From the frightful picture here drawn of social depravity, we perceive the value—we might say, the necessity—of monasteries, as havens of refuge for those who recoiled in horror from the surrounding pollution. It is clear also that the influence of the monks was considerable. Monasteries were recognised places of education, where pious parents could depend on their children being virtuously brought up. The Christian wife of a pagan or worldly husband could here find a safe home for her boy, where he could escape the contamination of his father’s influence or example. Chrysostom relates, in chapter 12, how a Christian lady in Antioch, being afraid of the wrath of a harsh and worldly-minded husband if she sent away her son to school at the monastery, induced one of the monks, a friend of Chrysostom’s, to reside for a time in the city, in the character of pedagogue. The boy, thus subjected to his training, afterwards joined the society of the monks; but Chrysostom, fearing the consequences both to the youth and to the monastic body, should his father detect his secession, persuaded him to return to the city, where he led an ascetic life, though not habited in monkish dress. Out of these monastic schools, after years of discipline and prayer, and study of the Word, there issued many a pastor and preacher, well-armed champions of the truth, strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might; like Chrysostom himself, instant in season and out of season; stern denouncers of evil, even in kings’ courts; holding out the light of the Gospel in the midst of a dark and crooked generation.
The foregoing extracts and paraphrases from these treatises prove also that as philosophy was considered the highest flight in the intellectual culture of the pagan, so was asceticism regarded as the highest standard of Christian life; it was to the education of the soul what philosophy was to the education of the mind, and hence it was called by the same name. Possessed by this idea, Chrysostom threw himself at this period of his life into the system with all the ardour of his nature. If asceticism was good, it was right to carry it as far as nature could bear it. He adopted the habits of an old member of the brotherhood named Syrus, notorious for the severity of his self-inflicted discipline. The day and greater part of the night were spent in study, fastings and vigils. Bread and water were his only habitual food. At the end of four years he proceeded a step further. He withdrew from the community to one of those solitary caves with which the mountains overhanging Antioch on its southern side abounded. In fact, he exchanged the life of a monk for that of an anchorite. His frame endured this additional strain for nearly two years, and then gave way. His health was so much shattered that he was obliged to abandon monastic life, and to return to the greater comfort of his home in Antioch.[159]
Meanwhile a friend of his, Stagirius by name—a person of noble birth, who, in spite of his father’s opposition, had embraced monasticism—was reduced to a more deplorable condition. While Chrysostom was confined to his house by illness, a friend common to him and Stagirius brought him the sad intelligence that Stagirius was affected with all the symptoms of demoniacal possession—wringing of the hands, squinting of the eyes, foaming at the mouth, strange inarticulate cries, shiverings, and frightful visions at night.[160] We shall perhaps find little difficulty in accounting for these distressing affections, as the consequence of excessive austerities. The young man, who formerly lived a gay life in the world, and in the midst of affluence, had in the monastery fared on bread and water only, often kept vigil all night long, spent his days in prayer and tears of penitence, preserved an absolute silence, and read so many hours continuously, that his friends and brother monks feared that his brain would become disordered.[161] Very probably it was, and hence his visions and convulsions; but those were not days in which men readily attributed any strange phenomena, mental or bodily, to physical causes. We may believe in the action of a spirit-world on the inhabitants of this earth; but we require good evidence that any violent or strange affection of mind or body is due to a directly spiritual agency, rather than to the operation of God according to natural law. The cases of demoniacs in the Gospel stand apart. Our Lord uses language which amounts to a distinct affirmation that those men were actually possessed by evil spirits. To use such expressions as “come out of him,” “enter no more into him,” and the like, if there was no spirit concerned in the case at all, would have been, to say the least, a mere unmeaning piece of acting, of which it would be shocking to suppose our Lord capable. But to admit the direct agency of spirit, when confirmed by such authoritative testimony, is widely different from the hasty ascription to spiritual agency, by an uncritical and unscientific age, of everything which cannot be accounted for by the most superficial knowledge and observation. Chrysostom, of course, not being beyond his age in such matters, did not for a moment dispute the supposition that Stagirius was actually possessed by a demon, but he displays a great deal of good sense in dealing with the case. As the state of his own health did not permit him to pay Stagirius a visit in person, he wrote his advice instead. He perceived the fatal temptation to despair in a man who imagined that the devil had got a firm hold upon him, and that every evil inclination proceeded directly from this demoniacal invader. He will not allow that the suggestion to suicide, of which Stagirius complained, came direct from the demon, but rather from his own despondency,[162] with which the devil had endeavoured to oppress him, that he might, under cover of that, work his own purposes more effectually, just as robbers attack houses in the dark. But this was to be shaken off by trust in God; for the devil did not exercise a compulsory power over the hearts of men; there must be a co-operation of the man’s own will. Eve fell partly through her own inclination to sin: “When she saw that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat;” and if Adam was so easily persuaded to participate in her sin, he would have fallen even had no devil existed.
Chrysostom endeavours also to console his friend by going through the histories of saints in all times who have been afflicted. His sufferings were not to be compared to those of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and St. Paul. “These afflictions were sent for remedial, purgatorial purposes—that the soul might be saved in the day of the Lord. It was not easy to say why such a person was tried by this or that form of suffering, but if we knew exactly God’s motives, there would be no test of faith. The indispensable thing was to be firmly convinced that whatever God sent was right. Some men were disturbed because the good were often troubled, and the wicked prosperous; but such inequality in the distribution of reward and punishment in this life suggested a future state where they would be finally adjusted. The wicked who had here received his good things would there receive his evil.[163] Stagirius had not been attacked by any demon when he was living in carelessness and worldly pleasure, but when he had buckled on his armour and appeared as an antagonist, then the devil descended to the assault. Hence he had no need to be ashamed of his affliction; the only thing to be ashamed of was sin, and it was owing to his renunciation of sin that the devil assailed him. The real demoniacs were those who were carried away by the impulses of unregulated passions.” His summaries of the lives of the Old Testament saints, which fill the rest of the second book and most of the third, are very masterly, and display most intimate acquaintance with Holy Scripture in all its parts. A powerful mind and retentive memory had profited by six years of retirement largely devoted to study.
CHAPTER VII.
ORDINATION AS DEACON—DESCRIPTION OF ANTIOCH—WORKS COMPOSED DURING HIS DIACONATE. A.D. 381-386.
Probably one of the last acts of Bishop Meletius before he left Antioch to attend the Council of Constantinople in 381, was to ordain Chrysostom a deacon. The bishop never returned. He died during the session of the council of which he was president, leaving both that and the see of Antioch distracted by the most deplorable factions. It will be remembered[164] that the Catholics of Antioch had, ever since the ill-judged mission of Lucifer of Cagliari, been divided between allegiance to Paulinus, a priest of the old Eustathian party, who had been consecrated bishop by Lucifer, and Meletius, bishop of the more moderate party. With the laudable purpose of healing this schism, it is said that several of the clergy at Antioch, who were considered most likely to succeed to a vacancy, bound themselves under an oath, that in the event of either bishop dying, they would decline the offer of the see, if made, and acknowledge the survivor. But on the death of Meletius, their plan was frustrated. Either the Asiatics, who generally favoured Meletius, refused to submit to the authority of Paulinus, because he had been ordained by a Western prelate, or the Eustathians who acknowledged Paulinus were unwilling on their side to admit Meletians into their fold. In any case, the earnest endeavours of Gregory of Nazianzum, now President of the Council, to unite the two factions under one prelate were unsuccessful.[165] The Meletians elected Flavian to be their bishop, one of the very priests who had, under oath, renounced their pretensions to the see. This appointment of course exposed Flavian to the imputation of perjury, but we may hope that, like Gregory, he yielded to a pressing necessity only, and to a conviction that the dissension would have been aggravated and protracted if he had obdurately refused.[166] At any rate, as will hereafter appear, his conduct, wherever it comes before us, is worthy of all admiration, and Chrysostom must have filled the office of deacon with happiness under his administration. A greater contrast than the initiation of Chrysostom into clerical life, and that of a young deacon in modern times, can scarcely be imagined. He was in his thirty-seventh year, and had supplemented the good liberal education of his youth by several years of devotion to close study of Scripture, to rigorous mortification of the body, to prayer and meditation, and to every means of promoting the culture of the soul. After this long and careful training, he enters the subordinate ranks of the clergy, not to discharge, like a modern deacon, duties as laborious, and often as responsible, as those which pertained to the priest, but such light and irresponsible tasks as were suitable to men who might be young, and were necessarily inexperienced in pastoral work. The deacons were sometimes called the Levites of the Christian Church.[167] It was their office to take care of the holy table and its furniture, to administer the cup to the laity, but not to a priest or a bishop, and occasionally to read the Gospel.[168] They were in most churches permitted to baptize.[169] But their peculiar duty in the services of the Church was to call the attention of the people to every fresh movement, to use a musical expression, in the progress of the service. Thus at the close of the sermon, the deacon’s voice was heard crying: “Let the hearers [i.e. the second order of catechumens who were permitted to hear the sermon, but not the conclusion of the Eucharistic service] and the unbelievers depart!”[170] Then he bid the remaining orders of the catechumens, i.e. the energumens, the competentes, and the penitents to pray for one another, and the people also to pray for them; ἐκτενῶς δεηθῶμεν, “let us ardently pray for them”—such was the form. Again when they were dismissed by the command ἀπολύεσθε, “disperse,” the faithful were invited by the deacon to pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church.[171] Thus the deacons were the sacred criers or heralds of the Church; they “proclaimed or bid prayer,” they announced each part as it was unfolded in the sacred drama of the Liturgy. The frequent recurrence in our own Liturgy, without much apparent significance, of the form “Let us pray,” is a remnant of these old diaconal invitations. The deacons were not permitted to preach except by a special direction of the bishop. Their duty in part corresponded to that of our churchwardens; they were to reprove any improper behaviour during divine service,[172] to bring cases of poverty and sickness before the notice of the bishop, to distribute the alms under his direction, and also to report to him grave moral offences.[173] They were essentially, as the name implies, ministers to the bishops and priests, and were often styled, in symbolical language, “the bishop’s eyes,” or “ears,” or “right hand.” The attitude of respect, which they were bound to maintain in church towards bishops and priests was in keeping with the servitorial character of their office as a whole. While the priests had their chairs ranged on either side of the central chair of the bishop in the choir, the deacons stood humbly by, as if ready to receive and execute the directions of their superiors.[174] Even the Roman deacons, who rose rather above the natural lowliness of their office, did not presume to sit in the church.[175]
The duties of the diaconate must have brought Chrysostom into constant intercourse with the Christian population of Antioch, and especially with the poorer portion of it. The whole population of the city amounted, according to Chrysostom’s statement, to 200,000,[176] and the Christians to 100,000,[177] of whom 3000 were indigent, and mainly supported by the bounty of the Church.[178] The deacon’s function of searching out and relieving the necessitous by distribution of alms must have been peculiarly congenial to him. There is no Christian duty on which he more constantly and earnestly insists than that of almsgiving, not only in order to alleviate the sufferings of poverty, but as a means of counteracting the inordinate avarice and selfish luxury which were the prevailing vices in the higher ranks of society, both in Antioch and Constantinople. His hold upon the affections of the common people, partly no doubt through his sympathy with their needs, partly by his bold denunciation of the vices of the wealthy, partly by his affectionate and earnest plain-speaking of Christian truth, was remarkably strong throughout his life. As during the secluded leisure of his monastic life he had acquired a profound intimacy with Holy Scripture, so in the more active labours of his diaconate he enlarged his knowledge of human nature, and stored up observations on the character and manners of the people among whom he moved; qualifications no less important for the formation of a great and effective preacher.