He had a clear conception of the essential coherence between the Old and New Testament. He observes that the very words “old” and “new” are relative terms: new implies an antecedent old, preparatory to it. The condition of the recipients, the circumstances and age in which they lived, being different, necessitated a difference in the treatment. A physician treated the same patient at different times by directly contrary methods; sometimes administering sweet, sometimes bitter medicines, sometimes using the lancet, sometimes cautery, but always with the same ultimate end in view—the health of his patient. So the Old and New Testaments were different, but not, as the Manichæans maintained, antagonistic. The commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” attacked the fruit and consequence of vice; the precept, “Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause,” etc., struck at the root. This was an illustration in a small instance of the general truth that the New Dispensation was only a completion and expansion of the Old. Those, therefore, who rejected the Old Testament dishonoured the New, which was based upon it, and presupposes it.[749]
He is equally rational in his manner of accounting for the variations in the Gospel narratives. That they differ in details, but agree in essential matters, he regards as a powerful evidence of veracity. Exact and verbal coincidence in every particular would have excited in the minds of opponents a suspicion of concerted agreement.[750] Authors might write variously without being at variance; if there had been ten thousand evangelists, yet the Gospel itself would have been but one.[751] Each evangelist tells substantially the same tale, but varied according to the readers for whom he wrote, and the special object which he had in view. So St. Matthew wrote in Hebrew for the Jews, St. Mark for the disciples in Egypt, St. John to set forth the divine aspect of our Lord’s life. Thus we have variety in unity, and unity in variety.[752]
In his commentaries on the Epistles he is careful to consider each as a connected whole; and, in order to impress this on his hearers, he frequently recapitulates at the beginning of a homily all the steps by which the part under consideration has been reached. In his introductions to each letter he generally makes useful observations on the author, the time, place, and style of composition, the readers for whom it was intended, the general character and arrangement of its contents. He regarded the Bible as in such a sense written under the inspiration of God, that no passage, no word even, was to be despised;[753] that men wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, but not to the total deprivation of their own human understanding and personal character. The prophet was not like the seer who spoke under constraint, not knowing what he said; he retained his own faculties and style; only all his powers were quickened, energised by the Spirit to the utterance of words which unassisted he could not have uttered.[754]
Chrysostom’s influence as a preacher was not aided by any external advantages of person. Like so many men who have possessed great powers of command over the minds of others—like St. Paul, Athanasius, John Wesley—he was little of stature; his frame was attenuated by the austerities of his youth and his habitually ascetic mode of life; his cheeks were pale and hollow; his eyes deeply set, but bright and piercing; his broad and lofty forehead was furrowed by wrinkles; his head was bald. He frequently delivered his discourses sitting in the ambo, or high reading-desk, just inside the nave, in order to be near his hearers and well raised above them. But these physical disadvantages were more than compensated by other more important qualities. A power of exposition which unfolded in lucid order, passage by passage, the meaning of the book in hand; a rapid transition from clear exposition, or keen logical argument, to fervid exhortation, or pathetic appeal, or indignant denunciation; the versatile ease with which he could lay hold of any little incident of the moment, such as the lighting of the lamps in the church, and use it to illustrate his discourse; the mixture of plain common-sense, simple boldness, and tender affection, with which he would strike home to the hearts and consciences of his hearers—all these are not only general characteristics of the man, but are usually to be found manifested more or less in the compass of each discourse. It is this rare union of powers which constitutes his superiority to almost all the other Christian preachers with whom he might be, or has been, compared. Savonarola had all, and more than all, his fire and vehemence, but untempered by his sober, calm good sense, and wanting his rational method of interpretation. Chrysostom was eager and impetuous at times in speech as well as in action, but never fanatical. Jeremy Taylor combines, like Chrysostom, real earnestness of purpose with rhetorical forms of expression and florid imagery; but, on the whole, his style is far more artificial, and is overlaid with a multifarious learning from which Chrysostom’s was entirely free. Wesley is almost his match in simple, straightforward, practical exhortation, but does not rise into flights of eloquence like his. The great French preachers, again, resemble him in his more ornate and declamatory vein, but they lack that simpler common-sense style of address which equally distinguished him. Whether the sobriquet of Chrysostomos, “the golden mouth,” was given to him in his lifetime is extremely doubtful; at any rate, it seems not to have been commonly used till afterwards. John is the only name by which he is mentioned in the writings of historians who were most nearly contemporaneous, but the other was a well-known appellation before the end of the fifth century.[755]
The preservation of Chrysostom’s discourses we owe mainly to the custom, prevalent in the Eastern Church at that time, of having the sermons of famous preachers taken down by shorthand writers as they were spoken; but some of them Chrysostom published himself.[756] To what extent they may have been written before preaching it is impossible to say. The expository parts were evidently the result of previous study and preparation; the actual diction of the practical portions he may have left to the suggestion of the moment, though the main subjects of his address had been always decided upon beforehand. Extempore remarks were frequently called forth by the behaviour of the congregation, or some passing incident. The discourse delivered after his return from exile we also know to have been purely impromptu; and Suidas observes that he “had a tongue which exceeded the cataracts of the Nile in fluency, so that he delivered many of his panegyrics on the martyrs extempore without the least hesitation.”[757] His hearers were sometimes rapt in such profound attention that pickpockets took advantage of it:[758] sometimes they were melted to tears, or beat their breasts and faces, and uttered groans and cries to Heaven for mercy; at other times they clapped their hands or shouted—marks of approbation frequently paid at that time to eloquent preachers, but always sternly reproved by Chrysostom.
Although his style is generally exuberantly rich, yet it is seldom offensively redundant, for every word is usually telling; and at times he is epigrammatically terse. A few instances will suffice:—“The fire of sin is large, but it is quenched by a few tears;” “Pain was given on account of sin, yet through pain sin is dissolved;” “Riches are called possessions (κτήματα) that we may possess them, not be possessed by them;” “You are master of much wealth, do not be a slave to that whereof God has made you master;” “Scripture relates the sins of saints, that we may fear; the conversion of sinners, that we may hope.” He refers to a visitation of Antioch by an earthquake, as God “shaking the city, but establishing your minds; making the city crumble, but consolidating your judgment.”
His familiarity with classical Greek authors is apparent sometimes in direct references. He speaks of “the smoothness of Isocrates, the weight of Demosthenes, the dignity of Thucydides, the sublimity of Plato.”[759] He quotes the beginning of the “Apology,” to show that if Socrates did not put a high value on mere fine talking, how much less should the Christian.[760] He illustrates the readiness of men to supply the wants of the monk by a passage from Plato, where Crito says that his money, and that of Cebes and many others, is at the disposal of Socrates; and, go where he will, he may rely on finding friends.[761] Sometimes we detect a thought derived, it may have been unconsciously, from classical sources. When he compares the crowd of the congregation before him to the sea, and the play upon the surface of that sea of heads to the effect of a strong west wind stirring and bending the ears of corn,[762] it is impossible not to think that the idea was suggested by the well-known simile in Homer (Il. ii. 147). Again, when, in speaking of David’s sin, he compares the body to a chariot and the soul to the charioteer, and says that, when the soul is intoxicated by passion, the chariot is dragged along at random, it can hardly be fanciful to see a reflection of Plato’s celebrated image of the charioteer and horses in the “Phædrus.”[763]
But whatever admiration Chrysostom may have retained of those authors whom he had studied in his youth, it was confined to their language, for with their ideas and modes of thought he had, so far as we can judge, abandoned all sympathy. Nor was this unnatural. Christianity existed in such close contact with Pagan corruption, and it had suffered so much from Pagan persecution, that the revulsion of earnest Christians from all things Pagan was total and indiscriminating. “The old order changeth, yielding place to new;” and the new, having fought a hard struggle with the old, is for a long time incapable of recognising merit in anything belonging to it. There are several allusions in Chrysostom to the “Republic” of Plato, but they are always depreciative. He fastens on a few points, such as the regulations about marriage and female work, and condemns it on these as absurd and childish, quite failing to consider the idea in its grandeur as a whole.[764] Yet it is instructive to notice that he never hesitates to assign to Plato the first place among the heathen philosophers, dignifying him with the title of Coryphæus.[765] He often compares the failure of Plato’s teaching to regenerate men in every rank with the successful labours of St. Paul and the other apostles; but while he rejoices that the writings and doctrine of the philosopher were eclipsed by the tentmaker and fisherman, and well-nigh forgotten, he evidently regarded it as the most signal triumph which Christianity had achieved.[766]