In Book II. he expresses his astonishment that fathers should so little understand what was best for their sons as to deter them from studying “the true philosophy.” But in combating this error he will put forward all that can be urged on their side. He imagines the case of a pagan father, possessed of great worldly distinction and wealth. He has an only son, in whom all his pride and hopes are centred; one whom he expects to surpass himself in riches and honour. Suddenly this son becomes converted to monasticism; this rich heir flies to the mountains, puts on a dress coarser than that of the meanest servant, toils at the menial occupations of gardening and drawing water, becomes lean and pale. All the schemes of his father for the future are frustrated, all past efforts for his education seem to have been squandered. The little vessel which was his pride and pleasure is wrecked at the very mouth of the harbour from which it was setting out on the voyage of life. The parent has no longer any pleasure in life; he mourns for his son as for one already dead.[150]
Having thus stated the case on his adversary’s side as strongly as possible, Chrysostom begins his own defence by asking which would be best: that a man should be subject to thirst all his life, or wholly exempt from it? Surely to be exempt from it. Apply this to the moral appetites—love, avarice, and the rest. The monk is exempt from them; the man of the world is distracted by them, if not overwhelmed. Again, if the monk has no wealth of his own, he exercises a powerful influence in directing the wealth of others. Religious men will part with much of their riches according to his suggestions; if one refuses, another will give. The resources, in fact, of the monk are quite inexhaustible; many will subscribe to supply his wants or to execute his wishes, as Crito said that he and his friends would subscribe for Socrates. It is impossible to deprive the monk of his wealth or of his home; if you strip him of everything he has, he rejoices, and thanks you for helping him to live the life which he desires; and as for his home, the world is his home; one place is the same as another to him; he needs nothing but the pure air of heaven, wholesome streams, and herbs. As for high place and rank, history suffices to teach us that the desert does not destroy, and the palace does not give, true nobility. Plato—planting, watering, and eating olives—was a far nobler personage than Dionysius the Tyrant of Sicily, amidst all the wealth and splendour of a monarch. Socrates—clad in a single garment, with his bare feet and his meagre fare of bread, and dependent upon others for the mere necessaries of life—was a far more illustrious character than Archelaus, who often invited him, but in vain, to court. Real splendour and distinction consisted not in fine raiment, or in positions of dignity and power, but only in excellence of the soul and in philosophy.[151]
He then proceeds to maintain that the influence of the monk was more powerful than that of the man of the world, however distinguished he might be. If he descended from his mountain solitude, and entered the city, the people flocked round him, and pointed him out with reverence and admiration, as if he were a messenger from heaven. His mean dress commanded more respect than the purple robe and diadem of the monarch. If he was required to interfere in matters of public interest, his influence was greater than that of the powerful or wealthy; for he could speak before an emperor with boldness and freedom, and without incurring the suspicion of self-interested or ambitious motives. He was a more effectual comforter of the mourners than any one in a prosperous worldly condition was likely to be. If a father had lost his only son, the sight of other men’s domestic happiness only revived his grief; but the society of the monk, who disdained the ties of home and family, and who talked to him of death as only a sleep, soothed his grief. Thus the man who wished his son to possess real honour and power would permit him to become a monk; for monks who were once mere peasants had been visited in their cells and consulted by kings and ministers of state.
Chrysostom concludes this book by relating the history of one of his own brethren in the monastery, who, when first he desired to become a monk, had been disowned by his father, a wealthy and distinguished pagan, who threatened him with imprisonment, turned him out of doors, and allowed him almost to perish with hunger. But, finding him inflexible in his purpose, the father at last relented, and, at the time when Chrysostom wrote, honoured, he might say venerated, that son, considering the others, who occupied distinguished positions in the world, scarcely worthy to be his servant.[152]
As the second book was intended to meet the objections of a pagan father, so the third contains admonitions to one who was professedly Christian, but worldly-minded, on the duty of parents in regard to the moral and religious education of their children.
It appeared to him that the fathers of that day gave their sons none but worldly counsel, inculcated none but worldly industry and prudence, and encouraged to the emulation of none but worldly examples.[153] The force of habit was intensely strong, especially when pleasure co-operated with it, and parents, instead of counteracting habits of worldliness, promoted them by their own example. God led the Israelites through the wilderness as a kind of monastic training, to wean them from the luxurious and sensual habits of an Egyptian life; yet even then they hankered after the land of their bondage. How, then, could the children of parents who left them in the midst of the Egypt of vice, escape damnation? If they achieved anything good of themselves, it was speedily crushed by the flood of worldly conversation which issued from the parent. All those things which were condemned by Christ—as wealth, popularity, strife, an evil eye, divorce—were approved by parents of that day, and they threw a veil over the ugliness of these vices, by giving them specious names. Devotion to the hippodrome and theatre was called fashionable refinement; wealth was called freedom; love of glory, high spirit; folly, boldness; prodigality, benevolence; injustice, manliness. Virtues, on the contrary, were depreciated by opprobrious names: temperance was called rusticity; equity, cowardice; justice, unmanliness; modesty, meanness; endurance of injury, feebleness. He truly remarks, that nothing contributes so much to deter men from vice as calling vices plainly by their proper names.[154]
“How can children escape moral ruin, when all the labour of their fathers is bestowed on the provision of superfluous things—fine houses, dress, horses, beautiful statues, gilded ceilings—while they take no pains about the soul, which is far more precious than any ornament of gold?”[155] And there were worse evils behind: vice too monstrous and unnatural to be named, but to which he was constrained to allude, because he felt that it was poisoning with deadly venom the very vitals of the social body. “Well,” but worldly men reply, “Would you have us all turn philosophers, and let our worldly affairs go to ruin? Nay,” says Chrysostom, “it is the want of the philosophic spirit and rule which ruins everything now; it is your rich men—with troops of slaves and swarms of parasites, eager for wealth and ambitious of distinction, building fine houses, adding field to field, lending money at a usurious rate of interest—who propagate the strife and litigation, and envy, and murder, and general confusion, by which life is distracted. These are they who bring down the vengeance of Heaven, in the shape of droughts, and famines, and inundations, and earthquakes, and submersion of cities, and pestilences. It is not the simple monk, or the philosophic Christian, who is contented with a humble dwelling, a mean dress, a little plot of ground. These last, shining like bright beacons in a dark place, hold up the lamp of philosophy on high, and endeavour to guide those who are tossing on the open sea in a dark night into the haven of safety and repose.”[156]
“In spite of law, disorder prevailed to such an extent, that the very idea of God’s providence was lost. Men assigned the course of events to fate, or to the stars, or to chance, or to spontaneous force. God did, indeed, still rule; but He was like a pilot in a storm, whose skill in managing and conducting the vessel in safety was not perceived or appreciated by the passengers, owing to the confusion and fright caused by the raging of the elements. In the monastery, on the other hand, all was tranquillity and peace as in a community of angels. He strenuously combated the error of supposing that sin was more pardonable in a man of the world than in a monk. Anger, uncleanness, swearing, and the like, were equally sinful in all. Christ made no distinctions, but propounded one standard of morality for all alike. Nothing had inflicted more injury on the moral tone of society than the supposition that strictness of life was demanded of the monk only.”[157] He strongly urges the advantage of sending youths for education to monasteries, even for so long a period as ten or twenty years. Men consented, he says, to part with their children, for the purpose of learning some art or trade, or even so low an accomplishment as rope-dancing; but when the object was to train their souls for heaven, all kinds of impediments were raised. To object that few attained through residence in a monastery that perfection of spiritual life which some expected of them, was a mere excuse. In the case of worldly things, on which men’s hearts were set, they thought of getting as much as they could, not of reaching absolute perfection. A man did not prevent his son from entering military service because the chances of his becoming a prefect were small; why, then, hesitate to send your son to a monastery because all monks do not become angels?[158]
These treatises are remarkable productions, and deserve to be read, not only because they exhibit Chrysostom’s best powers of argument and style, but also because they throw light upon the character of the man and the times in which he lived. He pleads his cause with the ingenuity, as well as eloquence, of a man who had been trained for the law courts. We find, indeed, that his opinions on the advantages of the monastic life were modified as he grew older; but his bold condemnation of worldliness, his denunciation of a cold secularised Christianity, as contrasted with the purity of the Gospel standard, the deep aspirations after personal holiness, the desire to be filled with a fervent and overflowing love of Christ, the firm hold on the idea of a superintending Providence, amidst social confusion and corruption; these we find, as here, so always, conspicuous characteristics of the man, and principal sources of his influence.