now in his eighteenth year. Yet he assumed the state and splendour of a god. " His chariot/' says Chry- sostom, " was of pure and solid gold, and flashed, when it moved, with the gleam of precious stones." The empress Eudoxia, the daughter of a Boman soldier, was elevated by an intrigue to the throne. In this giddy heig' while she preserved her beauty, says D'Aubigne, she lost her virtua She became haughty and luxurious, greedy of gold, and the slave of vice. Ferocity, it was said, flowed in her veins with her Frankish blood. Such were the uncongenial surroundings to which the humble presbyter of Antioch found himself transferred. Had he been content to maintain the pomp and splendour of his prede- cessor, Nectarius, and to be an obsequious and courtly preacher, he might have lived and died in worldly ease. But in his desert cell he had learned to scorn the gauds and vanities of time, and to live as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye, and in the broad light of eternity. He carried the asceticism of the monk into the palace of the archbishop. " Instead of munificent hospitality," says Mil- man,* "he took his scanty meal in his solitary chamber. His rigid economy endured none of * Hist, of Christianity. Chap. iz. akcunt and modern. 68 that episcopal snmptaousness with which his predecessor Nectarius had dazzled the public eye : he proscribed all the carpets, all silken dresses ; he sold the costly furniture and the rich vessels of his residence ; he was said even to have re- trenched from the Church some of its gorgeous plate, and to have sold some rich marbles and furniture designed for the great basilica. He was lavish, on the other hand, in his expenditure on the hospitals and charitable institutions. But even the use to which they were applied did not justify to the general feeling the alienation of those ornaments from the service of the Church. The populace, who, no doubt, in their hours of discontent, had contrasted the magnificence of Nectarius with apostolical poverty, were now offended by the apostolical poverty of Chrysostom, which seemed unworthy of his lofty station," The following is the strain — in which we seo a picture of the old Byzantine life — in which, from the ambo of the stately Church of St. Sophia, the bold preacher addressed the courtly throng, who, notwithstanding their poignancy, were charmed by his words : " The rich lords and ladies come hither not to hear the Word of God, but to exhibit themselves, how they shall make the greatest display, surpass each other in the splendour of their diess, and attract attention 64 GB£AT PR£ikODEB2l by their looks and airs. The lady is thinking within herself ' Has this and that person noticed and admired me ? Do my robes sit well ? Are they properly arranged ? ' Then comes the lord, attended by a band of slaves, who clear the way before him. As soon as he takes his place his thoughts fly off to his business or his money- bags. Yet such persons think they are confer- ring a favour upon us, upon the Church, and even upon God himself, by their mere presence among us." These bold, brave words were little apt to conciliate the favour of the proud court dames and lordlings of the gay Byzantine capital. Nothing more strikingly shows the decadence into which the great empire of the Caesars had fallen than the facility with which base adven- turers attained the highest places in the state* Eutropius, the eunuch, who had begun life as a blave and groom of the stables, by fraud and guile had won his way to the very steps of the throne. " As imperial chamberlain, this vile huckster," says the poet Claudian, " marked off and appraised the lioman provinces from the llasmus to the Tigris. A large tablet in his anti- chamber shows their various prices. As he sold himself, he is determined to sell every one else." He governed the emperor like a sheep, says Zosimus, a contemporary writer, and pandered ANCIENT AND MODERN. 66 to the vices and greed of the emprcssw Ji*- made Ilosius, originally a Spanish cook, Cbai.n< llor of the Empire. He struck down from their places and banished to the Libyan desert or the rugged wilds of the Caucasus, officers of the highest rank and noblest name. One of his victims took refuge in the church and appealed to the protec- tion of Chrysostom. The intrepid primate be- came the champion of the oppressed, and resisted the t^-rauny of the oppressor. The malicious eunuch obtained an edict violating the right of sanctuary, little thinking that he himself should so soon need its protection. Chrysostom, lamenting the evil of the times, excliiiras, " Does it not seem as if societv were dissolving into chaos ? Where shall I begin ? "With the high ofiices of state ? There is more stability with the motes floating in the sunbeam than in them. The man who yesterday sat upon the judge's bench, to-day is hurled down, and stripped of all his possessions. Poverty is now tl:o bhield of defence, while wealth is the signal of danger." But, like most minions of arbitrary power, Eutropius was in turn dragged from his eminence. The army demanded his head ; the populace thirsted for his blood. Tlie empress, wiio had proKted by his errors, betrayed him. T;i6 emperor basely yielded him to his enemies. 66 OBEAT PBBACHERS, The wretched man sought in the CDurch whose right of sanctuary he had abolished, and at the hands of the prelate whom he had insulted and defied, that protection which he could find no where else. And he was not disappointed. With the magnanimity of a great soul, Chrysostom interposed, and saved the life of his abject enemy at the peril of his owa " While the hunted criminal lay trembling at the altar," says a historian of the event,* •* listen- ing to the cries of the infuriate multitude de- manding his life, the Sabbath day came round, and Chrysostom appeared in the pulpit The great cathedral was filled to overflowing with an excitea and tumultuous throng, who came, it is to be feared, not so much to worship God as to gratify their vindictive curiosity by feasting their eyes on the fallen minister. * It is always season- able,' said the orator, as he rose, but at this moruent more seasonable than ever, to exclaim " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Where is the glory of this man ? Where the halo of that light which suiTounded him ? Where the shouts with which he was received when he appeared in the theatre and at the race-course ? Gol? — all gone I A sudden whirlwind has swept off the leaves and left the tree bare. The trunk stands ^Maogilvray. Life of Gbrysostom, p. 253. ANCIENT AND MODERN. t>7 naked and stricken to the roots. Where are the friends who worshipped his greatness and sur- rounded him with a cloud of incense ? It was but a dream of the night : the morning has dawned and the dream is dissolved. It has fled like a shadow ; vanished like a vapour ; burst like the empty bubble that it was I ' Oh vanity oi vanities ! all is vanity ! ' " Turning to the miserable wretch who crouched at the altar, gazing at the excited multitude like a wild beast at bay, he admonished him of his guilt and exhorted him to repentance. Then addressing the tumultuous throng he demanded his pardon. " Let it be the glory of the Church;' ho said, '* to open her gates to her former enemy, to protect the man who is pursued on every hand. Let her in such a cause brave the displea- sure of the emperor, the wrath of the people, the hatred of all." He justified the plea for mercy by the example of the woman who was a sinner, who, nevertheless, was spurned not from the feet of Christ ; and he besought them to approach not the table of the Lord without forgiving their enemy. The spell of the preacher's eloquence triumphed. Sobs were heard on every side, and the vast audience was melted into tears. The whole scene lacked no element of dramatic in- 68 GUEAT PUEACHERS, terest, and is worthy of beinw immortalized by the genius of the poet in deathless verse. The death-penalty pronounced on the unhappy man \.as 'ommuted to perpetual exile in the Inland of Cyprus. But his crimes were too many to be forp;otten. He was subsequently tried on another charge, and, as no Chrysostom was by to protect him, he was ignorainiously beheaded. But with all his courage, his eloquence, his moral dignity, says Milnian, Chrysostom, instead of establishing a firm and permanent authority in the turbulent city of Constantine, became himself the victim of intrigue and jealousy. The very unworldliness of his character prevented his exercising that decision and practical wisdom which characterized the later prelates of the West — as, for instance, an Ambrose or a Gregory the Great. He lacked also the mental sternness which enabled a Knox in later days to resist the entreaties of his sovereign, urged with all the fascination of lovely womanhood. Chrysostom had degraded irom olHce an unworthy ecclesiastic whose restoration the empress demanded. The prelate refused her request backed by the au- thority of the emperor. Determined not to be foiled she proceeded in state, with the infant prince Theodosius in her arms, to the Church of St. Sophia. She rapidly traversed the nave, en- \ A:a i;:sT and modkun. v.) tercd the choir, and paused befon- the primato seated on his throne. Plucinj^ the cliild umou his knee, she conjured him to pardon the dep )3cd bishop. The venerable patriarcli hesitated, but moved by the sii^dit of the infant prince, whose duty it would be to learn to pardon, he granted the request. Knox would have austerely rebuked the hau'^hty empress and denied her suit. In a corrupt and venal a^e, as was that, of tho decadence of the Koman Empire, moral upright- ness, like that of Chrysostum, was siire to raise up enemies. " All orders and interests," soya Milmau, " conspired against him. The court would n^^ endure the grave and severe censor; the clergy rebelled against the rigour of the pre- late's discipline ; the populace, though, when uiider the spell of his eloquence, fondly attached to his person no doubt, in general resented his implacable condemnation <'t" their amusements. The Arians, to whom, in his uncompromising zeal, he had persuaded the emperor to refuse a siugle church, though demanded by the most powerful subject ot the empire, Gainas the Goth, were still, no doubt, secretly powerful. A pagan priefect, Optatus, seizeil the opportunity of wreak- ing his animosity towards Christianity itself upon its powerful advocate. Some wealthy court dames are named as resenting; the severe condemnation •0 CHEAT TREACnERS, of their dress and mauners. But of ell his ad- versaries, the most dangerous, the most perseve- ring, and the most implacable, were those of his own order and his own rank." The episcopal jurisdiction of Chrysostom ex- tended not only over south-eastern Europe but over the whole of Asia Minor, and embraced a numerous and powerful body of bishops, and many hundreds of presbyters. In his zeal to maintain orthodoxy of faith and purity of prac- tice in an age of general laxity and declension, the indefatigable prelate travelled far and near, exhorting, reproving, warning, and inflicting on the evil-living or heretical, ecclesiastical penal- ties. A powerful opposition of malcontent clergy was soon organized, by whose machinations the unworldly and impolitic Patriarch was destined to fall. A self-appointed council of his enemies, chiefly Egyptian and Asiatic bishops, many of them sulfering from ecclesiastical disabilities and penal- ties, assembled at Chalcedon and formulated twenty-nine several charges against the Primate of Constantinople. Most of these were trivial or irrelevant, others notoriously false, and some a ground of praise rather than censure. To these were acded, on account of his bold reproofs of the vices of the empress, the more perilous ac- cusation of high treason. ANCIENT AND MODKBN. 71 Bat calm and unmoved in hia conscious inno- cence, the intrepid prelate refused to plead beforo this illegal tribunal. Yet he ceased not iu his zealous ministrations in the great basilica of St Sophia. " The billows are mighty and the storm furious," he exclaims, "but we fear not to be wrecked, for we are founded on a rock. What can I fear ? Death ? To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Exile ? The earth is the Zord\ and the fulness thereof. Confiscation? We brought nothing into this world, and it is c«r- tain we can carry nothing out of it. I scorn the terrors, and smile at the advantages, of life. I fear not death, I desire to live for your profit But you know, my brethren, the true cause of my ruin. Because I have not strewn rich carpets on my floors, nor clothed myself in silken robes ; because I have discountenanced the sensuality of certain persons." Then follows in obscure and embarrassed language, as though, says Milman, the preacher was startled at his own boldness, an allusion to the fate of John the Baptist and to the hostility of Herodias : " It is a time of wail- ing: lo, all things tend to disgrace; but time judgeth all things." The fatal word *^ disgrace" (qdoxia), was supposed to be an allusion to Eudoxia, the empress. Lotween the empress and the court party, who I J GREAT PREACHERS, found in the austere and pious Patriarch a con- tinual reproach of their own excesses, and tho corrupt and venal council of Chalcedon, was a tacit conspiracy to destroy the venerable metro- politan. Caiques were continually skimming the waters of the Golden Horn bearing hostile monks and bishops from the council to the palace. " A great man and a mighty v/as Theophilus, thu rural Archbishop of Alexandria, in those days," says a graphic historian of the cabal.* " He was a frequent guest at tho imperial table, where he was treated with great distinction by the royal puppet who reigned but did not rule, as well as by the bold and mischievrous dame who both reigned and ruled." The thunderbolt at length was launched, and Chrysostom was publicly deposed and condemned of the crime of high treason. But the expulsion of this frail old man was a task that daunted the lord of a hundred legions. For thiee days the populace surrounded the house of the bishop, re- solved to defend with their lives their beloved chief pastor. A word, a gesture of Chrysostom, would have roused them into fury and produced a revolution. But, like his Master, he warred not with earthly weapons. The Egyptian sailors in the port, under the * Macgilvray, Life of Chryaostom, p. 290. ANCIENT AND MODEKN. "3 lead of the crafty Theophilus, tried to force tlicir way into the church to take luin. A tumult en- sued in which blood M'as shed. Tlie imperial archers were marched upon the scene, and a mas- sacre of the people seemed imminent: to prevent loss of life the Patriarch privately surrendered himself to his enemies. " Do not weep and break my heart, my brethren," he said to his friends who sought to restrain him. " For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." Placing his right forefinger in his left palm — the characteristic gesture is recorded — he calmly went on : " The ministry did not begin and will not end with me. Moses died, but did not Joshua succeed him ? Elijah was caught up into heaven, but did nob Elisha prophesy ? Paul was beheaded, but did he not leave Timothy and Titus behind him V Thus sublimely he proceeded to his menaced doom. He was banished to the town of Prse- netus in Bithynia to await the pleasure of his enemies. Their triumph seemed complete. They began to wreak their vengeance upon his ad- herents, and the populace were awed in sullen silence. But even nature herself seemed to raise her protest against this judicial crime. " The night," says Milman,* " of the following day, strange * History of Chriatianity, chap. ix. 74 GUKAT FUKACIIKK8, and awful sounds were lieard throughout the city. The palace, the whole of Constautinople, sliook with an earthquake. The empress, as supersti- tious as she was violent, when she felt her chamber rock beneath her, shiiddeiiug at the manifest wrath of Heaven, fell on her knees and entreated the emperor to revoke the fatal sen- tence. She wrote a hasty letter disclaiming all hostility to the banished prelate, and protesting that she was ' innocent of his blood.' The next day the palace was surrounded by clamorous multitudes, impatiently demanding his recall. The voice of the people and the voice of God seemed to join in the vindication of Chrysostom. The edict of recall was issued; the Bosphorus swarmed with barks, eager to communicate the first intelligence, and to obtain the honour of bringing back the guardian and the pride of the city." • A great shout," says another authority,* " rose up to the sky and ran echoing along the shores of the two continents of Europe and Asia — a shout of welcome, choked by the sobs and tears of thousands, to the thin worn grey-headed man who stood with streaming eyes and uplifted hands on the deck of the galley as it glided up the Golden Horn." On his arrival, continues Milman, • Macsrilvray, p. 302. ANCIENT AND MODERN. 76 * be was met by tbe whole population, — men, women, and cbildren, — all who could bore torches in their bands, and hymns of thanksgiving, com- posed for the occasion, were chanted before him as he proceeded to the great church." By tbe constraint of the multitude, eager to hear once more his golden words, he ascended at length the pulpit whence he ruled the souls of men with a more imperial sway than ArcadiuM on the throne of the world. ** What shall I say ?" be exclaimed, as he looked round upon the mighty concourse. " Blessed be God ! These were my last words on my departure, these the first on my return. Blessed be God, who turneth the tempest into a calm. Let my enemies be- hold how their conspiracy has advanced my peace and redounded to my glory. Before, the church alone was crowded, now the whole forum is be- come a church. The games are celebrating in the circus, but the wbole people pour like a torrent to the church. Your prayers in my behalf are moro glorious than a diadem." But this brief triumph was to have a tragic close. This bright sunset glow of his life was soon to darken into the shadows of exile and death. Again the rage of an angry woman — like another Jezebel or Herodias — procured the doom }f a faithful servant of the most hish God. 76 GRE. ; PRF.ACIIEnS, , The empress Kiuloxia, a vain and ambitious woman, had ordered a silver statue of lierself to be erected on the great square in front of the church of St. Sophia. Its inauguration was at- tended with games, dances and semi-pagan obser- vances, abhorrent to Christian faith and practice. The heathen mummeries and tumultuous festivi- ties even disturbed the solemn services of the church. Chrysostom felt bound to protest against the demoralizing spectacle, no matter how august the patronage under which it was celebrated. The empress again felt herself insulted and threatened tlie Patriarch with another council. The state of the social atmosphere was electric, when Clirysostom furnished tlie spark which pre- cipitated the threatened explosion. On the fes- tival of 3t. John the Baptist — the anniversary of his martyrdom — he occupied the pulpit of St. Sophia. Adapting his discourse to the day, he thundered out the exordium, 'Again Herodias, rages ; again she dances ; again she demands the head of John." The anger of Eudoxia was kindled to the intensest fury. She wrung from her weak-minded husband an edict for the im- mediate expulsion of the archbishop. " God has appointed me to this charge," re|)lied the un- daunted Chrysostom, " aud lie must set me freo before I yield it up." ANCIENT AND MODERN. On Easter eve a sacred service was held in the preat basilica. Anions others tliere were present three thousand catechumens, receiving solemn preparation for the rite of baptism on Easter-day- While the " Kyrie eleison" rang with thrilling cadence through the vaulted aisles, near mid- night, a body of troops burst into the church and forced their way, not merely into the nave but up to the very altar on which were placed the consecrated elements. "Many," says Milman, " were trodden under foot ; many wounded by the swords of the soldiers ; the clergy were dragged to prison ; some females, who were about to be baptized, were obliged to fly with their disordered apparel; the waters of the font were coloured with blood ; the soldiers pressed up to the altar and seized the sacred vessels as their plunder ; the sacred elements were scattered around ; their garments were bedewed with the blood of the Redeemer. Tiiracian cavalry, chiefly Goths and pagans, rode down the catechumens in the street. Constantinople for several days had the appearance of a city which had been stormed." To allay the tumult, its innocent cause surren- dered himself to the imperial soldiery. He was promptly placed on shipboard and exiled to Bithyuia to await the pleasure of the emperor. 78 GREAT PHEAOillittiJ, On the ninth day of June, A.D. 404, the Preacher of the Golden Mouth, the Patriarch of Constanti- nople, looked his last forever on the scene of his trials and his triumphs, and turned away from the pomp and pride, the palaces and the churches of the great imperial city, to the bitter exile and lonely death of the savage mountains of Armenia. At the same hour another fearful portent agitated the city. While the Thracian soldiers and the Johannites, as the adherents of Chrysos- torn were called, were struggling for the posses- sion of the basilica, a tremendous storm broko over the capital While the cathedral, says the historian previously quoted, was yet rocking to its foundation with the force of the tempest, and its pavement was still warm with the blood of the worshippers, the vast structure became filled with smoke. Soon red tongues of fire appeared, and an uncontrollable confiagration burst forth. The terrified throng rushed out, trampling the fallen under their feet. The fierce tlames con- sumed the choir, the stalls, and the lofty ambo, the theatre of the matchless eloquence of the banished bishop. The porphyry pillars burst; the gold and silver ornaments melted; the fire spread to the adjacent palace. The lead rolled from the roof like molten lava. The marble sta- tues were calcined. The two noblest structures ANCIENT AND MODERN. 79 of New Home, the palace and basilica, became a blackened mound of ruins. The retributions of Providence fell heavily upon the principal persecutors of the saint, — -so was interpreted the tragic fate which befel them. Within a year the Empress Eudoxia died sud- denly in excruciating agony. Soon after, tine Emperor Arcadius was called from his royal pa- lace, his golden chnriot, his white mules, to join his dead partner, Eudoxia. The bishop of Chal- cedon, while sitting at the Co^ancil which con- demned his superior, received an injury which caused the loss of both his legs, and a lingering and painful death. Another member of that body lost his reason, and imagined himself haunted, like Orestes, by avenging furies. Then another lost the use of his tongue with which he had condemned the apostolic bishop, and a fourth the use of the hand with which ho wrote his sentence. So history records the vengeance of Heaven against the enemies of the righteous. The victim of their malice, meanwhile, was huiTicd over the rugged mountain roads of Bith- ynia, Phrygia, Galatia, " more dead than alive," b() says, from the heat and toil of travel. The brutal emperor commanded that the old man should walk this terrible distance without shoes, and that his head should be exposed to the 80 GREAT PHEACHERS, burning rays of the sun. The wayfarers knelt down to receive his blessing as he passed, and wept as they followed him with their prayers into exile. But even here his enemies wreaked their malice on his defenceless head. The wild monks of Cappadocian Caesarea threatened to burn the house in which he lodged. At mid- night, through wild mountain passes he was com- pelled to proceed by the rude soldiery who guarded his progress. His mule stumbling in tha dark, he nearly lost his life. At length he reached Cucusus, a miserable village in the highlands of Armenia. The icy winds from the snowy mountains of Ararat chilled his aged and enfeebled frame. " I write from the brink of the grrve," he says, "having only life enough to be sensible of many suffer- ings. Though confined to bed, in a close cham- ber, half-stifled with smoke, and heaped with blankets, I suffer much from sickness, constant vomiting, and long sleepless nights." Yet the indomitable spirit triumphed over the frail body. " The Eastern Church," says Milman, " was almost governed from the solitary cell of Chrysostom. Ho corresponded with all quarters ; women of rank and opulence sought his solitude in disguise. The bishops of many distant sees Bent him assistance, and coveted his advice. The \x ANaENT AND MODERN. 81 bisliop of Rome received his letters with respect, and wrote back ardent commendations of his patience. The exile of Cucusus exercised, per- haps, more extensive authority than the Patriarch of Constantinople." Over two hundred epistles yet extant exhibit, even Gibbon admits, a tirmness of mind much superior to that of Cicero in his exile. He writes in words of tender consolation to bis revered mother who had consecrated his youth to God, now verging on her eightieth year. "I thank you for my birth," he says, " but much more for the training you have given nie, in which you proved yourself a mother indeed." " Eemember," he adds, " there is but one evil — sin. The way to heaven is through a sea of suffering. I am encompassed by such a fulness of blessing, and my soul is so enriched and exalted, that I thank God without ceasing." But not even this remote resting-place was permitted to the frail old man. Ilis enemies procured a decree for his banishment to Pitvus, on the noith-east coast of the Euxine Sea — the Siberia of the ancient world. But his life-journey was well-nigh ended. In- ctead of the black rocks of Pity us he was soon to reach the fadeless bowers of Paradise. While ■lis guards urged their frail prisoner forward, his uuwers completely failed at the village of Co- 82 GREAT PREACnEHS, mana, in Pontus. He slept in an ancient church, and in the night had a vision ol its martyred bishop Basilicus, who said, " Be of good cheer, Brother John ; to-morrow we shall be together." He besought the soldiers to tarry where he was till noon. But they brutally refused, and urged him three miles further on the rugged road. As he was evidently sinking, they returned to the church. Putting on his white priestly robe, the dying man asked for bread and wine. Pro- nouncing the words of consecration he partook for the last time of the Supper of the Lord. Kneeling at the altar, he exclaimtd, " God be praised for all things." With this thanksgiving on his lips he passed to the presence of the Master whom he loved and served so well. He died on the 14th of September, A.D. 407, in his sixtieth year. Within thirty years the bones of the saint and martyr were borne in state to the City of Con- stantine, and buried ia the " Church of the Apostles." There the son of Eudoxia knelt at his tomb anc implored the forgiv-aess of Heaven for the wrong done by his parents against " that pillar of the Church, that light of the Truth, that herald of Christ— the Bishop John Chrysostom." Again was fulfilled the saying, " The fathers stoned the prophets ; the sous built them sepul- ANCIEXT AND MODERN. 83 chrep." Twelve centuries later the martyr's relics were translated to tlie great basilica of St. Peter's, at Rome, and deposited iu tlie chapel which still hears his name. " Death, instead of closing his lips," says Pope Celestine, " made Chrysostoni the preacher of the world." Bossiiet describes him as the greatest preacher the Cliurch evt^r possessed. " Drinking liis inspiration from the fountain of the Scrip- tures, and kindling his zeal iu the bosom of his Eefleemer, he is the orator of the law of love." The writ-^r previously quoted, wlio has pro- foundly studied his works, thus discourses on hio genius :* " Our imagination can hardly picture to us this Christian orator in his grandest efforts, when every eye was tixed on him and every heart beat faster, and every word seemed the fittest, and every passage so complete, that when he rose to the supreme moment and climax of his discourse, and men were carried away as by a flood, and the force of truth alone was felt, and the triumph of the orator was quite lost sij^ht of. Men lett their business to hear him ; they hSt tin iv amusements and pleasures ; and pagans often left the temples of their gods to throng tlie Christian church. There was something so human in this man whii'.h * Life of Chrysoatom, Mac^ilvray, pp. 351-354, 358. 84 OJIEAT PREACHERS, touched their sympathies ; there was something so divine that awed their spirits. Tiie sublimity of an eloquence so natural and so impressive surprised and ravished the hearers, and awoke in tljem emotions they never felt before. Now they were ready to break out iu plaudits, and now they were in tears. " Chrysostom v/rote much which has been pre- served to us ; the diligence of short-hand writers has preserved more, and we are thankful. But there was much that could not be preserved. The flashing eyes, the striking attitudes, the varying voice that now spoke in whispers and now thun- dered, are a-wanting. Tlie charm of the living man is gone, his tender accents, his terrible de- nunciations. And the audience is gone, that great throng which watched his every movement, which now wept, and now clapped their hands. Yet the litem scripta remains, and it is precious. Who can tell how many have lighted their torches at this tlame — liave caught the holy lire at this shrine ? *' The ceaseless play of fancy on the pages of Chrysostom is something wonderful. Even tiio commonest topics are illustrated and enforced, not only by a diction of matchless energy and beauty, but by similes which miist have caught eveiy ear that heard thcui, and lingered in the \ ANCIENT AND MODERN. 86 memory ever after. The rich profusion of nature furnished this great teacher with ima^^es and metaphors as boundless and varied as iicrself. To him no flower that bloomed, no bird that gave out its morning or evening song, no insect of a day, no cloud that crossed the sky, was mean- ingless. His eye detected secret sympathies, and saw symbolic truths in all it rested on. He was as truly a child of nature as he was a child of grace, and his mind was stored with spoils from every field he trod, from every scene he wit- nessed. The music of the spheres seemed to fall on his enchanted ear, and the mysteries of the universe opened to his enraptured eye ; and so he was constantly telling men what they were quite familiar with, and yet had never seen till lb was shown them. "And this explains the freshness of his dis- courses and writings to this day ; for it is true that, after fitteen hundred years, there is nothing fresher yet, as there is nothing finer, for devout men to read. He described things as he saw and felt them; he worked from no copy, he drew from the grand original. Hence the vivid sense of reality we have whilst we read him and imagine ourselves among the crowds — now asleep for ages — that hung upon his lips. We can almost imagine their eager, gleaming eyes, when. »u GBF.AT PREACIIEKS, as they heard some sentence, a lif;ht from heaven broke in upon their minds ; and anon we are ready to an-swer with tears wlien a stroke of pathos follows and dissolves tlieir hearts. He could touch all chords, apd command all the pas- sions at his will. Multitudes bent before him, as reeds and willows bend before the wind. Their minds yielded to a new power, their hearts were stirred, and their imaginations carried captive. They surrendered themselves to a guide who, with a hand so strong and a heart so true, could lead them as he chose. No scornful critic dared to speak lightly of that finished style, that quickening oratory, those enchanting pictures, those momentous truths, those outbursts of emo- tion, which all went to form a discourse of Chry- sostom, and which recalled to scholars the names of only two other men, whose glory as orators was to fill the world, and last till the judgment- day. He had learned all the avenues to the heart, and all its dens and darkest windings, for he had studied his own — liad explored its secrets, and sounded its depths. He was a master of the art of persuasion ; and warring with celestial weapons, he carried the citadel by storm, an I made men in love with the conquests he had vnaOc, and the new chains that bound them. '* It id only in the Christian Church that such AKCIFNT AND MODER!!. 87 beautiful characters nre formed, and such noble lives exhibited. The heathen world has never produced a Chrysostom, just as Spitz1)crj4cn has nover produced the cedars of Lei anon. In both cases the atmosphere forbade it. The lustre of a S jcrates or a Seneca becomes dim in the presence of this man. The power of philosophy is weak in comparison with the inspiring virtue of the CDss. Tie former can teach contempt of the world, it can chill and steel the heart ; but the latter can give life, can give back to man the powers which he had lost. In philosophy we have the wisdom of the world; in the Gospel wc have the power of God." .-^> ^V^ "i?-^ ^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) -*% il.O ^tttUi lllll^S 1^ l&i 122 I.I u HA 1^ l£° 12.0 Sdences Carporation ^•^ \ ,v <>^ ^. ;\ 23 WIST MAIN STREIT WIISTIR,N.Y. 14SM (716)t72-4S03 ■^ IV. AUGUSTINE. gtNE of the most striking pictures of moilera ^^ art is that of Aiy Schefler, which represents the communings of Augustine and Monica. The son of many prayers, and the saintly mother who had borne him on her lieavt with sore-tried faith for many years, sit with locked hands side by side. In utter content and a sympathy that feels no need for words, they look out at tlie western sky, as if they saw in the «;oklen clouds of eventide, that holy "City of God," the theme of the lofty meditations of both motlier and son. The mem- ory of the yearning affection and tender piety of that noble mother breathes across the centuries and is fragrant throughout the world to-day. The life and labours of that son, the greatest of the Latin Fathers, are at once the monument and memorial of her faith and zeal. Tlie materials for the study of this remarkable life are found in what is — for its subtle soul- searching, its sad self-accusings, its intense sorrow fur sin, its keen mental analysis, and its fervent piety — the most wonderful autobiography in any language. The Confessions of Augustine have been for fourteen centuries the moral porir;;o f owor 100 GREAT PREACHERS, to touch the heart, in its subtle self-dissectioD, self-accusing, and final triumph of faith. He was sitting with his friend Alypius, when he received a visit from a Christian officer of the Imperial court. Upon a gmiing-table lay a parchment scroll The visitor took it up and found it the writings of St. Paul. This led to converse en religion, and the visitor told how, while walking with the Emperor in the gardens of Treves, two high officers of the court found the Life of St. Antony, written by Athanasius, and were so quick- ened by his holy example as to devote their lives to God. While the story was told, Augustihe looked within and beheld " how foul he was, how crooked and defiled, bespotted and ulcerous.'* All his life long he had been praying, " Give me purity, but not now." "And now the day was come," he writes, " wherein I was to be laid bare to myself, and my conscience was to upbraid me. Thus was I gnawed within, and exceedingly confounded with an horrible shame. What said I not against myself? with what scourges of condemnation lashed I not my soul, that it might follow me, striving to go after Thee." In the agony of his soul he retired to the privacy of his garden. " And Thou, Loid," he continues, " didst press upon me inwardly by a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame. I said within myself, ' Be it done now, be it done now.' " And he buireudered every vile afiection, every ANCIENT AND MOl»KUN. 101 i ft earthly tie. " I cast myself down," continues this soul-history, " I know not how, uiuler a certain fig-tree, givini; full vent to n»y tears ; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to Thee. And, cried I unto Tliee : Lord, how long ? hoio long, Lord, ivilt Thou he angry for €vei' ? How long ? how long ? * to-morrow, and to-morrow V Why not now ? why this hour is there not an end to my uncleanness ? So was I speaking, and weeping in the bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo ! I heard from a neigh- bouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, * Tolle, lege ; Tolle, lege* — * Take and read ; Take and read.* I seized, opened, and in silence read that passage, on which my eyes first fell : Not in rioting and drunkenneas, not in chamhcring and wantonness, not in strife and envying : hut put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh. No further would I read ; nor needed I : for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the (jiarkness of doubt vanishes! away. I shut the volume, and with a calmed couutenauce made it known to Alypius. Thence we go in to my mother ; we tell her ; she rejoices ; we relate in order how it tool, place; she leaps for joy, and triumphs, and blesses Thee, Who art able to do above that which we ask or think." Augustine now determines to devote his life 102 GREAT FBEACUERS, to God and to abandon his profession of rhetoric, or, as he styles it, ''the service of his tongue in the marts of lip-labour/' and resolves, having been redeemed by Christ, to sell himself no more. At length he with his friend Alypius, his brother, and his son Adeodatus — the child of his sin — were baptized together by Ambrose, at East- ertide, in the basilica of Milan. As he listened to the Ambrosian hymns and canticles recently introduced for the consolation of the victims of the Arian persecution, tears of joy and thanks- giving flowed down his face. Seeking where they might serve God most usefully, the neophyte converts were returnin;» to Africa, and were already at Ostia, the port of Eome. Here took place the pious communing of mother and son, immortalized in art by the pencil of Scheffer. "She and I stood alone," records Augustine with loving minuteness, " lean- ing in a certain window, which looked into the garden of the house where we now lay, at Ostia ; where, removed from the din of men, we were recruiting from the fatigues of a long journey, for the voyage. We were discoursing then to- gether, alone, very sweetly ; and forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are "before, we were inquiring, between ourselves of what sort the eternal life of the saints was to be, which eye hath not seen ANCIENT AND MODERN. 103 jwr ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.** The saintly soul in the fulness of her joy uttered her Nunc Dimittis. " Son," she said, " I have no further need of anything in this life ; my highest hopes are now fulfilled. What do I here any longer?" Within five days she fell ill of her mortal sickness. "Here shall you bury your mother," she said to her weeping sons. When asked whether she shrank not from leaving her body 80 far from her native city where she had prepared a tomb beside that of her husband, she replied, "Nothing is far from God, nor is it to be feared that in the end of the world He shall not know whence to raise me up." With such holy words, in supreme content, the blessed spirit passed away. When the weeping of the mourners was assuaged, with tearful voices they softly chanted around the bier the words of the Psalter, " I will sing of mercy and judgment, to Thee, O Lord." Amid the ruins of the crumbling port of Ostia is still pointed out the traditional tomb of Monica, where, through the long centuries of war and conflict that have rolled above her grave, her ashes peacefully await the resurrection of the just at the last great day. The remaining forty-three years of the life of Augustine were passed in ascetic austerity and in zealous labouis, with tongue and pen, in expound- \ ■ 104 OBEAT PREACHERS, ing, enforcin<», and defending tbe doctrines of the Catholic faith. He was called to the episcopate of the North African town of Hippo, and bnro its burdens for five and thirty years of arduous toil. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, be preached to the faithful and disputed with heretics of every name. His rigid theological system is most strikingly developed in his controversy with the British heretic Pelagius. His noblest work, " The City of God " (De Civitate Dei), is the mon- ument of highest genius of the ancient Church, and in its kind has never been surpassed. Its immediate occasion was one of the great epochal events in the history of the race — the fall of the Boman Empire and the capture of its capital by the Goths. "The city of God," says Milman, "is at once the funeral oration of the ancient society, the gratulatory panegyric on tho birth of the new. It acknowleged, it triumphed in the irrevocable fall of the Babvlon of the West, the shrine of idolatry ; it hailed at the same time the universal dominion which awaited the new theocratic polity. The earthly city had undergone its predestined fate; it had passed away with all its vices and superstitions, with all its virtues and its glories (for the soul of Augustine was not dead to the noble reminiscences of Boman greatness), witii its false gods and its heathen sacrifices : its doom was sealed, and forever. But in its place had ANCIENT AND MODERN. 105 arisen the City of God, the Ciuirch of Christ; a new social system had emerged from the ashes of the old ; that system was founded by God, was rnled by Divine laws, and had the Divine promise of perpetuity." ^ The writings of Augustine comprehend over two hundred and thirty separate treatises, most of which have been many times republished in ponderous tomes, and many of them have been translated into every European language. Their influence for fourteen centuries on the theology of Christendom has been unequalled by that of any other writer. The rigorous assertion of his theory of predestination arises doubtless from his early Manicheism, and from the virulence of the Pelagian controversy. "The Church of Rome," sneers Gibbon, "has canonized Augustine and reprobated Calvin, yet the real difference between them is invisible even to a theological miscros- cope." But above the rigour of his stern theology rises the grand personality of the man, the fervour of his piety, the intensity of his spiritual affec- tions, his untiring zeal in the cause of God. Of his humility of spirit many touching examples are recorded, but none is more striking than tliat afforded by the publication, in his seventieth year, of his Retradationcs, in which he corrects many of his previous opinions, and performs the difficult task of acknowledging himself to have been in the wrong. lOG CHEAT PREACHERS, The death of this great man was worthy of his life. Genseric and his Vandals fell like a simoon on the North African provinces. With fire and sword they persecuted the Churches as in the direst days of the pagan Emperors. Augustine refused to leave his flock, and while the Vandal army besieged the city of Hippo, he employed his strength only to calm the fears and sustain the faith of his brethren. His worn-out frame succumbed to the perils of the siege before its fall, and be was spared the spectacle of the debolation of his diocese. His end was one of pio*>8 ecstasy, and the tears of a weeping mul- titude attested the depth of their grief for his loss. His body was transported to Italy, and slumbers in the Cathedral of Pavia. His doctrine has leavened the thought of Christendom for centuries, and his piety has inspired the faith oi generations to the present time. IM^ V. FEANCIS XAVIER.' On a blithe April morning in the year 1541, a gallant fleet dropped down the Tagus fiom the white-walled port of Lisbon. Many an eye un- used to tears was dimmed as the orange groves and chesnut-forests and vine-clad hills that en- girdled the city receded from view. For that fleet bore a thousand men to reinforce the garrison of the pestilent town of Goa, in Portuguese India — few of whom were ever again to see their native land. Yet one heart was unmoved by regret or foreboding, one countenance beamed with delight, one soul glowed with the raptures of religious exultation. For that fleet bore a lonely, serge-clad man, whose fame is destined to live as long as time shall last For over two centuries he has been canonized among the saints in heaven and invoked on earth, and throughout Catholic Christendom have altars been ei^ected to his name. The memory of Francis Xavier still stirs the soul to high emprise and commands the admiration of mankind, three hundred years after his body has ret\irned to dust. * Reprinted from Dr. Deema' excellent. yeriocUo«i« The Sunday Magazine, 108 QllliAT 1M5EA0ULU.S, Among tho chesnut-covered slopep of tlie Pyrenees, in the year 1506, this cliild of destiny was born. He grew up in the castle of his ances- tors, strong of body, active of mind, and nourished in chivalric instincts by the heroic traditions of his martial line. He would fain have followed the cnrcier of arms, but the hearts of his parents yearned over the child of their old age, and at their desire he embraced the pursuit of letters and the arts of peace. Ho early won distinction at the University of Paris, and at the age of twenty-two he was elected Professor of Philos- ophy in the capital of France. The subtleties of Aristotle became a passion to the young enthu- siast, and around his chair thronged the ardent youth of the University. Here he was brought under the spell of one of the most potent spirits that ever ruled the world. Ten years before, Ignatius Loyola, the gay soldier of fortiiue, was stricken down by a French ball at the siege of Pampeluna. He arose from his couch the avowed soldier of Christ and His Virgin Motlier. He was healed of his wound, he averred, by the touch of St. Peter; but the Apostle, if a good physician, was a poor surgeon, for his patient remained a cripple for the rest of his life. Clad in the filthy gabardine of a beggar, he plunged for months into a solitfary cave., where he fasted and prayed, and tortured both body and luind till he was reduced to the verge of madness. ANCIENT AND MODERN. 109 Here be conceived and wrote those "Spiritual Exercises," consisting chiefly of meditations on the tortures of the damned and the raptures of the saved, which he formulated into the "act of conversion " whereby courtiers were to be changed into confessors, and soldiers into saints. In his retreat, Loyola felt himself summoned to be the leader of a great spiritual army — a "religious militia," as he phrased it — which should battle in all lands, and by every weapon, against the enemies of the Pope of Rome and of the Catholic faith. And faithfully he obeyed that call. By the Society of Jesus more than by any other agency was the Protestant Eeformation arrested and turned back, and the whole of Southern Europe retained beneath the spiritual despotism of Home. To prepare himself for his mighty work — to become the teacher of the future teachers of the world — he took his seat, a man of thirty-four, by the side of little boys learning the rudiments of Latin grammar. In prison, in exile, in ship- wreck, in sickness, in hunger, in poverty, begging his way through Europe, wandering a pilgrim to Palestine, he cherished his inflexible purpose in his steadfast soul. He sought to attach Xavier to his person and his cause. But the courtly scholar shrank from the scourge, the fasting, the penance of the "Spiritual Exercises," and he laughed them to scorn. Yet the I'uscination was upon IIU cncAT rUEACnCRB, him. That potcut spirit wove its spells about him, probed his conscience to the quick, fired his spiritual ambition, and won his heart Xavier became the disciple of Loyola, and surpassed all his brethren in the fervour of his zeal, the austerity of his devotion, the heroism of his life. To mortify his body, which had once been his pride, he tied cords around his arms and legs till they corroded their way almost to the bone. Twice these penances brought him to the verge of the grave. In the last hour, as it was thought, he was borne into the public squares that by his death he might preach even more effectively than by his life. But he was restored, by a miracle, as he believed, to fulfil a ministry of toil, and trial, and triumph, such as rarely, if ever, has been equalled by man. In his five-and-thirtieth year Xavier was sum- moned by Loyola to become the Apostle to the Indies. " Go, brother," he said, " wliither the voice of God calls you, and inflame all hearts with the divine fire within you. — Id y accendedlo todo y emhrasadlo en fiiego divino." Xavier res- ponded with delight to the summons. Passionate sobs, not of sorrow, but of joy, attested the rap- ture of his soul in accepting the sacred mission. Penniless, alone, clothed but in a ragged cloak, he set out the very next day from Eome to Lisbon. As he descended the rugged slopes of tliu Pyre^cH^s, lie bolicltl in llie distance iV.c towen ANOIEMT AND MODERN. Ill lei'T of his father's castle, where still lived, in the feebleness of extreme old age, the mother who had watched and blessed the years of his child- hood and youth. But with that crucifixion of the natural affections which the religion of Rome calls virtue, he repressed the yearnings of his soul and saw her not The perishing millions of India were awaiting him and he might not pause, even for an hour, to look for the lost time on the face of her who loved him best of any on earth. As he stood erect upon the vessel's deck, and the white-walled convents, tree-embowered, and sunny slopes where Lisbon smiles among her vines, receded from his view, a strange light gleamed in his soft blue eyes, a strange joy filled his soul. He was seeking the shores of the "gorgeous Inde" not for its wealth of pearl and gold, not to win renown of arms, or the honours or rewards of civil power, but to tell of the love of Mary and her Divine Son to the dusky multitudes of that far-off land. He went forth like the first Apostles of Christ, with neither purse nor scrip, without money and without food. He fulfilled to the uttermost the vow of poverty of his Order. He was dependent for the bread he ate and for change of raiment on the charity of the soldiers and sailors of the fleet ; his couch was a pile of ship's cordage; and the nausea of sea-sickness, aggravated by the coarse refuse food on which he subsisted, from choice probably as much as from liccessity, wasted away his frame. 112 OBEAT PUEACilERS, Tet, notwithstanding his own illness, he min- istered with the utmost devotion to the scurvy- smitten crew of the infected vessel, performing witii alacrity the most loathso nie offices, even for the unthankful and the unworthy. Before the filming eyes of the dying he held the crucifix and spoke of a Saviour's love. To the reprobate and tlie vile he declared the judgment of God's law. He sought to restrain their wickedness, and even invented innocent pastimes for their autusement, tu divert them from their passionate and quarrel- some gambling. With tlie ullicers of the ship he discussed philosophy and_ politics, war and com- merce, with all the grace of an accomplished scholar aud polished courtier. Alter a voyage of five weary months the fleet reached the coast of Mozambique. Beneath the burning sun of Africa an epidemic broke out, aud carried death and dismay among the passengers and crews. Xavier was indefatigable in his min- istrations to the sick and the dying. The former he nursed with a woman's tenderness ; to tiie latter he gave the last consolations and rites of religion. At length he was himself stricken down by the infection, and well-nigh fell a victim to his service of love. Whenever he was able to leave his couch, •' he crawled," says the chronicler of his life, " to the beds of his fellow-sufferers to sooLiie their terrors or assuage their pains." He was raised up, however, from the gates of death \ AHCXniT AHD MODISy. 118 to be the messenger of life to the millions of India tnd Japan. AttMt many sufferings by sea and land, Xavier reached the scone of his future labours thirteen months after leaving Lisbon. At Goa he found the greatest obstacles to the conversion of the pagans to be the profligacy and wickedness of his Catholic countrymen. A greed for gold and a thirst for pleasure had utterly corrupted the ruling race. Lust and extortion and cruelty found their victims in a conquered and helpless people. Even the ordinary restraints of civilized society were wanting to sliame into the sem- blance of decency the orgies of vice of the European inhabitants. Appalled at the profligacy and corruption of society, Xavier sought first to reform the morals of the Christians before he attempted the conversion of the idolaters. It is recorded, indeed, that some of the latter who had forsaken their false gods were so shocked at the vices of their masters that they returned again to the worship of idols. Despairing of reclaiming the veterans of vice, Xavier resolved to try to rescue the children from its polluting power. Arming himself with a laige hand-bell, he roamed bareheaded through the streets of Goa, calling aloud on the parents to send their children to be catechised. Even in the vilest of men there is one chord, their love of their offspring, that promptly responds if skil- 114 GREAT PREACHERS, fully touched. The strange spectacle of this saintly man, clad in rags like an eremite from the wilderness, with his noble and expressive countenance, pleading for those neglected chil- dren, touched even the stoniest natures. A mul- titude of all ages followed him to the church. With impassioned eloquence he probed their conscience and sought to awaken in them a desire for a better life. He won the hearts of the little children by his more than a father's tenderness and love. He shared their youthful games and amusements, while at the same time he inculcated the holiest lessons of morality and religion. His great, loving heart yearned over all th^ victims of want and woe. He sought out the worst forms of suffering as other men seek out pleasures, in order that he might relieve the pangs of wretchedness. For this purpose he took up his abode in the lepers' hospital with the lazars and outcasts of mankind. But he sought especially, constrained by a passionate charity, the moral lepers of society — those smitten with the most deadly infection of sin. Even in the haunts of dissipation and profligacy his saintly presence was found, unstained amid the surround- ing pollution — like a sunbeam illuminating the vilest places — and seeking by his pungent wit and keen irony to shame them from their vices, or by his earnest beseeching to woo them to puiity of life. Nor were his effurts unavailing. ANCIENT AND MODERN. 115 Dy the strange spell of his iufluence even disso- lute men were reclaimed from vice to virtue, and the very pariahs of society were elevated to the dignity of nien, and often to the fellowship of saints. After a year of successful toil at Goa, Xavier learned the existence of beings of still more abject and urgent misery than any he had en- countered. They were the wretched pearl-divers of the Malabar coast. Their need was a call his soul could not resist. He sought their burning shore, and among those degraded people his bell rang out his call to [rayer and its warning of doom. Impatient of the slow mode of preacliing through an interpreter, he committed to memory translations of the Creed, the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, and recited them with impas- sioned earnestness and often with streaming tears. For fifteen months he toiled among these fisher- men, lodging in their squalid huts, sharing their simple fare of rice and water, consoling their sorrows, and inspiring the hope of immortality beyond the grave. He slept, it is said, during this period, but three hours out of the twenty- four. Such zeal was not without its sure reward. Many a lowly cottage bore the consecrating sign of the cross, and many a humble neophyte re- ceived Christian bcptism. Soon upon that arid coast no less than five-and-forty churches reared 116 GREAT PREACHEtt3, their altars to the worship of the Son of Mary. In such succesd Xavier's soul drank supreme content. His faith and that of his humhle converts was destined to undergo a severe trial A hostile invasion uprooted the newly-planted churches, and drove the Christian neophytes to take refuge among the desolate sand-bars and rocks of the Gulf of Manaar. Thither Xavier accompanied them, sustaining, consoling, directing them ; and procuring succorir in their utter poverty from the viceroy at Goa, seven hundred miles distant Eager to Tvin new viol-oiib? for the Cross, Xavier penetrated Cue jealous barriers of the' kingdom of Travancore. The story reads likes a romance, yet it is sustained by ample authentic testimony. This solitary, serge-clad, unprotected man, by his lofty faith, his iiery zeal, his tireless energy, overthrew the immemorial idolatry of the realm, and substituted the Christian religion in its stead. The Kajah and his courtiers were among the foremost converts. The idol temples were thrown down and Christian churches rose every- where throughout the land. Yet, this national conversion was not unopposed. Tlie Brahmins, after the manner of the priestly caste, persecuted with fire and sword the converts to the Christian faith. They also procured, or encouraged, the aid of a foreign invader. Tlie ancient chivalry of his ANCIENT AND MODERN. iiv martial line flamed up in tlie soul of the professed apostle of peace. Grasping a crucifix, he led the van of the defensive army, and with flashing eye and thrilling tones delivered to destruction the opposing hosts. He won the gratitude of the nation and received the title of the "great father" of the rajah. The intoxicating draught of power seems to liave fevered even the unworldly soul of Francis Xavier. The late obscure and humble priest demanded and obtained the recall of the Viceroy of Portuguese India, Don Alphonso de Sousa, * who had incurred, righteously it may be, his dis- pleasure. Nor was he without other, and perhaps justifiable, secular ambition. The Island of Manaar, a dependency of the Kingdom of Jaffna, had been converted to the Christian faith and incurred, therefore, a bitter persecution. Six hundred of the islanders were massacred, together with the King's son. Xavier procured the equip- ment of a Portuguese expedition to dethroue the persecuting King, and to annex his dominion. But the warrior-priest no longer led the way to vic- tory. The expedition was defeated, and Xavier departed to seek more appropriate fields of spir- itual conquest. After strengthening his soul by devout medita- tion and bafiling an army of fiends — so reads the record — at the traditional tomb, on the Coroman- dol coast, of St. Thomas, the fimt missionary to 118 QRKA.T PRKACHEKS, Iiidia» Xavier set sail for the populous Portuguese port of Malacca. In luxury and sensual immor- ality it surpassed even the wickedness of Goa. Like a stern Hebrew prophet — a Jonah preaching to the Ninevites — he wandered through the crowded bazaars calling on men everywhere to repent ; his warning bell pealing above the din of trade and the music of mirth. The faithless generation, however, laughed his warnings to scorn. But, blending his stern denunciations and fiery zeal with keen wit and courtly accomplish- ments, he at length overcame all opposition. Altars rose in the public squares, and confession and prayer succeeded profligacy and cursing. The eager missionary pressed on to the Moluc* cas, far in the unknown Eastern seas. Scarcely had he reached the island of Amboyna, when a piratical Spanish fleet menaced its shores. The plague was on the vessels. With a burning charity that embraced enemies as well as friends, Xavier boarded the ships, ministered day and night to the sick and dying, brought succour to their bodies and preached repentance to their souls. Thus he melted even the stern hearts of pirates, and, with the weapons of love, repelled a wanton invasion. Despite all remonstrance, he hastened on his perilous mission of proclaiming the Gospel to the barbarous tribes of the savajife neighbouring island!-. "If these lands," he exclaims, with a keenness of ANCIKNT AND MODERN. nu reproach that still echoes across the centuries, " had scented woods and mines of gold, Christians would find courage to reach them ; nor would all the perils of the world preveut them. They are dastardly and alarmed because there are nothing to be gained but the souls of meu. But shall love be less hardy and less generous than avar- ice ? " No ! he boldly answered, and to the warn- ing that he would probably perish by the hands of the inhabitants, he replied in the heroic spirit of a martyr : " That is an honour to which such a sinner as I am may not aspire ; but this I will aay, that whatever form of torture or of death awaits me, I am ready to suffer it ten thousand times for the salvation of a single soul." Even the most awful terrors of nature shook net this steadfast soul. Amid the shakings of an eaithquake, the convulsions of a volcano, the rain of falling rocks, and the peals of loudest thunder he calmly ministered at the reeling altar and exhorted his shuddering audience to flee from the wrath to come. But he also, with the character- istic casuistry of his Order, wrought upon their bodily fears for the good of their souls. The streams of molten lava, he assured them, were the outbursts of the fiery river of hell, the liijht- ning's glare was the reflection of its lurid flames, and the crashing thunders were the echoes of its groans of everlasting torment. The convulsions of the earth were caused, he averred, by the flight of the demons before the archanj^ers sword. 120 GRKAT PBEACIIERS, His was a spirit bom to rule. Even the heugh- tiest natures recognized his genius of command. The town of Malacca was besieged by a powerful Mohammedan fleet and army. The proud chiv- alry of Europe cowered before the insolent threats of the Moslem. In a weather-beaten bark Xavier entered the harbour. It was like the coming of Saint lago to the aid of the Christians in a hard-fought conflict with the Moms. He seemed like a supernatural presence which put lions' hearts into the bosoms of the garrison. He sent forth the fleet with the assurance of victory. It met with shipwreck and disaster. The fickle multitude now menaced with death him whom they had just hailed as a deliverer. But ho upraided their cowardice and reanimated their souls. The crisis of fate drew near. Full of faith and inspired with a lofty courage, Xavier kc?lt in importunate prayer at the altar. At length, springing to his feet, he exclaimed, in the spirit of prophecy, " Christ has conquered for us !'* Soon the victorious fleet re-entered the liarbour. Salvoes of cannon, a triumphal procession, jnd the chanting of the Te Dcum, celcbiated the victory. But Xavier, his task accomplished, turned his back on the grateful town. Human applause had no charms for him. Spurning wealth and plea- sure, and homage and power, the zealous mis- sionary sow^ut only the spiritual succor of tlie ANCIENT AND MODERN. 121 »»» perishing millions around him. In crowdcil bazaars or loathsome lazarettos, that lonely way- worn form might be seen, swinging his faithful bell ; his majestic countenance and pathetic eyes appealing with strange power to even stor hearts ; his great soul yearning with love and sorrow for the sinning and the sufTering ; and his pleading voice calling on all men everywhere to repent. With a profound and subtle sympathy he accommodated himself to every condition — the loftiest and the lowliest : now banqueting in the palace of the rnjah, and now sharing the rice and ghee of the humblest ryot or the outcast pariah; reasoning of high philosophy with the Brahmin pundit in the temples of Vishnu and Siva, or pointing the self- tormenting faquir to the Divine Sufferer who ha? taken away the sins of the world. He became all things to all men if by any means he might save some. After five years of wandering through the two Indies and the neighbouring archipelago, Xavier returned to Goa, the seat of Portuguese empire in the East. It was also the See of the Romish hierarchy. Here, too, the dread Inquisition re- pressed the hated crime of heresy with as relent- less and cruel a hand as even the iron rule of Torquemada. In appearance, Xavier was a mendic- ant. But his fame had spread from the Indies to the Yellow Sea, and to the Islands of Japan. A native of that far-o£f country, whose conscience 122 GREAT PREACHERS, was burdened with many crimes, for which he hr.l in vain sought expiation, heard of this great won- der. With two servants he set out to seek from this divine teacher, as he believed him to be, that peace of conscience which he could not find at home. In spite of storms and shipwreck he pro- ceeded in his eager quest to Malacca, and thence to Goa, a journey of eight thousand miles. In tliese men Xavier saw, he believed, the means for the conversion of Japan. After a cou rse of religious instruction they became not only Catholic Chris- tians, but members of the Order of Jesus. Japan had only four years before been dis- covered by the Portuguese. But Xavier was im- patient till he had conquered it for Christ. " I cannot express to you," he wrote to Loyol%** " tlie joy with which I undertake this long voy- age; for we consider a fleet sailing to Japan emi- nently prosperous in which one ship out of four is saved. Though the work far exceeds any which I have hitherto encountered, I shall not decline it; for our Lord has imparted to me an interior revelation of the rich harvest which will one day be gathered from the Cross when once planted there." In this assured faith he went forth. He wa9 obliged to take passage in a pirate ship. The images of false gods encumbered her deck, and foul demons, so he believed, beset her path with typhoon and whirlwind. After a twelve-months* ANCIENT AND MODERN. 123 voyage, the eight thousand miles journey was accomplished. He found in certain features of the Japanese religion a providential preparation, as he conceived, for the reception of Christianity. These strange people believed in a Virgin Mother and her Divine Son. There were also the anal- ogies of an infallible Pope, an ascetic priesthood, and institutions resembling those of the Cath- olic Church. We may assume, therefore, without breach of charity, that many of Xavier's converts retained their old doctrines under a new name. The pictures of Mary and the infant Jesus were easily substituted for those of Amida, the Japanese Virgo Deipara, and Xaca, her son, and they were as readily kissed and worshipped. It was a more difficult task to reform the sinful lives of the people. At the provincial capital of Nagoto his reproof of sensual wick- edness was answered by a shower of stones. " A pleasant sort of bonze, indeed," the luxurious in- habitants jeered, " who would allow us but one god and one wife," and they drove him, half-naked, away. The solitary, persecuted, and unprotected man walked, according to the traditionary record of his life, in a constant atmosphere of miracle. Poi- sons became innocuous, and deadly weapons harm- less, when employed against him. He was en- dowed with thaumaturgic power, he healed the sick ; he raised the dead ; he possessed the gift 124 GREAT PUKACIIER9, of ubiquity, he spoke in many langimjics at the .same time — so runs the fabulous legend. But it needs not these supernatural explanations to solve the secret of his success. Impelled by his im- passioned zeal, he acquired, we are told, at an ad- vanced age, a difficult language in a few weeks. He could dispute with the bonzes on tlie subtleties of their religion with a dialectic skill that won the admiration and often convinced the judgment of his accomplished adversaries. Koports of these polemics are still ixtant which recall the dis- putations of the philosophers in the grove of the Academy, or the dialectic tourneys of Padua or Salermo. But the authentic record of this remarkable life reveals the greatest miracle of all. With a faith that never faltered, a zeal that wearied not, a passionate love for souls that brooked no re- straint, and a courage that no dangers could daunt, he eagerly trod the thorny path of the confessor and the martyr. Driven from one city, he fled unto another. He resolved to visit Miako, at that time the capitol of the Empire. The season was midwinter. Tlie road led over rugged moun- tains and through tangled forests, icy streams and snowy wastes. Thinly clad against the bitter cold, he set out upon his journey with three of his converts who shared his persecutions. On his back he bore the sacred vessels for celebrating the Mass. A bag of parched rice was the pro- VMCIRNT a^CD MOriRRN. vis* >n for the way. They bMilii lost ^ «. the wit- derueas. A horseman approai •! beiiri.ig a heavy burden. "Xavier offered to carry the load," continues the record of the adventure, " if the rider would requite the service by pointing out the road. The offer was accepted ; but hour after hour the horse was urged on at such a pace, and so rapidly sped the panting missionary after him, that his tortured feet and excoriated body sank in seem- ing death under the protracted effort. In the ex- tremity of his distress no repining word was ever heard to fall from his lips. He performed this dreadful pilgrimage in silent communion with Him for whom he rejoiced to suffer the loss of all things, or spoke only to sustain the hope and courage of his associates. An entire month was consumed in the journey, the cruelty and scorn of man not seldom adding bitterness to the rig- ours of nature." At length he reached the capital. But it offered no repose to the wayworn yet intrepid missionary. The city was enduring the horrors of a siege. Amid the din of arms it was impossible to de- clare the Gospel of peace. Chanting the sublime strains of Psalm cxiv., "In exitu Israel de ^yypto^ donius Jacob de populo barharo" he set his face resolutely once more toward the wilderness, and reUaced his weary journey. Xavier visited chiefly the great cities of the 120 GREAT PREACHERS, Empire as tho cliief centres of influence. His fame as a saint had spread far and wide. At tlie Port of Fucheo, a Portugese ship was lying. The arrival of Xavier was hailed by a salute of all its fl;uns. The King, iu his palace, was as- tonished at the uproar, but was still more as- tonished when he found that its object was a mis- erable being, "so abhorred of the earth," said his messengers, " tliat the very vermin which crawled over him loathed their wretched fare." With the cliaracteristic policy of his Order, Xavier affected grandeur or humility, as either advanced the great interests for which alone he lived. He therefore submitted to the wishes of his countrymen, and assumed the gorgeous garb oi the ambassador of his most Christian Majesty Don John of Portugal. He was clad in robes of green velvet and gold brocade, adorned with precious stones. Silken banners and Chinese ta- pestry covered the barges in which the embassy and escort were rowed ashore, and the oars kept time to the clash of cymbals and the softer notes of flutes and hautboys. Beneath a panoply of state, with all the proud bearing of a monarch, Xavier advanced, surrounded by the chief officers of the ship, who, with bared heads, paid him the piofoundest honour. Six hundred men-at-arms were drawn up in barbaric pomp for his reception, through whose glittering ranks he marched with the native dignity of one born to command. The ANCIENT AND MODERN. 127 stately pageant produced the desired efTect upon the royal host. He received the hau;{hly aui- bassador of the Kin^ with the most courteous deference, whereas tlie humble missionary of Christ would have incurred only the utmo»t contempt Beneath his royal robes, Xavier cherished the same burnin ANCIENT AND MODHH*'. 141 jd His zeal and political, as well aa religwu*, influ- ence, drew upon him the animosity of the Koinan Catholic lords, and he was cited before the council to answer charges preferred against him, but was honourably acquitted. He was offered a benefice in the city of Lon- don, that of AUhallows. and even the mitre of Rochester, but declined both dignities with their emoluments on account of his anti-prelatical principles. He rejoiced in the progress of the Reformation in England, and in the suppression of the idolatries and superstitions of the mass ; but he regretted the temporizing policy that retained in the ritual and hierarchical institu- tions the shreds and vestiges of Popery. After the accession of Mary, Knox continued to preach, though with daily increasing peril, the doctrines of the Reformation. At length, his papers being seized, his servant arrested, and him- self pursued by the persecuting zeal of the court I arty, he withdrew, by the persuasion of his tViends, beyond the sea. An exile from his native land and fioni his family — for in the meantime he had married — he longed to return to the religious warfare from which he seemed to have fled. " I am ready to suffer more than either poverty' or exile," he writes, " for ihe profession of that religion of which God has made me a sim^>>e soldier and witness-bearer among men; 142 GBEAT rK£ACU£BS, : but my prayer is that I may be restored to the battle again." At Geneva, whither he repaired, he made the acquaintance of Calvin and other great lights of the Eeformation, and enjoyed the society o' many distinguished refugees from the Marian persecution. Here he devoted himself to study, especially in Oriental learning, then almost un- known among his countrymen. His enemies say that he also embraced tli€ antimonaichical prin- ciples of the Swiss Eepublic. Invited by the Protestant refugees of Frank- fort to become their pastor, he consented to do so ; but soon became involved in a controversy witli the prelatical faction of the English exiles, who anticipated on the continent the prolonged conflict between Conformists and non-Conformists» which subsequently convulsed the mother country. The Eeformation seemed to have been crushed out in Scotland with the capture of the Castle of St. Andrews, the last stronghold of the Protest- ant party, and with the banishment of the Pro- testant clergy which followed. But Knox, yearn- ing for the conversion of his country to the " true evangel," resolved, though at the peril of his life,> to visit the persecuted remnant lurking in ob- scure wynds of the city or in remote country houses, and to try to fan to a flame the smoulder- ing embers of the Eeformation, appuieutly well^ u rvi "til it." ANCIENT AND MODERN. 143 nigh extinct He was received with joy by brethren found faithful even in tribulation. "I praisit God," he writes, " perceaving that in the middis of Sodome, God mo Lottis than one, and mo faithfull dochteris than twa. Depart I cannot unto sic tyme as God quenche the thirst a litill of our brethrene, night and day sobbing, gronying for the breid of lyfe." He journeyed through the hill country — the refuge of the Lollards of Scotland — preaching and teaching day and night, kindling the zeal of the disheartened, and binding the scattered faithful in a bond of mutual helpfulness and common fidelity to the Christ and his Gospel — the first of those solemn leagues and covenants by which Scottish Protestantism was confederated against both Popery and prelacy. Like the sound of a clarion, his voice stirred the hearts of the people. " The trumpet blew the aid sound," he exclaims, "till the houssis culd not conteane the voce of it" Smoothing his rugged style to not uncou^'tly phrase, he wrote a letter of self-justification to the queen regent : " I am traduceit as an heretick, accusit as a f>ilse teacher and seducer of the pepill, besydis uther opprobries, whilk may easilie kindill the wrath of majestratis, whair innocencie ia not knawiu." He appeals to the justice of heaven, and refutes the false accusations against him. 144 GREAT PBEACHEB8, The remonstrance produced little effect The first principles of religious toleration were un- known in high places. Non-conformity to the religion of the sovereign was accounted rebellion against her person. "Please you, my lord, to read a pasquil ? " the regent contemptuously re- marked, handing the document to the Archbishop of Glasgow, the bitter enemy of the Reformer. Cited before an ecclesiastical court at Edinbur^^h, Knox repaired thither ; but, daunted by his bold- ness, his accusers abandoned their charge. He returned to Geneva to become, at the request ot the congregation, pastor of the C1.il h in that place. But no sooner had he left <.> k'agdom than the Komish clergy regained their courage. In solemn consistory they adjudged his body to the flames and his soi^l to damnation, and in impotent rage caused his efligy to be burned at the market-cross, amid the jeers of a ribald mob. While at Geneva, his busy pen was also en- gaged in fighting the battles of the Beformation, and he lent important assistance in translating that version of the Scriptures known as the Geneva Bible, one of the most powerful agents of the Eeforniation in Scotland. The cruel burning of the venemble Walter Milne by the Archbishop of St. Andrews, for the alleged crime of heresy, was the spark which exploded the mine of popular indignation against the priest party in ANCIENT AND MODERN. 145 Scotland. Knox felt that his place was in the thick of the impending conflict Denied passage through England by the antipathy of Elizabeth, after leaving Geneva forever, he sailed directly from Dieppe to Leith. The day after his arrival he writes from Edinburgh : " I am come, I praise my God, even into the brunt of the battle." The queen regent resolved to crush the Reformation, and declared that the Protestant clergy " should all be banished from Scotland, though they preached as truly as ever St. Paul did." On the outbreak at Perth, the regent attempted to dragoon the Protestants into conformity by French cuirassiers. The lords of the congregation took arms in defence of Christ's Kiik and Gospel. The summons sped like the fiery cross over the hills of Scotland. Knox preached everywhere, like John the Baptist in the wilderness, the new evangel The iconoclastic zeal of the new con- verts led, in many places, to the destruction of images and the sacking of monasteries and churches — events which have been a grievance with sentimental antiquarians to this day. But the evils with which the Eeformers were con- tending were too imminent and too deadly to admit of very great sympathy for the carved and painted symbols of idolatry. Better, thought they, that the stone saints should be hurled from their pedestals, than that living men should bu 146 GRKAT PREACHEna, burned at the stake ; and Knox is actually accused of the worldly wisdom implied in the remark, " Pull down their nests, and the rooks will fly away." We are not sure but that those stem iconoclasts would have regarded the sparing of these strongholds of superstition as analogous to the sin of Israel in sparing the fenced cities of the Philistines. " We do nothing," says Knox, "but go about Jericho, blowing with trumpets, as God giveth strength, hoping victory by His power alone." The Protestant lords, in solemn assembly at Edinburgh, deposed the regent and appointed a council of government. Tiiis sentence Knox ap- proved and defended. Thus was struck the first heavy blow at the feudal tenure of the crown in Europe, and Knox became one of the earliest expounders of the great principles of constitu- tional government and limited monarchy, a hun- dred years before these principles triumphed in the sister kingdom. Disaster assailed the Congregation. Their armies were defeated; their councils were frus- trated. But in the darkest hour the fiery elo- quence of Knox rekindled their flagging courage. An English army entered Scotland. The French troops were driven from the country. The re- ligious fabric, supported by foreign bayonets, fell in ruins to the ground, and the Beformatiou was ANCIENT AND MODERN. 147 established by law. The Protestant Council, with the aid of Knox, ])r<)ceetled to the orj^anization of society. Liberal provision was made for public instruction. In every parish was planted a school ; and to Knox is it largely owing that for three centuries Scotland has been the best edu- cated country in Europe, At this juncture arrived Mary Stuart, to assume the reins of governmont. Of all who came witliin the reach of her influence, John Knox alone remained proof against the spell of her fascinations. The mass to which she adhered was more dreaded by him, he said, than ten thousand armed men. And soon the Protestant party had cause to distrust the fair false queen^ who, with light words on her lip, and bright smiles in her eye, had seen head after head of the Huguenot nobles fall in the Place de la Greve, and who subsequently put her perjured hand to the bloody covenant of the Catholic League. Knox was now installed in the old historic Church of St Giles, where, to listening thous- ands, he thundered with an eloquence like his who " shook the Parthenon and fuhnined over Greece." "His single voice puts more life in us," exclaims a hearer, " than six hundred trumpets pealing in our ears." He spared not the vices of the court, and, with a spirit as daunt- less as that of Ambrose rebuking the Emperor 148 ORKAT PREACHERS, Theodosius, coiulcnined the couduct of the Queen. She sent for him in niiger. " Is lie not afraid ? " whispered the courtiers. "Why sould the plesiug face of a gentil woman affray me ? " he retorted ; " I have luik<'d in the faces of moiiy angry men, and yet have not been affrayed above measure." "My subjects, then," said the Queen, after a protracted interview, " are to obey you and not me?" " Nay," he replied, " let prince and subject both obey God." " I will defend the Kirk of Rome,*' she con- tinued ; "for that, I tliiiik, is the Kirk of God." " Your will, madam," answered Knox, " is no reason ; neither does your thought make the Eoman harlot tlie spouse of Jesus Christ" The subtle Queen next tried the effect of flattery on the stern Reformer. She addressed him with an air of condescension and confidence " as enchanting as if she had put a ring on his finger." But the keen-eyed man could not be thus hooded like a hawk on lady's wrist. The Protestant lords were beguiled, by the cunning wiles of the crowned siren, of the rights won by their good swords. Knox, with seeming prescience of the future, protested against their weakness, and solem.nI} renounced the friendship of the Earl of Murray as a traitor to the true ANCIENT AND MODEFN. Htf flvangel. But the submission of the han^lity barous of Scotland avaih^d iu)ti)in«; with the quuen while one frail old niiiu bowed not to her proud will. He was summoned before her. " Never prince was so handled," she ex- claimed ; " but I vow to God I will be revenged ;" and she burst into passionate weeping. Waiting till she became calm, he defended his public utterances. "He must obey God rather than man," he said. " He was not his own naster, but His who commanded him to speak plainly, and to flatter no flesh on the face of the earth." The queen again burst into tears. The stern old man seemed to relent. •' He took no delight in the distress of any creature," he said, "and scarce could bear his own boys* weeping when he chastened them for their faults ; but," he added, " rather than hurt his conscience, or betray his country, he must abye even the tears of a queen." Sentimental readers wax indignant at the iron- hearted bigot who could endure unmoved the weeping of a woman, young and lovely, and a queen. But possibly the vision of the headless trunks of the martyrs of Amboise steeled his nature against the wiles of the beautiful siren, who beheld unmoved that sight of horror ; and a thought of their weeping wives and babes may 160 GREAT PREACHEBS^ have nerved his soul to stand between his country and such bloody scenes. Knox at length was cited before Queen Mary on the accusation of treason. As she took her seat, she burst into laughter. " That man/' she exclaimed, " had made her weep, and shed never a tear himself. She would now see if she could make him weep." But Knox was not made of such " penetrable stuff" as to be moved by fear. The impracticable man was a thorn in the side of both Queen and courtiers. He could neither be overawed by authority, nor bribed by personal interest, nor cajoled by flattery. The ill-starred Darnley marriage was consummated. Knox pub- licly protested against it, although he kept clear of Murray's insurrection against the Queen. The Protestant lords being driven into exile in con- sequence of the disastrous failure of their revolt, the Catholic faction rapidly gained the ascendant. But the bloody scene of Eizzio's murder, and the consequent political convulsions, frustrated their hopes of supremacy. Knox, though innocent of all complicity with that foul deed, by which some of Scotland's noblest names were stained, was yet compelled to retire from Edinburgli to Kyle, and subsequently visited the English Court. He was absent from the realm when the dark tragedy of Kirk-a- Field Was enacted, rendered still more horrible by the AMCIEMT AND MODERN. 151 infamous marriage of the Queen with her hus- band's murderer. Crnig, the colleague of Knox at St. Giles, commanded to publish the banns of these fatal nuptials — vile as thos« of Clytem- nestra and ^gisthus — publicly took heaven and earth to witness that he abhorred and detested the marriage as scandalous and hateful in the eyes of God and men. The heart of the nation was stirred to its depths. The Protestants, almost to a man, be- lieved Mary guilty of the death of Darnley. Broadsides of verse invoked a bloody vengeance on the perfidious wife and Queen, as in the following example : '* Her dolesome death be worse than Jezebel, Whom through a window surely men did thrawn Whose bloud did lap the cruel hundys fell. And doggis oould her wicked bainis gnaw." ** Bothwell was no his lane in his sin," said the people, " and he suldna be his lane in the punish- ment." With this rhadamanthine judgment the stern spirit of Knox, and of most of the ministers, concurred. The nation rose in its majesty, and deposed the Queen who brought a stain upon the Scottish name. Bomance and poetry, and even the pages of sober history, have cast a glamour around the fair and fascinating Queen, who, by her witch- eries, beguiled all who came within her influ- 152 GREAT PREACnERS, encc — all save onr stem Reformer. Her beauty and Iier misfortunes, her long imprisonment and the tragic pathos of her death, have softened the rigour of historical judgment concerning her life. But the relentless litcraiy iconoclasm of Froude has broken the idol of romance, and exposed her faults and vices, which were neither few nor light. Knox's profound conviction of Mary Stuart's guilt must be his justification for what has been regarded as his harsh and almost vindictive treat* ment of his fallen sovereign. He felt that her crimes might not bo condoned without becoming a partaker in her iniquity. They were not merely political offences, but sins against high Heaven, which called aloud for retribution. " The Queen had no more right," he said, " to commit murder and adultery than the poorest peasant" And to the criminal lenity of the nation he attributed the civil war, which reddened mountain gorse and moor-land heather, and made many a rippling burn run ruddy to the sea with stains of Scotland's noblest blood. In the confusion and anarchy which followed Murray's murder, was fulfilled the saying, " Woe unto thee, land, when thy king is a child ! " The malice of Knox's enemies — and no man ever had more virulent ones — took advantage of thf, death of his poweful protector to bound dowd AlfCIKNT AND MODERH. 153 the agod and enfeebled minister of God. His life even was threatened by the Marian forces in possession of the city, and an arquebuse was fired inta his room, the ball failing to take effect only in consequence of a change of his accus- tomed seat The spiteful tribe of slander-mongers also distilled their venom, and strove to poison the public mind against him. His friends coun- selled his withdrawal from the reach of the tur- bulent Edinburgh mob. £ui the sturdy veteran refused, till they told him that they would defend him with their lives, but that if blood was shed the blame would be his. Upon this, " sore against his will," he retreated to St. Andrews, the scene of his earliest labours and of some of his greatest triumphs. Yet he was once more to be restored to his beloved flock at St. Giles. The Queen's party being driven from the city, Knox returned thither to die. Yet once more, like a lamp which a blast of wind fans into intenser flame only to flicker sooner to extinction, so the fiery soul was again to blaze forth in righteous indignation, and the clarion voice was again to fill the hollow arches of St. Giles before it became silent forever. The blood-curdling story of St. Bartholomew's dread massacre miglit well wake the dead or cause the stones to cry out. As post after post brought tidings of fresh atrocities to the tingling ears of 164 GUEAT PRKACIIERS, the Scottish Protestants, a tlirill of horror con- vulsed tho heart of the nation. It seemed as if the mystical angel of tlie Apocalypse poured his vial of wrath upon the earth, and it became as hlood. The direst crime since the Crucifixion, at which the sun was darkened and the earth trembled, cried to Heaven for vengeance. In tho guy French capital, as the midnight tocsin rang its knell of doom, human hytcnas raged from house to house, from street to street, howling, " Kill ! Kill I " Maids and matrons, aged men and little children, were offered in bloody holocaust to the papal Moloch. Infants were snatched from their mothers' arms and tossed on spear points through the streets; and high-born ladies were dragged in death by hooks through the gutters, reeking with gore. The sign of peace, the holy cross, was made the assassin's badge uf recognition. The noblest head in France, the brave Coligny's, was borne by a ruffian on a pike, its hoary hairs bedabbled with blood. The craven King, from his palace windows, glutted his cruel eyes with the murder of his people. Nay, such was his fanatic zeal, that, snntching an arquebuse from an attendant, he himself shot down the wretched supplicants who fled for refuge to his merciless gates. For a week the carnival of slaughter continued. In the capital and the provinces seventy thousand persons perished. ANCIENT AND BfODERN. 155 "Rome held high jubilee over this dceil of Ato. Cannon thundered, organs pealed, and sacred choirs sang glory to the Lord of Hosts for this signal favour vouchsafed His holy Church ; and on consecrated medals was perpetuated a memorial of the damning infamy forever. In the Sixtine« chapel may etill be seen Vcburi's picture of the tragedy, with inscription — " Pontifcx Colignii necem probat — The holy Pontiff approves the slaughter of Coligny." In the gloomy cloisters of the Escurial, the dark-browed Philip on the reception of the tidings, laughed — for the first time in his life, men said — a sardonic, exulting fiendish laugh. But throughout Protestant Christendom a thrill of hoiTor curdled the blood about men's hearts. They looked at their wives and babes, then clasped them closer to their hearts and swore eternal enmity to Eome. For once the cold language of diplomacy caught fire and glowed with the white heat of indignation. At London, Elizabeth, robed in deepest mourning, and in a chamber draped with black, received the French ambassador, and sternly rebuked this outrage on humanity. Her minister at Paris, in the very focus of guilt and danger, fearlessly denounced the crime. In Edinburgh, John Knox was borne to the great Kirk, and lifted up into the pulpit, " with a face wan and weary as of one risen from the if m 356 GKEAT rRKACIIEHS, dead." Over the upturned sea of fiiees— tlie woineii's pale with tearful passion, the inen'a kuit as in a gorgon frown — gleamed his kindling eyes. The weak voice quavered with emotion, now melting their souls with sympathy, now firing their indignation at the deed of blood. Gather- ing up his expiring energies, like a prophet of the Lord, he hurled forth words of doom, and denounced God's wrath against the traitor King. He declared that his name should be a curse and a hissing to the end of time, and that none of his seed should ever sit upon his throne. And ere long a dreadful Nemesis overtook the guilty monarch. Within twenty months he lay tossing upon his death couch at Paris. His midnight slumbers were haunted by hideous dreams. " The darkness " — we quote from Froude — " was peopled with ghosts, which were mocking and mo\^ing at him, and he would start out of his sleep to find himself in a pool of blood — blood — ever blood." The night he died, his nurse, a Huguenot, heard his self-accusations, "I am lost," he muttered ; " I know it but too well ; I am lost." He sighed, blessed God that he hud left no son to inherit his crown and infamy, and passed to the great tribunal of the skies. But Huguenoterie was not buried in the gory grave dug on St. Bartholomew, From the mar- tyrs' blood, more prolific than the fabled dragon's ANCIENT AND MODERN. 157 teeth, new hosts of Christian heroes sprang, con- tending for the martyr's starry and unwithering crown. Like the rosemary and thyme, which the more they are bruised give out the richer per- fume, Protestantism in France breathed forth those odours in sanctity, which shall never lose their fragrance till the end of time Knox's work was now well-nigh done. A few days after the scene above described, he tottered home from the pulpit which he should occupy no more, followed by a sympathetic multitude of his ** bairns," as he affectionately called his children in the Gospel, till he entered his house, which he never left again alive. With a prescience of his near approaching end, he calmly set his house in order, paying his servants and settling his worldly aflfairs. He gave also his dying charge and last iarewell to the elders and deacons of his Church, and to his fellow-ministers in the Gospel. The Earl of Morton he solemnly charged to maintain the true evangel, the cause of Christ and His Kirk, the welfare of his sovereign and of the realm. " If you shall do so," he said, " God will bless and honour you ; but if you do it not," he continued in solemn menace, "God shall spoil you of these benefits, and your end shall be igno- miny and shame." Though his right-hand had forgot its cunning, and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. 158 GREAT PREACHERS, yet did he not forget Jerusalem, but remembered her above his chief joy. His continual prayer was, " Be merciful, Lord, to thy Church, which thou hast redeemed. Give peace to this afflicted Commonwealth. Eaise up faithful pastors, who will take the charge of Thy Church." The reading of the Scriptures and of " Calvin's Sermons " cheered almost every hour of his sick- ness. The day before his death, Sunday, November 23, he was in holy ecstasy. " If any be present, let them come and see the work of the Lord," be exclaimed ; and as the bystanders approached his bed, the veteran confessor, having fought the fight and kept the faith, exulted, like another Paul, in his approaching deliverance, and beheld in holy vision the triumph of the true Church, ** the spouse of Christ, despised of the world, but precious in the sight of God." " I have been in heaven," he continued, " and have possession. I have tasted of the heavenly joys, where presently I am." The last day of his life, being in physical anp;uish, a friend expressed sympathy for his suffering. " It is no painful pain," he said, "but such as shall, I trust, put an end to the battle." He was willing to be thus for years, he said, if God so pleased, and if He continued to shine upon his soul through Jesus Christ. Exulting in the sure and certain hope of a «»■• " ANCIEMT AND MODERN. 159 a glorious resurrection, he requested his wife to read the fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians. " 0, what sweet and salutary consolation," he exclaimed, " the Lord hath afforded me from that chapter ! ** " Bead where I first cast my anchor," he added, a little later ; when she repeated Christ's pleading, pathetic intercession for His disciples in John xvii. — a passage which, with Isaiah liii. and a chapter from the Ephesians, he had read to him every day. " Now, for the last time," said the dying saint, ' I commend my body, spirit, soul, into Thy hands, Lord. . . . Within a short time I shall exchange this mortal and miserable life for a blessed immortdity through Jesus Christ. , , . Even so. Lord Jesus, come quickly." After evening worship, said a friend, " Sir, heard ye the prayers ? " " Would to God," he replied, '' that you and all men had heard them as I have heard them ! I praise God for that heavenly sound." After an interval of quiet, he exclaimed, " Now it is come;" and ere midnight tolled from the Tolbooth tower, the weary wheels of life stood still, and, without a struggle, he expired. The eloquent tongue was now silent forever. Tlie noble heart throbbed no more. The face that never blanched before man, became pale at the icy touch of death. His long toil and travail were ICO GREAT PREACHERS, ended. The Christian athlete laid his arms for- ever down, and entered into his eternal rest *' After life'* fitful fever, he sleeps well. . . . He hates him, That would upon the rack of this rongh world Stretch him out longer." In two days his body was laid beside tM walls of St Giles, the scene of his apostolic ministra- tions. The regent, the principal nobility, the neighbouring ministers, and a great concourse of people, paid their last homage, not without sighs and tears, to one of Scotland's noblest sons. As he was laid in the grave, the Earl of Morton pro- nounced his eulogy in the memorable words, " Here lies he who never feared the face of man." Baiely did so strong a soul tabernacle in so frail a body. He was of low stature, slight frame, and, as age, care, and sickness did their work, of worn and rugged features, which were, however, kindled by piercing dark eyes. His gray hair and long gray beard gave him a venerable and cl%rified mien. Knoi*s chief power was in the pulpit There he reigned without a rival. Indeed we must go back to the golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch and Constantinople before we can find his equal in eloquence and in iufiuenoe oa contemporary l/olitical events. » ANCIENT AND MODERN. 161 »* The afterward celebrated James Mtlville thus describes Knox's preacliing at St. Andrews : " In the opening up of his te.xt, he was moderate tlio space of an half-houre ; but ere he liad done with Iiis sermone, he was sa active and vigorous that he was lyk to ding the pulpit in blads, and flie out of it." His words rang like anvil-strokes where swords are forced for battle. He was not a man clothed with soft raiment, and speaking smooth things ; but a stern prophet of the truth, rebuking sin when flaunting in velvet as well as when cower- ing in rags. He was ungraced with that fine complacency which speaks only in flowery phrase and courtly coujpliment in the presence of the great. He felt that he stood ever in His presence before whom all earthly distinctions vanish, and tlie mcnnest and the mightiest are alike the olijects of His love and the subjects of His law. He walked " as ever in his great Task-maater'a eye." Yet his nature was not naturally stern. " I know," he said, as he lay upon his death-bed, " that many have frequently and loudly com- plained, and do yet con» plain, of my too great severity; but God knows that my mind was always void of hatred to the persons of those against whom I thundered the severest judg- ments." In refutation of the charge of seditious railing 162 GREAT PREACHERS, I j against his sovereign, he said that he had not railed against her, unless Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other inspired writers were also railers. He had learned plainly and boldly to call wickedness by its own terms. " I let them understand," he proudly said, "that I am not a man of the law that has my tongue to sell for silver or favours of the world." To the last, Knox was a devoted student of Holy Scripture. Every month the Book of Psalms was read in course ; and the sayings of our Lord and teachings of St. Paul were ever on his lips and in his heart. Knox was twice married ; first to Miss Bowes, of Berwick, a lady of good family, who for seven years made him a faithful helpmeet during his frequent exiles and journey ings. After her death, he remained a widower for upwards of three years, when he married Miss Margaret Stewart, a daughter of Lord Ochiltree. Knox was a voluminous writer, as well as an eloquent preacher, and a man active in public affairs. His literary style is marked by the characteristics of the age. It is somewhat in- volved, sometimes harsh, always strong, and often picturesque and animated, although devoid of ornament, for he utterly despised the graces of rhetoric. Ko man was ever more bitterly maligned and traduced during his life, or persecuted in the ANCIENT AND MODERN. 163 iled ther rned own said, \ my )rld." nt ol salma Lord s Upa JoweB, seven ng his death, years, .lighter as an public )y the lat in- and , devoid kces of led and in the grave with posthumous malice. Even his very bones have been flung out of their resting-place, and no man knoweth where they are laid. Political partizanship and religious rancour have combined in aspersing his character, his motives, and his conduct. "A romantic sympathy with the Stuarts," says Froude, " and a shallow liber- alism, which calls itself historical philosophy, has painted over the true Knox with the figure of a maniac." Nor even after a controversy of three centuries above his slumbering dust, has he been relieved of the odium which was heaped upon his memory. Like his distinguished contemporary, Lord Bacon, who, overwhelmed with obloquy and reproach, committed his reputation to after ages and to foreign lands, so the maligned and per- secuted Father of the Scottish Reformation, con- scious of the approval of his Maker, appealed from the passions and prejudices of his enemies to the judgment of posterity. " What I have been to my country," he declares, "albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. For, to me," he plaintively continues, " it seems a thing most unreasonable that in my decrepid age, I shall be compelltd to fight against shadows and houlets, that dare not abide the light." ** The full measure of Knox s greatness," says /■ 164 GREAT PREAGHEBS, the philosophic Froude, "no man could then estimate. It is, as we look back over that stormy time, and weigh the actors in it one against the other, that he stands out in his full proportions. No grander figure can be found in the entire history of the Reformation in this island than that of Knox. He was no narrow fanatic, who could see truth and goodness nowhere but in his own formula. He was a large, noble, generous man, with a shrewd perception of actual fact, who found himself face to face with a system of hideous iniquity. . , . His was the voice which taught the peasant of the L)thians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with the proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his forefathers. He was the one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften nor Muitland de- ceive. He it was that raised the poor Commons of his country into a stern and rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, superstitious, and fanatical, but who, nevertheless, were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest could force again to submit to tyranny. The spirit which Knox created saved Scotland."* But to-day he belongs not to Scotland, but to the world. While men love virtue and revere piety and admire heroism, so long will the memory *' History of England," x. 457. \ lIIOX )UttO [evere Imory ANCIENT AND MODERN. 1G5 of Knox be a legacy of richest blessing and an inspiration to highest courage and to noblest effort for the glory of God and for the welfare ol inau. •^ ^JS^ MCHAED BAXTEE. jF the two thousand nonconforming clergy who in the year 1062 abandoned their livings rather than perjure their consciences, none was more conspicuous for learning and piety, for zeal and suffering, than Ibi chard Baxter. Indeed, no nobler nature sprang from that stormy age which produced a Cromwell and a Hampden, a Marvell and a Milton. But never was more heroic soul enshrined in a frailer tabernacle, or assailed by ruder gusts of fortune. His life was one long martyrdom of disease and fiery agonies of pain. His physical infirmities were aggravated by unremitting toil and study, and by cruel per- secution and imprisonment. But the tree that wrestles with the storm upon the wind-swept height acquires a firmer fibre and a sturdier growth than that which nestles in the sheltered vale. So the stem Puritan nature, bufifeting with the blasts of adversity, developed a strength of moral fibre, an unfaltering will, and dauntless daring, that a blander atmosphere might have enervated or destroyed. The study of that heroic ANCIENT AND MODERN. 167 life cannot fail to quicken nobler impulses and 'iisi>ire a lofty purpose even in an age of luxury and self-indulgence. On the 12th A November, 1615, was born, in the pleasant village of Kuwton, Shropshire, the child who was to influence so largely the religious destiny of his own and of future times. His father was a substantial yeoman, who cherished the fear of God in a period of general spiritual declen- sion. King James's "Book of Sports" seemed almost to enforce the desecration of the Sabbath ; and Baxter complained that in his youth the family "could not on the Lord's-day read a chapter, or pray, or sing a psalm, or catechise and instruct a servant, but with the noise of the pipe and tabor, and the shoutings in the street, contin- ually in our ears. Sometimes the morris-dancers would come into the church in all their linen, and scarfs, and antique dresses, with morris- bells jingling at their legs; and as soon as common-prayer was read, did haste out presently to their play again." His early instructors in secular knowledge were A stage-player and an attorney's clerk, who had successfully assumed the functions of curate of the parish. But the religious teachings of his godly sire, and the study of the family Bible, which was all his library, save some pedlars' ballads and tracts, and a few borrowed books. 168 GBEAT PRRACIIEItfli were the most important elements in the forma- tion of his character. From his sixteenth to his nineteenth year he attended the Wroxeter gram- mar-school, where he acquired a fluent though uncritical use of Latin, and a partial knowledge of Greek. Few glimpses of his boyhood occur, although he tells us that he was addicted to orchard-robbing and to the inordinate \ise of fruit, which he believed induced his subsequent physi- cal infirmities. His constitution was further undermined by an attack of small-pox, which left behind symptoms of acute phthisis. Shortly after attaining his twentieth year Baxter was induced to try his fortune at Court Tliither he accordingly repaired, fortified with a letter to the Master of the Hevels. The frivolous amusements and fashionable follies of Wliitehall, however, proved distasteful to his naturally serious disposition, and within a month he returned to his quiet and studious life at Rowton. *' I had quickly enough of the Court,** he says, " when I saw a stage-play instead of a sermon on the Lord's-day in the afternoon, and saw what course was there in fashion.** From the seriousness of his deportment he early acquired the name of Precision and Puritan ; but though at first nettled by the sneer, he soon learned to regard us an honour an epithet which was daily heaped by the woi'st upon the best of men. AUCIENT AND MOUKfiN. 1G9 But mere sobriety of life could not satisfy tlio demands of an awakened conscience. A severe ill- ness soon brought him to the bordei^ of the grave. Deep convictions took hold upon his mind. His soul wa<( shaken with fearful questionings. Dark forms of unbelief assailed him, — doubts cf the future life, of the credibility of the Scriptures, ot the very existence of God. The very foundations of faith seemed to be destroyed. But he bravely wrestled with his doubts. He boldly confronted his spiritual diiriculties, and he came off victorious, but not without receiving in the conflict mental scars, which he bore to his dying day. His con- victions were inwrought into the fibre of his being. His faith henceforth was founded upon a rock. At the age of twenty-three he was ordained, and became the curate to a clergyman at Bridge- north. Two years after, he was appointed to the cure of souls at Kidderminster, and entered with enthusiasm upon his parochial duties. His earnest ministrations and sedulous pastoral care disturbed the spiritual apathy of the town, and soon wrought a wonderful improvement in the manners of the people. Nor was he less mindful of the ills of the body than of the maladies of the soul. For years he practised among them the healing art, till, finding the tax upon lus time too 170 GREAT IMIEAUIIF.IJS, fjreat, he secured the residence of a professional pliysician. The times were full of portents. The political atmosphere was surcharged with elements which must ere long produce an explosion. In the oppres- sive lull, like that before a storm, could be heard the far-off mutterings of the thunder about to burst over the astonished nation. Society was to be plunged almost into chaos by the violence of the shock. The Puritans, from being a religious sect, were gradually becoming a political power. Op- pression and persecution only confirmed them in their principles. They were gradually attracting to themselves the noblest spirits of the realm — those who loved God and loved liberty. Baxter's religious sympathies were almost en • tirely with the Puritans, but he was loyal to his sovereign. The storm burst in his immediate neighbourhood. The iconoclastic zeal of the Roundhead soldiery attacked some lingering relics of Popery in the Kidderminster church ; a riot with the townspeople ensued. Baxter, as a man of peauc, retired to Coventry as a city of refuge till the return of quiet times. " We kept to our own principles," he says : " we were unfeignedly for King and Parliament." Invited by Cromwell to become chaplain of the troops at Cambridge, he declined; but afterward visiting the Parliamen- tary army, he found, as he conceived, much theo- ANCIEM AMD MODKRN Hi logical error in its ranks, and accepted Ihu chaplaincy of Whalley's regiment, as affording an opportunity of converting the Anabaptists and Levellers to the orthodox faith.* A skilled polemic, he challenged his adversaries to a public discussion. Tiie theological tourna- ment took place at Amersham church, in Buck- inghamshire. " I took the reading-pew, says Baxter, " and Pitchford's cornet and troopers took the gallery ; and I alone disputed against them from morning until almost night." He sought a nobler antagonist iri the person of the General himself; but Cromwell, he complains with some bitterness, "would not dispute with me at alL" But he witnessed other and direr conflicts than these ; and after many a bloody skirmLii, minis- tered to the bodily and ghostly necessities of the wounded and the dying. He was also present at the sieges of Bridgewater, Exeter, Bristol, and Worcester, ever striving to mitigate the horrors of war, and to promote the spirit of peace and good- wia Compelled by ill-health to leave the army, he returned to his beloved flock at Kidderminster, and gave to the world the undying legacy of his 'Edwards, a writer of the period, in his "Gangraena," or Collection of Errors, enumerates sixteen prevailing varie- ti«8 of heresy, aud quotes one hundred and seventy-six erroaeoas paiisages from current theological literature. 172 GREAT PREACHERS, "Saint's llest " and "Call to the Unconverted," written, he tells us, " in the midst of continual* languishing and medicine by a man with one foot in the grave, between the living and the dead." The one seems like a blissful anticipation of tliat heaven in whose very precincts he walked ; the other is almost like a call from the other world, so frail was the tenure of his life when it was uttered, but echoing through the ages in many a strange land and foreign tongue.* It has aroused multitudes from their fatal slumber, and led them to their everlasting rest. Baxter was no sycophant of the great. He fearlessly declared, even before Cromwell, his abhorrence of the execution of the King, and of the usurpation of the Irotector. Invited to preach at Court, he boldly declaimed in the presence of the Great Captain agaiust the sin of maintaining schism for his own political ends. With a candour no less than his own, and in honourable testimony to his worth, and to the value placed upon his esteem, Cromwell sought to convince him of the integrity of his purpose and justice of his * During Baxter's life as many as twenty thousand copies of the "Call to the Unconverted" were sold in a year- -a vast number for that period. It was translated by Eliot into the Indian dialect, for the use of the American savages. It has since been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and multiplied almost beyond oomputatioo. \ ANCIKNT AND MODKKK. 173 acts. But the Puritan Iloynlist was faithful to the memory of liis slain king. He left the Court, where advancement awaited him, and consecrated Ids wealth of learning and eloquence to the humble poor of Kidderminster, rejoicing in their simple joys, sympatliizing with their homely sorrows, warning every man and teaching every man as in the sight of God. Baxter sympathized strongly with the exiled sovereign, and preached the thanksgiving sermon at St. Paul's on Monk's declaration for the king. On the Restoration he accepted a royal chaplaincy, and in conscientious discharge of the duties of his office he preached a two-hours sermon of solemn admonition, ungraced by courtly phrase or com- pliment, before the yawning monarch. He was jealous of the interests of religion, and in a per- sonal interview with Charles, to use the words of Neal, " honest Mr. Baxter told his majesty that the interest of the late usurpers with the people arose from the encouragement they had given religion ; and he hoped the king would not undo, but rather go beyond, the good which Cromwell or any other had done." Invited to present a plan of ecclesiastical refor- mation, he framed one on the basis of Archbishop Usher's " Eeduction of the Episcopacy ," but his comprehensive and moderate scheme was rejected. Notwithstanding the specious promises of the m 174 GUEAT FKEACUERS, royal Declaration, the perfidy of the king ani court was such that Baxter refused the offer of the mitre of Hereford as an insidious bribe. He sought instead permission to return to his humble flock at Kidderminster. He asked no salary, if only he might labour among them in the gospel ; but his request was refused. Baxter was a prominent member of the cele- brated Savoy Conference, in which for fouiteeu weeks twenty-one Anglican and twenty-one Presbyterian divines — twelve of the former being of episcopal or archipiscopal dignity — attempted a reconciliation between the contending ecclesias- tical factions. But this project was defeated by the bigoted opposition of the bishops. " Their lordships were in the saddle," says the contem- porary chronicler, "so they guided the contro- versy their ovn gate." From the same authority we learn that " the most active disputant was Mr. Baxter, who had a very metaphysical head and fer- tile invention, and was one of the most ready men of his time for an argument ; but," he adds, " too eager and tenacious of his own opinions." He gave special offence by drawing up a "Eeformed Liturgy," in the language of Scripture, which he proposed as an alternative to the venerable form consecrated by the use of a hundred years. The prelatical party were eager to return to the living.'' from which they had been so long ANCIENT AND MODERN. 17a excluded. Even clergy sequestered for public scaodal, reinstated in their forfeited privileges, threw off all the restraints of their order. Every week, says Baxter, sc^e were taken up drunk in the streets, and one wa^ reported drunk in the pulpit A flood of profligacy swept over all the barriers of virtue and morality. The king saun- tered from the chambers of his mistresses to the church evtn upon sacrament days. The Court became the scene of vile intrigue. Dissolute actresses flaunted the example of vice and made a mock of virtue in lewd plays upon the stage. The " Book of Sports; " was revived, and Sabbath desecration enjoined the authority of Parliament. To be of sober life and serious mien was to be accounted a schismatic, a fanatic, and a rebel. Engrossed in persecuting schism, the National Church had no time to restrain vice. The excesses of a faction of Fifth Monarchy men, who in the name of King Jesus raised a riot in the city, gave an occasion of persecuting the Puritan and Presbyterian party. In the very year of the Eestoration, and almost coincident with His Sacred Majesty's Declaration of liberty of conscience, the dungeons of Loudon were glutted with prisoners for conscience* sake. Among these were five hundred Qu^r-ors, besides four thousand in the country gaols. For " devil- ishly and perniciously abstaining from church/* 176 GREAT PRKACIIERS, attending conventicles, and like heinous crimes, John Bunyan languished in prison for twelve years, and bequeathed to the world its noblest uninspired volume. The Act of Uniformity went into effect on August 24, 16G2, the anniversary of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew — an omen of sinister signi- ficance, inasmuch as both crimes were animated by the same spirit of religious intolerance. Two thousand, " worthy, learned, pious, and orthodox divines," as Locke has styled them, were forcibly banished from their roof-trees and hearth-stones, and driven forth homeless and shelterless, for no offence save worshipping God according to the dictates of their conscience. While the courtly revellers of Whitehall were celebrating the nuptials of King Charles and the fair Catha- rine of Portugal, from tlie cathedral close and prebendal stall, from rectory and vicartige, the ejected clergy went forth, like Abraham, not knowing whither they went. This cruel act, says Burnet, raised a grievious cry over the nation. Many must have perished but for the private col- lections for their subsistence. " They cast them- selves," CO ^tinues the bishop, " on the providence of God and the charity of friends." " Many hun- dreds of them," says Baxter, " with their wives and children, had neither house nor bread." Many of the ministers, being afraid to lay down ANCIENT AND MODERN. 177 their ministry after they had het n ordained to it, preached to such as would hea? them, in fields and private houses, until they were apprehended and cast into gaol, where many of them perished. " Some lived on little more than brown bread and water," says the Conformist Plea. " One went to plough six days and preached on the Lord's day. Another was forced to cut tobacco for a liveli- hood." The expulsion of these ''learned and pious divines " was in wanton disregard to the spiritual necessities of the nation. Although many illite- rate, debauched, and unworthy men were thrust into the sacred office, as the author of the " Five Groans of the Church" complains, yet many parishes long remained under a practical interdict — the children unbaptized,the dead buried without religious rites, marriage disregarded, the churches falling into ruin, and the people relapsing into irreligion and barbarisnL One of the most illustrious of this glorious company of confessors was Richard Baxter. With broken health and wounded spirit he was driven forth from the scenes of his apostolic labours. The sobs and tears of his bereaved congregation at once intensified and soothed the pangs of part* ing. He espoused poverty, contumely, persec .- tion, and insult His home thenceforth alternated between a temporary and precarious refuge among 178 GREAT PREACHEr.8, filends, and the ignominy and discomfort of a loathsome prison. But he went not forth alone. Woman's love illumined that dark hour of his life, and woman's sympathy shared and alleviated his suffering. It is a romantic story, that of his courtship. He had often declared his purpose of living and dying in celihacy. His single life, he said, had much advantage, because he could more easily take his people for his children, and labour exclusively for them. There was little in his outward appearance to win a youthful maiden's fancy. Nearly fifty years of pain and suffering had furrowed his wan cheek and bowed his meagre form. His features were rather pinched and starved-looking, and decked with a scanty beard. His nose was thin and prominent, his eyes were Lunkenand restless. Tufts of long hair escaped from beneath his close Geneva skull-cap. Broad bands and a black gown complete his portrait. » Margaret Charlton was scarce twenty years of age, well-born and beautiful, endowed with gifts of wit and fortune. But love is lord of all ; and these two apparently diverse natures were drawn together by an irresistible attraction. The Puritan divine had been the maiden's counsellor, her guide and friend ; and mutual esteem deepened IntiD intense and undying affection. For nineteen years, in bonds and imprisonment, in suffering and offe piu-i Mar He he over and mini ties. oftU iNCIENT AND MODERN. 179 of rifts and t-awu ritaa her lened iteen and sorrow, in penury and persecution, the winsome presence of the loving wife soothed tlie pain, inspired the hope, and cheered the heart of the heroic husband, whose every toil and trial she nobly shared. The witlings of Whitehall did not fail to bandy jests — not over-refined — concerning these strange espousals ; and some even of Baxter's friends sighed over the weakness of the veneral»le divine. " The king's marriage was scarce more talked of than mine," he says. But the well-nigh score of happy wedded years he passed are the best justification of this seemingly ill-matched union. There was nothing mercenary in his love, nor was it the mere impulse of passion. He renounced the wealth his wife would have brought, and stipulated for the absolute com- mand of his time, too precious and precarious to be spent in idle dalliance. After his ejection Baxter preached as occasion offered, in town and country. In one London parish, he writes, were 40,000, and in another, St. Martin's, 60,000 persons, with no church to go to. He felt that the vows of God were upon him, ant I he might not hold his peace. His heart yearned over these people as sheep having no shepherd ; and in spite of prohibition and punishment he ministered, as he had opportunity, to their necessi- ties. During this period occurred the awful events of the Plague and Fire of London, like the judg- 180 GUEAT rUKACIIEnS, mcntfl of the Almi^rlily upon a perverse nation. Yet ptMsccution rn<,'t'(l with intense fury. A High Church pulpiteer, in u sermon before the House of Commons, tohl them that " the Nonconfor- mists ouglit not to be tolerated, but to bo cu'od by vengeance." He urged them " to set fire to the fagot, to teach them by scourges or scorpion^, and to open their eyes with gull. " Baxter was several times imprisoned for his public ministrations, for privately preaching to his neighbours, for having more than the statutory number at family prayer, and for similar heinous offences. If but five persons came in where he was praying, it could be construed into a breach of the law. So weary, he writes, was he of guarding his door against vile informers who came to dis- train his g' ods for preaching, that he was forced to leave his house, sell his goods, and part with his beloved books. For twelve years, he complains, the latter which he prized most of all his posses- sions, were stored in a rented room at Kidder- minster, eaten with worms and rats, while he was a fugitive from place to place, and now he was forced to lose them for ever. But with pious resignation he adds, " I was near the end both of that work and life which needeth books, and oo I easily let go all. Naked came I into the world, an'i luiked must I go out." He was once arrested in his sick-bed for com?Ti« AMCIF.NT AND MODERN. 181 18, JS- jr- ias las 111 3 I of v] '»S within five miles of a corporation contrary to tho statute ; and all his goods, oven to the bed be- neath him, were distrained on warrants to the amount of £105 for preaching five sermons. As he was dragged to prison he was met by a phy- sician, who made oath before a justice that his removal was at the peril of his life ; so he was allowed to return to his rifled home. On one occasion, finding him locked in Iiis study, the officers, in order to starve him out, placed six men on guard at the door, to whom he had to surrender next day. Had his friends not become his surety, contrary to his wish, to the amount of £400, he must have died in prison, " as many excellent persons did about this time," naively remarks his biographer. Although he enjoyed the friendship and esteem of Lord Chief-Justice Hale, of whom he wrote an interesting Life, yet even his influence was powerless to resist the persecutions of the Goverunient. If he might but have the liberty that every beggar had, of travelling from town to town, he somewhat bit- terly remarked, so that he could go up to London and correct the sheets of his books in press, he would consider it a boon. " I am weary of the noisd of contentious revilers," he plaintively writes, " and have often had thoughts to go into a foreign laud, if I could find anywhere I might have a healthful air and quietness, that I might ^v^ v^ ..^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) :^ I 1.0 £fl2i li£ ■)• lU 12.2 : m 12.0 1.1 g||U|L6 6" FhotogFajM: Sdmoes Carporation 23 WnST MAIN STMIT WnSTII,N.Y. 14SM (7I6)I72.4S03 182 GREAT PRSACHEUa, live and die in peace. When I sit in a corner and meddle with nobody, and hope the world will forget that I am alive, court, city, and country are still filled with clamours agaiust me ; and when a preacher wants preferment, his way is to preach or write a book against the Nonconformists, and me by name." But perhaps his most scurrilous treatment was his arraignment before the brutal Jeffreys, Lord Chief-Justice of England — the disgrace of the British Bench, and the original of Bunyan's Lord Hategood — for his alleged seditious reflections on Episcopacy, in his Paraphrase of the New Testa- ment, written for the use of the poor. The Latin indictment sets forth that "Bichard Baxter, a seditious and factious person, of a depraved, im- pious, and unquiet mind, and of a turbulent disposition and conversation, has falsely, unlaw- fully, unjustly, factiously, seditiously, and im- piously, made, composed, and written a certain false, seditious, libellous, factious, and impious book;" and proceeds by garbled extracts and false constructions to bring it within the penalties of the law. The partizan judge, of the brazen forehead and the venomous tongue, the mere tool of tyranny, surpassed his usual vulgar insolence. He stormed and swore, he roared and snorted, and, we are '.old, he squeaked through his i?ose with uprolled U AMCIRNT AND MODERH. 183 eyes in imitation of Baxter's supposed manner of praying. " When I saw/' says an eye-witness, *' the meek man stand before the flaming eyes and fierce looks of tliis bigot, I thought of Paul standing before Nero." His conduct, says Bishop Burnet, would have amazed one in the bashaw of Turkey. The accused asked for time to prepare his defence. "Not a minute to save his life," was the amiable reply; and, pointing to the infamous Oates, who stood pilloried in Palaco Yard, JeflTreys thundered, "There stands Oates on one side of the pillory, and if Baxter stood on the other, the two greatest rogues in the kingdom would stand together. This is an old rogue, a schismntical knave, a hypocritical villain." When the counsel reminded the jud^e of King Charles's esteem for the accused, and his offer of a mitre, he shouted, " What ailed the old blockhead, the unthankful villain, that he would not conform ? — the conceited, stubborn, fanatical dog 1 '.' " My lord," said the venerable old man, "I have been much censured by dissenters for speaking well of bishops." "Hal Baxter for Bishops ! " jeered the ermined buffoon, " that's a merry conceit indeed; turn to it, turn to it." The proof being given, he exclaimed, " Ay, that's Kidderminster bishops, rascals like yourself, factious, snivelling Presbyterians. Thou art an old knave," continued the brow -beating bullyi 184 GREAT PRKACHER% w thou hast written books enough to load a cart^ and every book as full of treason as an egg is full of meat Hadst thou been whipped out of thy writing forty years ago it would have been well. I ace many of your brotherhood waiting to see what will become of their mighty don ; but by the grace of God Almighty, I will crush you all. Come, what do say for yourself, old knave ? Speak up ! I am not afraid of you for all your snivelling calves," alluding to some of the spectators who were in tears. " Your lordship need not," replied Baxter, " I'll not hurt you. But these things will surely be understood one day ; what fools one sort of Protestants are to persecute the other." Lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, " I am not con- cerned to answer such stuff, but am ready to pro- duce my writings for the confutation of all this ; and my life and conversation are known to many in this nation." After Jeffreys had passionately charged the jury, Baxter inquired, " Does your lordship think they will pass a verdict after such a trial as that ?" " 1*11 warrant you, Mr. Baxter," he sneered, " don't trouble yourself about that ;" and bring in a ver- dict of guilty they did, without retiring from the box. He was fined five hundred marks, to lie in prison till he paid it, and bound to his guuil behaviour for seven years ; and but for the i-o- liAUiiSliance of his fellow-judges, Jeffivys would the] ANCISNT AND MODIBN. 18b have added the sentence of whipping at the cart's tail through the city. " My lord, there wa^once a Chief-Justice," said Baxter, referring to his deceased friend, Sir Matthew Hale, ** who would have treated me very differently." * There's not an honest man in England hut regards thee as a knave," was the hrutal reply.* The old man howed and broken with seventy years of toil and suffering, penniless, homeless, wifeless, childless, was haled to the cells of King's Bench Prison, where he languished welf-nigh two years, hoping no respiU. but that of death. But the celestial vision of the Lord he loved cheered the solitude of his lonely chamber ; and sweetly falling on his inner ear, unheeding the obscene riot of the gaol, sang the sevenfold chorus of cherubim and seraphim on high. Pain and sick- ness, bereavement and sorrow, persecution and shame, were all forgotten in the thrilling antici- pation of the divine and eternal beatitude of the redeemed before the throne. The rude stone wall seemed to his waiting soul but the portals of the palace of the great King, the house not made with hands in heaven. "He talked," says Calamy, "about another world, like one Vho had been there." *When Baxter WM^oa this or some previous occMion brought before J«ffreys, "Richard," said the bmtal Chief. Jasticsb " I see a rogue in your face." " I had not known before," replied Baxter, '*that my face was a mirror." 186 GREAT PBKACHER8, Bat persecution and sickness had done their work. His feeble frame broke down beneath his accumulated trials. After his release he lingered about four years " in age and feebleness extreme," preaching as opportunity and strength permitted, till at last the weary wheels of life stood stilL "In profound loneliness," writes a sympathizing bio- grapher, ** with a settled reliance on the Divine mercy, repeating at frequent intervals the prayer of the Redeemer, on whom his hopes reposed, and breathing out benedictions on those who encircled his dying bed, he passed away from a life of almost unequalled toil and suffering" to the rest that remaineth for the people of God. \ The malice of his enemies sought to pursue him beyond the grave, by asserting that his last hours were darkened by doubt and despair.'!' But his dying words are the best refutation of this posthumous slander. To Dr. Increase Mather, of New England, he said the day before his death, " I have pain ; but I have peace, I have peace. ..... I believe, I believa** To a later inquiry of how he was, he replied, in anticipation of his * Among tlM phrMM applied to Baxter in a ■onrriloni Latin epitaph by the Rey. Thoe. Long, prebendary of Exeter, are the following : — ** Reformed Jeaait, brazen hereeiarch, «hief cl •ehiamatiee, caoae of the leprosy of the Churoh, the awom eaeBy of the king and biahopa, and the very bond of vebela." \ AXOIXMT AND MODKBN. 187 n of his •peedy departure, " Altnust well." His last words were, speaking of his Divine Master, " Oh, I thank Him I I thank Him ! " and turning to a friend by his bedside, " The Lord teach you to die." Thus passed away in his seventy-seventh year, on the 8th of December, 1691, one of the noblest and bravest spirits of the seventeenth century In primitive times, says Bishop Wilkins, he would have been counted a Father of the Church. He rests from his labours, but his works do follow him. Being dead, he yet speaketh. His words of wisdom can never die. In camps and courts in his parish and in prison, in pain and sickness, in poverty and persecution, his busy pen and copious mind poured forth a flood of written elo- quence—of argument, counsel, entreaty, — that, still living in the printed page, is his truest and most enduring monument — cere perennius. His collected works amount to no less than one hundred and sixty-eight volumes, many of them ponderous folio tomes of forgotten controversy, or of superseded ecclesiastical lore. We know of no parallel instance of such intense literary activity, conjoined with such a busy life, save in the kindred character of John Wesley, Baxter's " Methodus TheologicfiB Christiante," written, he tells us, " in a troublesome, smoky, sa(focating room, in the midst of daily pains of sciatica, and many worse," and his " Catholic Theology " are now left to the 'l I 188 QUEKT PREACHERS. undisturbed repose of ancient libraries — the mausolea of the labours of the mighty dead — the prey of the book-worm, insect or human. His *'Holy Commonwealth, or Plea for Monarchy under God the Universal Monarch," was con- demned to the flames by the University of Ox- ford, for the assertion of the constitutional, buf, as then thought, seditious principle, that the laws of England are above the king. In a Dantean vision of hell, one of his clerical oppon- ents represents the pious Puritan as enthroned in perdition, crowned with wreaths of serpents and chaplets of adders, his triumphal chariot a pulpit drawn by wolves. " Make room," exclaims the amiable critic, " scribes and pharisees, hypo- crites, atheists and politicians, for the greatest rebel on earth, and next to him that fell from heaven." The tumult of the strifes and contro- versies in which Baxter was enga.'^ed has passed away. Most of the principles for which he contended have long since been universally con- ceded. But even in the sternest polemical conflict his zeal was tempered with love. " While we wrangle here in the dark " with a tender pathos he exclaims, " we are dying and passing to the woild that will decide all our controversies ; and the safest passage thither is by peaceable holi- ness." Baxter was not exempt from a touch of human ANCIENT AND MODEBN. 189 infirmity and a tinge of superstition, incident to the age in which he lived — a superstition that was shared by Sir Matthew Hale and Sir Thomas Browne, one of the ablest judges and one of the subtlest intellects of Europe. In the remarka- ble witchcraft delusion of Old and New England he saw unquestionable evidence of the certainty of the world of spirits ; and wrote a treatise com- memorating the fact But it is by his " practical works " that he is best known ; and these will never grow old nor lose their spell of power. As long as weary hearts and bruised consciences ache with a sense of sin and sororrow; as long as heavy-laden spirits struggle, often baffled and defeated, with the ills of earth, and yearn with an infinite longing for the repose of heaven, — so long will the " Call to the Unconverted," the " Dying Thoughts," the "Saint's Best," continue to probe the wounded spirit to the quick, to point out the inveterate disease of the soul and its unfailing antidote, to quicken to a flame of devotion tlit* sluggish feel- ings of the mind. Throughout all time will the "Beformed Pastor" be a manual of ministerial conduct and duty, an inspiration and example of pastoral diligence and zeaL The secret of this power is the intense earnest- ness of the man. He poured his very soul into his books. They seem written with his heart's 190 ORBAT PBULOHERS, bloodl I?e walked continually on the very verge of the spirit world. The shadows of death fell ever broad and black across his path. All his acts were projected against the background ol eternity. The awful presence of the king o( terrors stood ever with lifted spear before him. Chronic and painful disease grappled ever at the springs of life. A premature old age — prtematura senectuSf as he himself called it, — accompanied him through life from his very youth. " As waves follow waves in the tempestuous sea," he writes, " so one pain and danger follows another in this sinful miserable flesh. I die daily, and yet remain alive." His spirit gleamed more brightly for the ' extreme fragility of the earthen vessel in which it was enshrined, like a lamp shining through an alabaster vase. He walked a stranger on earth, as a citizen of heaven. The evanescent shows and semblances of time were as nothing; the fade- less verities of eternity were all in all. Like a dying man, dissevered from the ephemeral intier* ests of life, he wrote and spoke as from the borders of the grave. Each day must be redeemed as though it were the last. " I live only for work," he says. The worst consequence of his afflictions was, he considered, the loss of time which they entailed. He therefore wasted no midnight oil in minute revision, for he knew not if to- morrow's sun would permit the completion of the ANOIDfT AND MODERN. 191 task he had begun. Each sermon had all the emphasis of dying words. Indeed the last t ime he preached he almost died in the pulpit Therefore he fearlessly administered reproof and exhortation alike before king or protector, before parliament or parishioners. He feared God and feared only Him. He had no time or disposition to cultivate the graces of style, the arts of rhetoric. He sought not to catch the applause nor shun the blame of men, beyond both of which he was soon to pass for ever. Hence he poured the tumultuous current of hia thought upon the page, often with impassioned and unpremeditated eloquence, often with thrill* ing and pathetic power, somtimes with diffuseness or monotony, but never with artificial prettiness or fanciful conceits. ** I must cast water on this fire," he exclaims, ''though I have not a silver vessel to carry it in. The plainest words are the most profitable oratory in the weightiest matters. The transcript of the heart has the greatest force on the hearts of others." When the success of his labours was referred to, he meekly replied, *'I am but a pen in the hand of God ; and what praise is due to a pen ? " He was not insensible to the defects of hia writings, and admits that " fewer and well studied had been better." But he adds, in explanation of their character, " The knowledge of man's nothing* 19J GBIAT nrnkcOM. nest and God's transoendAiit grsstniss» with wlioai it is that I have most to do; and the senae of th« brevity of human things and the nearneei of eternity, are the principal oanses of this efEsef Well we^ it for each of ns who read the veoofd of this noble life, if similar lofbj prinoiplee and solemn sense of onr dntiee and relationships in- spired each thought and act^ and monlded our daily life and oondoot GEORGE WHITEFTELD.^ ur ALICK KINO. |N£ day, in the year 1714, there w»j a oou- siderable stir iu the Bell Inn at Gloucester. The women from the country, who, with their baskets of eggs and vegetables, turned into the Bell for a little refreshment, whispered together; the servant-maids ran about looking flushed and excited ; the page-boy, having no one to look after him, played tricks at hia leisure in the pantry. Had some guest arrived ? Yes, a guest had arrived, but one for whom neither the big bed in the best room nor the oak-wainscoted parlour were prepared; only a basket filled with trim little snowy garments, and a warm place in a mother's heart. That day the cry of a newly-born infant was heard in the Bell, but as there was nothing un- usually eloquent or expressive in the sound, and * We had purposed preparing our iketch of Whitefield on ship-board, bat were unable to procure the neceasarj books. We therefore adopt from the Sunday Magaxin* tht following admirable article by on accouiplislied la^y writer —Ed. 19i GREAT PREACHERS. as there was certainly nothing connected with the pulpit in the surroundings of the hostess mother, not the most lively imagination in all the street ever dreamt that this child, whose voice was now for the first time audible upon earth, would be one of the greatest preachers that ever spoke to a Christian congregation. There was not anything peculiarly thoughtful or studious about the childhood of George White- field ; hd was only a bright, intelligent little lad, who was always ready for activity of either mind or body. It may, however, reasonably be supposed that the glorious Protestant memories connected with his native city worked quietly upon him, and had something to do with shaping his future opinions. These streets were trodden by the feet of Tyndal as he meditated on the English translation of the Bible. In this square Hooper bore at the stake a good testimony to the Eeformed Faith, turning his funeral pyr^ into a lamp that lights England stilL At the door of that cathedral good old Bishop Miles Smith stood and protested against the Komanist practices of Laud the dean, saying that he would never cross again the sacred threshold unless the signs of Popery were swept from the building. We may well believe that stories like these, hanging, as it were, in the very atmosphere of the town in which his early years ANCIENT AND MODERN. 195 rith less the oice iTth, ever btful hite- I lad, mind Itbat with id had nions. yndal f the stake iTuing igland were spent, often wove themselves into the fancies and painted themselves in clear pictures before the thoughts, of a boy of lively intellect, such as was George Whitefield. Whitefield was educated at the Gloucester grammar school, where he acquired a consider- able degree of both classical and general know- ledge. The chief way, however, in which he dis- tinguished himself at school, was by his declama- tion. The most difficult piece of poetry on field days of display before parents and relations, the address from the school to the head master on his birthday, the longest speech when the boys held a mimic parliament on any subject, were all en- trusted to young Whitefield, and spoken by him with the applause and wonder both of his teachers and his companions. There was a grace in his action, a subtle power in his voice, which seemed as much born in him as song in a young night- ingale. In aft«r years, Whitefield often attributed his self-possession, when speaking before vast multitudes, to the practice which he had had in his school- days. At fifteen, Whitefield left school. Things had gone badly with the hostess of the Bell, and she could afford no money to give her son a fair start in life.* There was nothing better for him to do than to become a general servant in the inn. *Bin father died when he was two years old. 196 GREAT PREACHERS, His duties were now commonplace and iinin« teresting enough ; but young Whitefield did them with his might He had not, as the saying goes, an idle bone in his body; whatever his work might be it was an absolute necessity of his nature that he should do it with earnestness and energy. Besides, his religious convictions were already beginning to be singularly clear and strong for a youth of his age, and already ho was growing to underatand that the only answer of peace to the mystery of human existence, about which skeptics were writing and cynics were laughing so much in his day, was to be found in the Life and Death of which the Gospels told. He therefore took his humble position at the Bell cheerfully, as the sphere of action that God had appointed him for a season. It was, however, only for a season. Perhaps through his school companions, perhaps through old frequenters of the Bell, George Whitefield had made several rich, kindly friends, who saw that such a youth was being thrown away in his present situation. They resolved to enable him to go on with the cultivation of his mind, and before long, by their help, he found himself at Pembroke College, Oxford. Here he made a friendship which deepened yet more the religious tone of his whole nature. ANCIENT AND MODERN. 197 saw [dyet iture. John Wesley was then in Oxford, waking up the spiritual life of the old city. Wiiitefield heard, and was struck by bis preaching, and made with him an acquaintance which soon ripened into an intimacy. Though in after years they differed in certain points of doctrine, Wesley and White- field never ceased to be friends, and to see each in the other a mighty soldier of Christ. From this time forward, George Whitefield's vocation in life was fixed. One, and but one, should be his work — he would lead men aud women to heaven. The doctrine of the Atonement now became the whole joy and comfort of his spirit All the time he could spare from study while at Oxford was spent in works of mercy. He visited the prison, and shook with his words the strong- hold of sin in the heart of many a criminal. He knelt by sick-beds in dark garrets, where this world's sunshine came seldom, and gospel light never. He took little children by the hand, and put theih into the Saviour's arms. When he left Oxford, the fame of his good deeds went before him to Gloucester, and Bishop Benson offered, in consideration of his high char- acter, to ordain him at twenty-two. At that age, therefore, he entered the ministry, and preached his first sermon in a Gloucester church, among his own townsfolk. Even on this early occasion II 198 GREAT PREACHEBS, he is said to have charmed his congregatioD. He became curate to the Tower of London and chap- lain to Ludgate Prison. Soon after he took the curacy of the little village of Dummer, in Hamp- shire. He tried to do his duty well there, but an out-of-the-way country parish was not at all the place for George Whitefield. He wanted a large sphere of action ; the very energy of his nature required it. In a short time, therefore, he gave up Dummer. Wesley now asked him to go with him to America, to visit a colony of his own followers who had settled in Georgia. To this Whitefield agreed, and crossed the Atlantic for the fiist time. On shipboard he had prayers and preachin;^ twice a day, and oftener on Sundaya In America he preached with remarkable success, and helped to found near the town of Savannah an orphan- age, on which, throughout his whole life of crowded work, he always kept a father's eye. On his re- turn to England, Whitefield was ordained priest. It was now that his real warfare with evil', a war- fare which lasted as long as he breathed upon earth, in good earnest began. One day, as he -was taking a walk near Bristol, he saw a number of colliers standing idly about, probably in their dinner-hour. They were rough men, with coarse coats and coarser minds. It struck Whitefield that these were people who would never come ANCIENT AND MODEBN. 199 into church or chapel to look for gospel truth, but that, nevertheless, gospel truth might be brought out into the fields to them. He therefore mounted a little green knoll near at hand, and began to preach. The result exceeded his expectations. The colliers listened first wonderingly, but very soon attentively. Then tears began to flow down grimy cheeks, and the precious dew of prayer was on many a lip that had long been parched by the malignant breath of sin. Whitefield thanked God that night, and was encouraged to make further efforts in the same direction. So powerful was his preaching that sometimes over a thous- and notes for prayer were sent him, and as many as three hundred and fifty awakened souls were received into society in a week. Before loQg he went to London, and began there his ministry. But both the Church and the Dis- senters, with the exception of the little band that followed Wesley, were sunk in a sleep which seems almost incredible to us, living as we do in the midst of the unwearying work, the active charity, which, to the glory of the nineteenth century be it spoken, now characterize the minis- tors of every denomination of Christians. White- field, with his burning earnestness, which would not let him be half an hour without doing some- thing for his Master, seemed to his brethren a 200 GRKAT PREACHERS, miachievmis a^tator, and scarcely a man among them would jadmit him to his pulpit Being thus driven from temples made with hands, Whitefield went out into the fields, and took the green earth and the blue sky for his church. Not a whole phalanx of divines could keep the population of London, from the lord to the street heggar, from flocking to him. Out they all streamed to hear and see this great new preacher who had risen up among them. Let us try for a moment to sketch a picture of one oi these vast open air meetings. Though not far from the great city, it is a quiet country place enough in general, where leaves whisper and streams murmur ; hut to-day it is as full oi human life as a town thoroughfare. In that long line of ponderous coaches drawn up yonder sit the ladies of title. How prou^lly their jewels flash in the sunshine ! With what languid dignity they throw themselves hack on their cushions, and spread out their stiff broc tde skirts, as though they were protesting against the injury done to their own greatness by coming here at all ; and yet their ladyships cannot, any more than other daughters of Eve, resist the curiosity which drives them out to hear the famous preacher. This carriage has a much lighter and more jaun^ air than the heavy coaches of the nobility. AKCIENT AND MODIRN. 201 What a fluttering there is here of many-tinted feathers, what a sparkling of bright eyes, what a twirling of fans, what a brisk exchange of airy repartee between these pretty women and the gentlemen who crowd around their carriage door ! These are the actresses from the great theatres, who are come to see if the preacher can outshine the stage hero of last night Here is a little knot of gentlemen who but yesterday were at King George's court Some are still sitting gracefully on their glossy, highly- groomed horses, some are leaning against the tree^ with an air of elegant indifiference, as though they were come hither merely to comply with a whim of fashion. A little apart from the rest of this group are two men, who are distinguished from the others by their haughty superiority of bearing. Their eyes flash with satiric fun, and keen sarcasms leap from their lips as they glance toward their less intellectually gifted companions ; their deli- cate, jewelled hands, round which the lace rufll;3S fold so softly, play lightly with the gilded hilts of their rapiers ; every now and then their heads bow in stately homage to some highly favoured lady in the carriages. We start as we hear these two men's names ; they are Chesterfield and Bolingbroke. What ! BoUngbroke, the fastidious free thinker, and Chea- 202 GBEAT PREACUSU8, tei field, the man whose Bible is a book of rules of court etiquette, listening to the innkeeper's son t Yes, for that spell of the highest truth which sounds from Whitefield's lips has fallen even upon them, at least for a season. They have been to hear him before, and somehow they cannot choose but come to hear him again. This man, who now saunters up to join the assembly, is of a very different type from the gentlemen of the court. His brow is knit ; at intervals he murmurs some word to hin*self as if he wished not to foiget it ; something very like a proof-sheet is peeping out of his pocket* People stare at him, half through curiosity, half with wonder, as though they were surprised to see him here. David Hume has, in truth, not much time to spare from his History, but he cannot dery himself such an intellectual treat as listening to Whitefield, whom it was worth, he said, going twenty miles to hear. In and out among the well-dressed many, there moves a crowd of people who wear neither silk nor velvet There is the artisan, with his wife and children, who have come out here chiefly for the sake of the fresh, sweet country air; there are the city clerk and his sweetheart, flirting a little to while away the time ; there is the poor needlewoman, whose pale face has such a wistful look that we fancy her heart must be beginning ANCIENT AND MODERN. 203 dimly to guess that if she could grasp the mean- ing of the great preacher's words, it might possibly bring into her life even more warmth and colouring than there is in the dresses she stitches for the grand ladies. Suddenly the murmur of voices which has been running through the vast assembly is hushed. The duchesses and countesses incline their heads a quarter of an inch forward; the fans of the actresses cease to flutter ; the mass of the people make a little rush, all in the same direction. Every eye is fixed on a man who is ascending slowly a green bank near at hand. At first sight there is nothing very remarkable in his appearance. His figure is tall and spare, his dress is homely ; when he turns to the audi- ence we see that he squints, and he has no especial beauty of feature. But the moment he begins to speak his face is forgotten in his voice. How does it thrill with holy passion as he tells of his dear Lord; how does it ring with stern indignation against sin, and yet how does it melt with tenderness over the sinner! It is so clear that it is heard at the further end of the wide assembly ; and yet so sweet that music is the only word that can give an idea of its tones. His face, too, and his figure have changed since we last looked at him. Meaning has come into every movement of his 204 GREAT PREACHBB8, hand ; each feature answers to the theme that i upon his lips, as does the lake to the lights and shadows in the sky above; his form ueems to have grown majestic, and to be like that of the desert preacher, or of him who cried against Nineveh. When he speaks of heaven, we almost believe that he has been there ; when he tells of the Saviour's love and sufferings, it seems to us that he must have walked with Peter and John at His side ; when he tells a story by way of illus t ration, as he often does, the description is so vivid that we listen breathlessly, as though we really saw the scene he paints with our bodily eyes. For two hours the tide of eloquence flows on unceasingly, and still the listening crowd re- mains enthralled. Different signs of emotion ap- pear among them. The daughters of the people stand with clasped hands, looking up at the preacher as though he were an angel bringing them the good tidings which are the especial birthright of the toil-worn and weary ; the actresses sob and faint ; the great ladies actually bit upright to listen. The sterner sex, too, are affected in their own way. The hard faces of the mechanics work with unwonted feeling; the brow of Hume grows smooth ; even Chesterfield, who hitherto has stood like a statue of one of his own ancestors, so far ▲NaENT AND kODIBN. 205 forgets himflelf when the preacher, in a lively |>arable, is describing a blind beggar on the edge of a precipice, as to start forward and murmur, " save him, save him ! " No wonder they are thus moved, for the preacher himself sets them the example Some- times his voice trembles so much in his intense earnestness that he can scarcely go on ; sometimes he even weeps. At length the sermon ends in a grand wave of heaven-aspiring prayer ; then the crowd disperses : some to spend the niglit at a masquerade or at the gaming-table, some to criticise, some to forget, some to keep the good seed silently in their hearts. In a ^short sketch like the present, it is impos- sible to follow, in detail, all the changes in White- field's varied career. Now he was riding along a muddy country road, bringing the Gospel to some remote Welsh town ; now he was back again in London preaching fifteen sermons a week; now he was tossing on the Atlantic on his way to America, where his ministry always met with especial success. Sometimes he was preaching in a green Devonshire meadow, and sometimes on a purple Scotch heath. In one of his journeyings he stopped at Aber- gaveimy, where he made acquaintance with, and married his wife, whose name was James. It may have been that this lady was dazzled by his fame, 206 OBKAT PREACHOS, and 80, in order that the might attain to being the great preacher's bride, simulated many graces of heart and mind that she did not really possess ; it may have been that he was captivated by the mere outward charms of her person ; but be this as it may, one thing is certain, and this is, that she was by no means worthy of the high position, which it was for any woman, to be George White- field's wife. Like John Wesley, he stipulated that marriage should never prevent the delivery of a single sermon. His frequent absence from England for months, and even years, was not con- ducive to domestic felicity. Nevertheless his wife seems to have had in her something of the hero soul. Once, when Whitefield was attacked, while preaching, by a mob — he tells the story himself — his courage began to fail, but his wife, plucking his gown, said, " George, play the man for your God," when his confidence returned, and he preached with his wonted energy and effect. Whitefield had many ladies, some of high rank, among his closest personal friends. Indeed, wherever he went, women generally crowded around him ; thay felt that the cause he advocated has been, in all time, the cause of womanhood ; they understood that those delicate sensibilities which Whitefield possessed in common with all men of genius, made him appreciate all that is best in woman's nature. x^ ARCIEHT AND MODItN. 207 Like all God's mott favoured senrantt who have li i^ed upon earth, George Whitefield had hia faults. Hi was often too haaty in judgment ; his language in controversy was often unwarrantably violent ; his burning zeal often led him into ex- tremes. No one was more conscious of his own shortcomings than Whitefield himself; indeed, a simple and deep humility was one of the most marked points in his character. We have no greal book left us by Whitefield, in which we may now know and love him. His only printed remains are his letters, which are chiefly interesting as giving a glimpse into his inner nature, and a volume of his sermons, which are unsatisfactory from having been taken down as he preached them by unpractised reporters, and having never been revised by himselt Pabt XL DY W. H. WITUROW, U.A. 'HITEFIELD'S bold evangelism broiiglit its common reward of persecution. Like a new Baptist crying in the wilderness "Kepent ye, for tho kingdom of heaven is at hand/' he openly reproved the Pharisees and hypocrites who gainsaid his message, and of couise incurred their wrath. " Scoffers/' says he, " mutter in the coffee-houses, give a curse, drink a barrel of punch, and then cry out against me for not preaching more morality. Alas ! poor men, their morality, falsely so called, will prove their damnation." In South Carolina, Whitefield was formally arrested and tried before the quarter sessions for " libel against the clergy" in his sermons. But ho appealed to England and the prosecution was dropped. Often was he ex- posed to the assaults of evil-minded men, stung to fury by the pungency of his reproofs of sin. But often, also, those who came with stones in their pockets or clubs in their hands, to do him bodily harm, were disarmed by his words and remained to cry for mercy on their souls. Many, also, were the dangers he encountered akount and modern. 209 bj sea and land. Like the great apostle, wliom in his burning zeal he so much resembled, he might refer to his joumeyings often, his perils in the city and in tlie wilderness, to his weariness and painfulness, his watch ings, his fastings, and his manifold infirmities. In traversing the path- less American forests, sometimes he could hear the wolves " howling like a kennel of hounds ; " and he had at night to keep them at bay by blazing fires. lie had to ford icy rivers, and once was nearly drowned in crossing the Potomac amid the rigours of midwinter. Seldom has such a burning soul been tabernacled in so frail a body. The latter portion of his life was one long martyr- dom of suffering. Once after preaching he was 80 exhausted that, as he was laid upon a bed, he heard the bystanders say " He is gone." Again, he writes, " I was in all appearance a dying man, expecting to be with my Maker before morning. I spoke with peculiar energy. Such effects fol- lowed the word, I thought it worth dying a thou- sand times." Later on he writes, "Everything wearies this shattered bark. ... for a hearse to carry my weary body to the grave." Yet his zeal burned the more intensely the nearer he drew to the end of his labours. Four- teen times he visited Scotland, in the rude and uncomfortable coaches of the period. During the last of these visits we read that he preached 210 GREAT PBEiVCHERS, " generally twice, sometimes thrice a day, and once five times/* When his health was at its worst, his "short allowance of preaching was once a day and thrice on Sunday." To get into the pulpit seemed to put new life in his dying frame. While thousands hung upon his words he seemed to soar like a seraph to the gate of heaven, and speak as one who saw the secrets veiled from mortal sight The labours undergone by that enfeebled frame were Herculean. Thirteen times he crossed the broad Atlantic in the crowded and comfortless vessels of the time, often consuming eleven weeks on the voyage. Once his vessel lay a month in the Downs waiting for a favourable wind. He was wont to have prayei'S and preaching on ship> board every day. From Georgia to Maine he ranged through the forest wilderness of America, preaching in its scattered towns to eager multi- tudes. In Great Britain, from the mountains of Wales, to the heathy moors of Scotland, in crowded cities and on barren wolds, his persuasive voice was heard pleading with men to flee from the wrath to come. During the terrors of mid- night tempest and earthquake, \e preached to an awe-stricken multitude in Hyde Park of the uiuie iiwful terrors of a dissolving world and of the judguiciil-day. Again he preaches beneath the gallows-tree, standing upon the coffin of the ANCIENT AND MODERN. 211 criminal who is to be executed, and ascending with him to the scaffold, prays with him to the last At five o'clock on a winter's morning thou* sands were drawn without the city to listen to the story of Calvary from his lips. " I have seen/' writes a spectator, "Moorfields as full of lanterns at these times as the Haymarket is full of flambeaux on an opera night" Never were more disinterested labours than those of Whitefield. While raising thousands of pounds for charitable objects, he lived and died a poor man. At one service he collected £600 for the people of an obscure village in Germany, which had been burned down, for which he re- ceived the thanks of the Prussian Sovereign. He maintained for years a household of over a hundred orphan children in Georgia, by the volun- tary contributions of his hearers, most of whom themselves were poor. Tet he himself derived no sort of advantage from this stewardship. He even had to sell his furniture to meet the ex- penses of the orphan-house. He might, indeed, have enjoyed ease and leisure if he would. He was offered £800 a-year in Philadelphia to become a settled pastor for but half the time, leaving him six months to range the continent But he could brook no trammels on his freedom to go whither- soever the Spirit called him, and the tempting offer was declined. 212 GREAT PREACHERS, The profound humility, the true lowliness of spirit of this great man is one of the most remarkable traits of his character. He exhorts his friends at Savannah to "pray that he may know himself to be, what really he is, less than the least of them all." In the midst of his apos- tolic labours, he exclaims, — " Oh that I may at length learn to live. I am ashamed of my sloth and lukewarmness, and long to be on the stretch for God." Again, near the close of his life of unprecedented toil, he writes with undeserved self-upraidings, ''Oh to begin to be a Christian and minister of Jesus." Notwithstanding the unhappy doctrinal differ- ences between himself and his early friend, John Wesley, he ever cherished toward him feelings of the deepest and tenderest regard. At one time when Wesley was seriously ill and supposed to be dying, Whitefield wrote, " The prospect of your dissolution has quite weighed me down. I pity myself and the Church, but not you. A radiant throne awaits you, and ere long you will enter on your Master's joy. But I, poor I, that have been waiting for my dissolution these nineteen years, must be left behind to grovel here below. If prayers can detain you, even you, revered and ever dear sir, shall not leave us yet. But if the decree has gone forth that you must now sleep in Jesus, may He kiss your soul away, and give you ANCIENT AND MODERN. 213 ts of most tiorts may than apoa- ay at sloth bretch ife o! served istian differ- , John jelings e time sed to f your I pity adiant enter have eteen Ibelow. d and if the eep in eyou to die in the embraces of triumphant lov&*' He had soon the satisfaction of witnessing the re- covery of his friend, who was yet to preach his funeral service and survive him more than twenty years. On another occasion, when a small-souled bigot asked him if he thought he should see John Wesley in heaven, he replied, " I fear not, for he will be so near the throne and you and I so far away that we shall scarce be able to catch a sight of him." With true greatness of soul be could rise superior to the calumnies of malice. When his character and motions were bitterly aspersed he calmly wrote, " I am content to wait till the judgment for the clearing up of my character; and after I am dead I desire no other epitaph than this. 'Here lies George Whitefield. What sort of man he was the great day will discover.* " Nevertheless, in spite of the carping criticisms of mole-eyed malice, few men ever awakened such enthusiastic admiration and warm affection. Like his great Ma,ster, the common people heard him gladly. Nor were the higher ranks insensible to the spell of his eloquence. ^lore than once in America the legislature and the judges' ses- sions adjourned in order to hear him preach. Philosophers, like Franklin and Hume, esteemed his correspondence with them a privilege^ and 214 QBKilT FBVACHERS, many tiUed and noble persons considered them« selves honoured by his friendship. It is difficult, after the lapse of more than a hundred years since his death, to fully compre* bend the secret of his wonderful eloquence and his spell-like power over the souls of mea A contemporary well remarks that if his delivery were tbt) product of art it was certainly the per- fection of art, for it was entirely concealed. While he was a great master of words, he studied espe- cially plainness of speech. His zealous ministra- tions were a striking contrast to those of a good many somnorific divines of the period to whom applied the words of Longfellow — *' The preacher droned from tlie pulpit With a aound like many bees." His stirring appeals touched every hearty and held the attention of every hearer. A worthy ship- builder narrates that he could usually during a sermon build a ship from stem to stern; but under Mr. Whitefield he could not lay a single plank. The voice of this Son of Thunder was one of rich musical quality and of great strength. The philosophic Franklin computed, by practical experiment^ that he could easily be heard by thirty thousand persons. Indeed, he often held audiences of over twenty tbo'isand spell-bound by his eloquence. His dramatic ability was such ANCIENT AND MODEBN. 215 tliat his auditors seemed actually to see the things which he described. Once, while preaching to an audience of sailors at New York, he thus por- ti'iyed in vivid words the terrors of a shipwreck : " Hark ! don't you hear the distant thunder ? Dcn't you see those flashes of lightning ? The air is dark. The tempest rages. Our masts are gone ! What next ? '* Thj unsuspecting tars, continues the chronicler of the scene, as if struck by the power of magic, arose, and with united voices exclaimed, " Take to the 1 >iig boat, sir I '* The celebrated actor, Garrick, was heard to say that he would give a hundred guineas if he could only say " Oh ! " as Mr. Whitefield did. But the crowning glory of hib preaching was that it was accompanied with the demonstration of the Spirit and with {tbwer. Hundreds were pricked to the heart and led to repentance and faith. In a single week he received a thousand letters from persons under conviction of sin through his preaching, and everywhere he laboured he won multitudes of trophies of Divine grace through those labours. A marked characteristic of Whitefield was his tenderness, his sympathy for sinners, his burning love for souls. He that would move others must himself be moved. Hence multitudes were melted into tears, because tears were in the preacher's words, his voice, and often on his cheeks. " You blame me for weeping," he says, "but how can 216 OBEAT PBEACHEBSt I help it when you will not weep for yourselves, altli(ju;;h your immortal souls are upon the vcrg« of destruction ? " Whitefield used to pray that he might die in the pulpit or just after leaving it. His prayer was almost literally granted him. He died, as he lived, in the midst ot lahours more abundant than those of almost any other man. The last entry in J lis journal, July 29th, 1770, is that during the month he had completed a five hua* dred miles cncuit in New England, preaching and travelling through the heat every day. At Exeter, Massachusetts, he was requested to preach again. A friend remonstrated, " Sir, you are more fit to go to bed than to the pulpit." ♦* True," he replied, and clasping his hands, exclaimed, ** Lord Jesus, if 1 have not yet finished my course, let me speak for Thee once more in the fields, and then come home and die." As he entered the pulpit he seemed like a dying man. Yet, for the space of two hours, he exhorted the people like a man who already beheld the realities of the eternal world. His text was 2 Cor. xiii. 5, "Examine yourselves whether ye be be in the faith," etc. At this last service an intending persecutor, with a pocket full of stones, said, " Sir, I came to break your head, but God has broke:) my heart." After the sermon, he rode on to Newbury * AKCIINT AND MODEBV. 217 port, a distance of fifteen miles. As he retired to his chamber on the last evening of his life, so many wore desirous of hearing him that he stood upon the stairs with his candlestick in his hand, and addressed them with much feeling till the candle burned low in its socket — like the lamp of his life then flickering to extinction. During the night the asthmatic spasms, tx) which he had been for so many years a martyr, came on with increased violence. He was removed to the open window to enable him to breathe with less difficulty, but after an hour's suffering his spirit passed away. He left no d3ring testi- mony ; but he had borne so many for God during his life that there was no need. His labours in two hemispheres, the eighteen thousand sermons that he preached, his many joumeyings by sea and land, his undying zeal for the salvation of souls — these were a testimony which shall be an inspiration and a spell while the world shall last. He was buried beneath the pulpit of the Old South Church, Newburyport, and thither pilgrims from many lands have come to pay their tribute of homage to the memory of the gieatest preacher since the days of Chrysostom. One of these thus describes his visit to Whitefield's tomb: "We descended to the vault There were three coffins before us. Two pastors of the church lay on either side, and the remains of Whitefield in the 218 GREAT P3EACHKB8, centra The cover was slipped aside, and they lay beneath my eye. I had stood before his pulpits ; I had seen his books, his rings, his chairs ; but never before had I looked upon part of his very self. The skull, which is perfect, clean, and fair, I received, as is the custom, into my hands. Thought and feeling were busy, and we gave expression to the sentiments that possessed us, by solemn psalmody and fervent prayer." The Quaker poet, Whittier, has thus sketched, in tuneful lines, the salient features in the life and character of this great and good nan, and with the quotation we close this brief tDview of his labours — Lo I by the Merrimack Whitefield fltauds In the temple that never was made by handfl^-* Curtains of aziire, and crystal wall, And dome of the lanshinc over all t — A homeless pilgrim, wita dubious name Blown about on the winds of fame ; Now as an angel of blessing classed, And now as a mad enthusiast. Called in his youth to sound and gaage The moral lapse of his race and age, And, sharp an truth, the contrast draw Of human frailty and perfect law ; Possessed by one dread thought that lent Its goad to his fiery temperament Up and down the world he went, A John the Baptist crying, — Repent t And the hearts of people where he passed Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast, ANCIENT AND MODERN. Under the spell of * roioe which took la its oompaM the flow of 8ilo«'s brook. And the myitical chime of the bells of gold On the ephjd's hem of the prieet of old, — Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law. A solmnn fear on the listening crowd Fell like the shadow of a cloud. The sailor reeling from out the shipa Whose masts stood thick in the rirer-slipa Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips. Listened the fisherman rude and hard. The calker rough from the builder's yardi The man of the market left his load, The teamster leaned on his bending goad. The maiden, and youth beside her, felt Their hearts in a closer union melt, And saw the flowers of their love in bloom Down the endless vistas of life to come. Old age sat feebly brushing away From his ears the scanty locks of gray ; And careless boyhood, living the free Unconswious life of bird and tree, Suddenly wakened to a sense Vif sin and its guilty consequence. tX was as if an angel's voice Called the listeners up for their final choice | As if a strong hand rent apart The veils of sense from soul and heart, Showing in light ineffable The joys of heaven and woes of hell ! All about in the misty air The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge The water's lap on its gravelled edge, The wailing pines, aod. far and £sint, 220 GREAT PBEACHEIUI, The wood'dore'i not* of uA eoropUint,— To the eolemo Toioe of the preacher leot An undertone m of low Uroeut ; And the rote of the lea from ite mndj cout, On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost, Seemed the marmarous loand of the judgment host So the flood of emotion deep and itrong Troubled the land as he swept along, But left a result of holier Urea, Tenderer mothers and worthier wi^ea. The husband and father whose children fled And sad wife wept when his drunken tread Frightened peace from his roof«tree's shad*, And a rook of offence his hearthstone made, In a strength that was not his own began To rise from the brute's to the plane of i Old friends embraced, long held apart By evil counsel and pride of heart ; And penitence saw through misty tears, In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears. The promise of Heaven's eternal years, — The peace of Ood for the world's annoy,— Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy ! Under tho church of Federal Streeti Under the tread of its Sabbath feet, 'Walled about by it* basement stones. Lie the marvellous preacher's bones. No saintly honours to them are shown, No sign nor miracle have they known ; But he who passes the ancient church Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch And ponders the wonderful life of him Who lies at rest in that charnel dim. Long shall the traveller strain his eye From the railroad car, as it plunges by, ANCIENT AND MODEKN. 221 And the rtnithing town behind him •fftreh For th« ilender ipira of th« Whitefield Chaivh | And feel for one moment the ghoeta of tmde^ And fiuhion, and folly, and pleaanre laid, B7 the thought of that life of pure intent^ That Toiceof warning yet eloquent. Of one on the errands of angela sent And if where he laboured the flood of sin Like a tide from the harbour-bar leta in. And over a life of time and aenae The ehurch-spirea lift their vain defence^ A* if to acatter the bolU of Qod With the points of Calvin's thunder-rod,-* Still, aa the gem of its civio crown. Precious beyond the world's renown. His memory hallows the ancient town t