John of Antioch was born about the year 347, of a noble family. His father, Secundus, held a high rank in the imperial army; he died early, and left a very young widow, in the bloom of age and beauty, and amply endowed with wealth. Many suitors sought to obtain the hand of St. Anthusa. She remained faithful to the memory of her husband, and devoted to the education of her only son. She brought him up in all the knowledge of the age and in strict piety, which she enforced by her example. St. Anthusa, amid all the perils of Antioch, guarded her son John with the same care which her contemporary, St. Monica, bestowed in the small circle of an African town on her Augustine. She was happier in one thing. The heathen charms of Antioch exerted no such power over her son John as the like seductive beauty of Carthage exerted over the young Augustine. The prayers and the care of St. Monica and St. Anthusa were equally zealous. In the one case, after the most terrible fall, lasting over a period of at least fourteen years, the African mother had the unspeakable joy of seeing her son’s mind delivered from the most dangerous heresy of the day, and was allowed to die in the arms of the new-born Christian, who could share all her hopes of eternal life, which are recorded in the beautiful dialogue between mother and son preserved for us by that son, who was to be the greatest doctor of the Church. In the other case, the Antiochene parent to whom was applied that expression of the admiring heathen, ‘See what mothers these Christians have,’ had the still rarer gift of rearing a son who never fell, who pursued from beginning to end a holy life, who was crowned with a confessorship exceeding the glory of many martyrs, and whose least merit is that he was the greatest preacher of the Eastern Church, and gave to the language of Plato, eight hundred years after him, in its decline, a glory equal to that which the Athenian gave to it in its prime. Two men—I know not if there be any others in all history—have had their personal name merged by posterity in the name which expressed their special qualities. As the son of Pepin is for ever Charlemagne, so John, the son of St. Anthusa, is for ever Chrysostom, the Golden Mouth. It is thus the world calls the one great and the other eloquent. To return to the facts of John of Antioch’s life. As he grew up he had lessons from the renowned heathen rhetorician Libanius. He studied philosophy, and distinguished himself, at twenty years of age, in preparation for the bar. Libanius considered him the best scholar he had, and even wished to be succeeded by him in his office. Named Preacher at Antioch