as he is himself, and who catch eagerly his words of life, and follow his directions as if he were indeed a messenger of Jehovah,—­then I know of no moral power which can be compared with the pulpit.  Worldly men talk of the power of the press, and it is indeed an influence not to be disdained,—­it is a great leaven; but the teachings of its writers, when not superficial, are contradictory, and are often mere echoes of public sentiment in reference to mere passing movements and fashions and politics and spoils.  But the declarations of the clergy, for the most part, are all in unison, in all the various churches—­Catholic and Protestant, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist—­which accept God Almighty as the moral governor of the universe, the great master of our destinies, whose eternal voice speaketh to the conscience of mankind.  And hence their teachings, if they are true to their calling, have reference to interests and duties and aspirations and hopes as far removed in importance from mere temporal matters as the heaven is higher than the earth.  Oh, what high treason to the deity whom the preacher invokes, what stupidity, what frivolity, what insincerity, what incapacity of realizing what is truly great, when he descends from the lofty themes of salvation and moral accountability, to dwell on the platitudes of aesthetic culture, the beauties and glories of Nature, or the wonders of a material civilization, and then with not half the force of those books and periodicals which are scattered in every hamlet of civilized Europe and America!

Now it was to the glory of Chrysostom that he felt the dignity of his calling and aspired to nothing higher, satisfied with his great vocation,—­a vocation which can never be measured by the lustre of a church or the wealth of a congregation.  Gregory Nazianzen, whether preaching in his paternal village or in the cathedral of Constantinople, was equally the creator of those opinion-makers who settle the verdicts of men.  Augustine, in a little African town, wielded ten times the influence of a bishop of Rome, and his sermons to the people of the town of Hippo furnished a thesaurus of divinity to the clergy for a thousand years.

Nevertheless, Antioch was not great enough to hold such a preacher as Chrysostom.  He was summoned by imperial authority to the capital of the Eastern Empire.  One of the ministers of Arcadius, the son of the great Theodosius, had heard him preach, and greatly admired his eloquence, and perhaps craved the excitement of his discourses,—­as the people of Rome hankered after the eloquence of Cicero when he was sent into exile.  Chrysostom reluctantly resigned his post in a provincial city to become the Patriarch of Constantinople.  It was a great change in his outward dignity.  His situation as the highest prelate of the East was rarely conferred except on the favorites of emperors, as the episcopal sees of Mediaeval Europe were rarely given to men but of