Chrysostom and His Message Author:Stephen Neill What did it feel like to live in Antioch fifteen centuries ago? What was it like to be a Christian in the Roman Empire fifty years after Constantine had made Christianity the favoured religion in the Empire? We are fortunate in having a great many letters and sermons from that period, and through them we can come very close to Christians of a di... more »stant date, who turn out to be perhaps not so different after all from ourselves. The most famous preacher of that century was John, who because of his eloquence came to be known as Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed. Great churches were always crowded, when he preached; the pulpit, as he used it, served often for comment on contemporary affairs, as well as for instruction in the Christian faith.
The Director of World Christian Books has here taken a selection from Chrysostom's sermons and put them into something like contemporary English. These are not exactly the kind of sermons that we should expect to hear from any Christian pulpit today; but, as we read we are brought very close to our predecessors in the faith, and we can easily imagine the kind of sermons that Chrysostom would be preaching, if his pulpit was in St. Paul's Cathedral, and not in the great church of Antioch in Syria.« less