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swollen by mountain torrents, bore down all opposing force, and overleaping its native banks, scooped for itself a channel along the dusty highways of men where sin and misery follow each other as shadow the substance. The people of that continent on the opposite shore were "dead in trespasses and sins." Polytheism had failed, utterly failed, whether under the shadow of the porch and forum, or amid the bloody rites of Scythian barbarism to bring peace to the conscience smarting from a sense of guilt-failed to purify the corrupted springs of man's moral nature, failed to comfort those who were in sorrow, and finally failed to answer the allimportant question, "If a man die shall he live again?" Eight hundred years before this Isaiah in a vein of satire unequalled for caustic force had exposed the supreme folly of idol worship. We are invited to the workshop were the gods are manufactured; it is a smithy; coals, tongs, hammers, and brawny arms fashion out of the raw material a stupid senseless form, to which shall be paid high and perpetual honours, or it is the carpenter selecting the goodliest tree of the forest, cypress, ash, or oak, operating upon it with line, rule, plane, and compass; but mark how ironically the sacred writer describes the varied uses to which this sacred tree is put. "He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image; he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god." Blind, impotent, and heart-sick, is there no help for these poor idolaters? Shall no trumpet usher in for them a great day of atonement, no scape-goat to bear away their iniquities? Where is David's root and offspring, the bright and morning star of the nations? Shall the primal curse not be removed, and another Eden bloom fairer than that in olden story? That vessel just leaving the quay at Troas, whose white sails are filling with the south wind, is bearing the messengers of the everlasting Gospel of the blessed God to an idolatrous, sin-cursed world. These men are conquerors, other than military conquerors. Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon shall be held in everlasting execration, as men, who to gratify ambition, and the lust of dominion, trampled on the sacredness of human life, desolated homes, filled lands with deeds of rapine, blood, and misery; but our travellers are heralds of a happier time, and types of a higher manhood. "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will towards men," is inscribed on their banners; breathes in their Gospel, and follows like a benediction their footsteps, and they are inheritors of the beatitude, "Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God."

Every good man has a vision similar to that seen by Paul. The

Saviour heard that cry for help, and he said, "The fields are white unto the harvest; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth labourers into the harvest." It is the cry of moral destitution; of the sick for a physician; of the weary for rest; of the guilty for pardon; of the ignorant for a teacher. We cannot stop our ears to that cry as distinctly heard in the nineteenth century as in the olden time; like a wild threnody it is born on every breeze; we hear it in the din of the world's great vanity fair and strife of tongues, it speaks to us in the columns of every morning's paper; amidst the clamour of the passions; from mine and factory; from the abodes of affluence down to the slums of society; we hear it when on our knees; it follows us into the sanctuary; it startles us as we are about to put the chalice of pleasure to our lips, and embitters the draught. "Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me."

This also the Scripture lesson teaches, that wherever the path of duty leads, our obedience should be prompt and cheerful. As we have seen, the travellers immediately follow the divine intimation; and we now affirm that if our conscience is under divine enlightenment, its voice shall be regarded with all the sacredness of an intimation from heaven, God marking out our path. It has all the authority of a "Thus saith the Lord," or an utterance from Sinai. To parley with the enemy when conscience speaks is to be vanquished; hesitancy too often ends in discomfiture, evil suggestions can only be met with, "Get thee behind me, Satan." How oft is the still small voice drowned by the pressure of business, the whirl of excitement-earth's Babel tongues-the clamour of the passions! Life's great purpose is chained to the car of our inclinations. "Our sails flap idly 'gainst the mast of our intent; we rot upon the waters, when our prow should grate the golden isles."

To be true to ourselves, to achieve greatness, we must have decision of character, make a right choice; then with Pauline resolution say, "This one thing I do."

We cannot close this brief sketch without referring to another lesson obvious to every thoughtful reader, and that is, the multiplying power of our actions. How wide and ever widening are the results of that voyage, not only to Europe but through her to the entire world. Never did issues so momentous start from such small beginnings. The seed which these men deposited has yielded and will continue to yield a rich harvest, verdant and fragrant as the heights of Lebanon. Nearly two thousand years have been notched on the wheel of time since the Troas expedition, yet that mighty impulse instead of having spent itself, is more potent than ever. Modern thought, Saxon energy, the high civilization of Western empires, with their activities and many-sidedness; all are indebted to and

complexioned by that voyage. As individuals we act and are acted upon in like manner, though not it may be to the same extent. In this sense none of us liveth unto himself. The concentric ripples formed by throwing a stone into the water soon pass beyond our ken; but they cease not till broken on the farther shores; each member of society is rippling the currents by which he is surrounded. Thought long since forgotten, embodied in speech or action, still continues to vibrate along the cords of time, mingling with the consciousness, and tinging the character of some individual life. R. F.

ART. X.-CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH IN CHRYSOSTOM'S AGE.

ONE

NE important use of Chrysostom's works is the minute fidelity with which they depict the manners of his age, especially the defection of the church, and the licentious practices of the world. He seems to have had a peculiar fondness for the musical part of the church service. "Hymns and Litanies" were composed under his care during the disasters at Antioch, and the practice of psalmody, both in the church and in the streets, was revived or improved on his translation to Constantinople. We learn, too, that during the delivery of his sermons, the preacher sat, and his audience stood. No ordinary strength of limb was needed by such as waited till the termination of some of his discourses; the majority of them must have occupied nearly an hour, nay, the pronunciation of some of them must have filled two hours. Pickpockets intruded among the crowds that thronged the church at Antioch, and we are amused to find Chrysostom warning his auditors to empty their purses of money ere they came to their place of worship. The preacher rarely used notes, trusting either to his memory, or depending upon his power of extemporaneous address. We also meet with Chrysostom rebuking his audience for inattention, for shunning the service, and only relishing the sermon. The loquacity and titter of the young females occasionally disconcerted him, and provoked his bitter reproof. Sometimes his audience seem freely to have expressed to one another their critiques on the sermon, when the preacher paused at the conclusion of a paragraph. The decorum of a religious assembly was frequently interrupted by demonstrations of applause, the audience at any brilliant passage clapping their hands and waving their handkerchiefs. The manners of the theatre had been introduced into the church. "Did ye give praise?" says he, in the seventeenth homily on Matthew"Nay, I do not wish tumultuous and noisy applause. One thing I earnestly desire, that ye listen in quietness and with intelligence,

and do what is said. This is the applause, this the panegyric for me. This is no dramatic spectacle, but a spiritual school." He needed to tender this rebuke, for the whole population, both at Antioch and Constantinople, were possessed with a frenzy of visiting public spectacles. They almost lived in the theatre, and Chrysostom often complains that the church was abandoned for the Circus. The effect upon their morals was pernicious in the extreme, for licentiousness was the essence both of the drama and pantomime, and female nudity, as the homilist testifies, was openly exhibited on the stage. Other remnants of Paganism, such as lascivious songs and dances, yet kept their hold on a voluptuous people in their nuptial festivals. Vital Christianity seems almost to have disappeared, both in Theopolis, as Antioch was fondly named, as well as in the city of Constantine.

But the condition of the church was fearfully depraved. The earlier writings of Chrysostom, such as the Defence of the Monks, which was called forth by the persecution of Valens against them, as well as some subsequent tracts, describe rather what monkery ought to be than what it really was-what it ought to be in the author's imagination and in a few rare instances, not what it was in general fact. Whether it had its origin in imitation of the earlier hermits, who had fled to the desert and lived in caves, or were perched on pillars, or whether its parentage may be traced to the Jewish Therapeutæ, and the Essenes were reproduced in the Christian cœnobites, or whether other causes may not be sought in the climate and temperament of an indolent and emotional people -as the more modern dervishes succeeded also the warriors of Islam-it was essentially a selfish institute, for the individual recluse sought his own perfection in ignorance or contempt of the masses around him. While his life might present to the world the sublimity of devotion, and seem to have reached such limits of ascetic abstraction as brought it almost to the coveted enjoyment of unembodied intercourse with heaven, yet this high pretension was gained at the expense of health and all social enjoyment. Sleeplessness and hypochondria were the monastic distemper; the shrivelled heart flung from it all love but that of its own clan, unmindful that the universal adoption of its maxims would be fatal to the existence of society, and the organization and extension of the church. And the unnatural system was not long in showing the consequences of its transcendental ethics. Its virus soon spread through Christian society, and ate out its purity. The nature of the subject forbids enlargement on it. The testimony of this Father is sufficient; he favoured the system, while he condemns such results as its admirers denominate abuses. His formal charges are scarcely so awful revelations of its enormities, as his incidental allusions. We cannot help wondering how such a delu

sion, which scarce took the trouble to veil its grossest impuritieswhich emulated the worst pollutions of Paganism, and yet practised the horrid jest of naming itself from its professed superiority to ordinary humanity-could so seduce and enslave the mind of Chrysostom. Modesty is so outraged, that we dare not describe monastic manners, nor yet venture to translate such portions of Chrysostom's works as unfold their turpitude.

Will our readers bear the following shaded picture? It was common for parents to bind children of both sexes to perpetual virginity, while the victims of their fanaticism could form no idea of the vows they had so solemnly taken, so that in after life they struggled in hopeless bondage, indemnified themselves by indulgences which nature and religion alike abhor, and vindicated such excesses as the justifiable license of early compulsion. It was common for the monks to have handsome young women, under various pretences, domiciled with them, and the cell of a solitary was hung round with female ornaments and apparel,"girdles, caps, and combs." This practice was so common, that Chrysostom without a blush wrote a treatise against it, many portions of which must lie beneath the veil of a foreign tongue. So open and frequent was the incontinence of monachism, that the gallantry of monks to their paramours surprised and disgusted the Christian assemblies, for it attracted attention in the church, and that during the celebration of the Mysteries. The profligacy of these 'terrestrial seraphs' was notorious, and, in the case of Chrysostom, it is the hand of a friend that lays it bare; nay, he actually says, in the sorrow of his heart, "marriage would even be preferable to such monachism." Aye, and the young nuns surrounded themselves with trains of Platonic admirers. It is to such that Jortin, with his usual dry humour, applies the Homeric advice :

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No more, but hasten to thy task at home,
There guide the spindle, and direct the loom."

Modesty fled under guise of superior sanctity. A life of chastity and contemplation! The phrase was a terrible burlesque; and even placing its impurity out of view, the ridiculousness of such monachism is graphically touched by Chrysostom. The poor monk was not only worried to death with female tongues, and distracted with the broils of his harem, but he toiled and sweated in running to the silversmith, perfumer, linen-merchant, and upholsterer, in pursuit of mirrors, vases, scents, frills, laces, and couches, in order to gratify the whims of damsels, who had left the vanities of the world, and had become "dazzling specimens of all philosophy"-"nymphs of paradise"-" brides of Christ." O how far had Nicene Christianity fallen from the Apostolical model! In

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