CHAPTER XX. ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM. A.D. 347-407. PART I. At this time lived St. John Chrysostom, whose name is known to us all from the prayer in our service which is called "A Prayer of St. Chrysostom." He was born at Antioch about the year 347. While he was still a little child, he lost his father; but his mother, Anthusa, who was left a widow at the age of twenty, remained unmarried, and devoted herself to the training of her son. During his early years, she brought him up with religious care, and he was afterwards sent to finish his education under a famous heathen philosopher. I have already had occasion to tell you that Christian youths, while in the schools of such teachers, ran a great risk of being turned from the Gospel, and that many of them fell away;[21] but John was preserved from the danger by daily studying the Scriptures, and thus his faith was kept fresh and warm. The philosopher had such a high notion of his talents, that he long after spoke of John as the best of all the pupils he had ever had, and said that he would have been the worthiest to succeed him as a teacher, "if the Christians had not stolen him." [21] Page 67. When he left this master, John studied law; but, after trying it for a time, he found that there were things about the business of an Antioch lawyer which went against his conscience; so he resolved to give up the law, and to become a monk. But his mother thought that he might lead a really Christian life without rushing away into the wilderness and leaving his natural duties behind him. She took him by the hand, led him into her chamber, and made him sit down beside her on the bed. Then she burst into tears: she reminded him of all the kindness which she had shown him, and of the cares and troubles which she had borne for his sake. She told him that it had been her chief comfort to look on his face, which put her in mind of the husband whom she had lost. "Make me not once more a widow," she said: "wait only for my death, which may, perhaps, not be far off. When you have laid me in the grave, then you may go where you will--even beyond the sea, if such be your wish, but so long as I live, bear to stay with me, and do not offend God by afflicting your mother." The young man yielded to these entreaties, and remained in his mother's house, although he gave up all worldly business, and lived after the strict manner of the monks. But when the good Anthusa was dead, he withdrew to the mountains, near Antioch, in which a great number of monks dwelt. There he spent four years in a monastery, and two as a hermit in a cave. But at last his hard life made him very weak and ill, so that he was obliged to return to Antioch; and soon after this he was ordained to be one of the clergy, and was appointed chief preacher of the city (A.D. 386).