and succession of ages as distinctions between various states and modes of action.  “The day of the Lord,” Scripture says, “is great and very terrible,” and elsewhere, “Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord:  to what end is it for you?  The day of the Lord is darkness and not light.”  A day of darkness for those who are worthy of darkness.  No; this day without evening, without succession, and without end is not unknown to Scripture, and it is the day that the Psalmist calls the eighth day, because it is outside this time of weeks.  Thus, whether you call it day or whether you call it eternity, you express the same idea.  Give this state the name of day; there are not several, but only one.  If you call it eternity still it is unique and not manifold.  Thus it is in order that you may carry your thoughts forward toward a future life that Scripture marks by the word “one” the day which is the type of eternity, the first-fruits of days, the contemporary of light, the holy Lord’s day.

But while I am conversing with you about the first evening of the world, evening takes me by surprize and puts an end to my discourse.  May the Father of the true light, who has adorned day with celestial light, who has made to shine the fires which illuminate us during the night, who reserves for us in the peace of a future age a spiritual and everlasting light, enlighten your hearts in the knowledge of truth, keep you from stumbling, and grant that “you may walk honestly as in the day.”  Thus shall you shine as the sun in the midst of the glory of the saints, and I shall glory in you in the day of Christ, to whom belong all glory and power for ever and ever.  Amen.

CHRYSOSTOM

EXCESSIVE GRIEF AT THE DEATH OF FRIENDS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Chrysostom (that is, “Of the Golden Mouth”) was a title given to John, Archbishop of Constantinople.  He was born of a patrician family at Antioch about 347, and owed much to the early Christian training of his Christian mother, Anthusa.  He studied under Libanius, and for a time practised law, but was converted and baptized in 368.  He made a profound study of the Scriptures, the whole of which, it is said, he learned to repeat by heart.

Like Basil and Gregory he began his religious life as a hermit in the desert.  After six years he returned to Antioch, where he gained reputation as the greatest preacher in the Eastern Church.  Raised to the metropolitan See of Constantinople in 397, his fulminations against the corruptions of the court caused him to be banished, after a stormy ministry of six years.  He was recalled in response to popular clamor, but removed again, and shortly after died, in 407.  He was a great exegete, and showed a spirit of intellectual liberty which anticipated modern criticism.  Sermons to the number of one thousand have been attributed to him.