Counsels and Correspondences of St. John Chrysostom

This collection contains many letters of St. John Chrysostom from being addressed to a young widow to Pope Innocent I. This collection also includes minor treatises titled “No One Can Harm the Man Who Does Not Harm Himself” and “Instructions to Catechumans.” Chrysostom was one of those rare men who combine greatness and goodness, genius and piety, and continue to exercise by their writings and example a happy influence upon the Christian church. He was a man for his time and for all times. But we must look at the spirit rather than the form of his piety, which bore the stamp of his age. He took Paul for his model, but had a good deal of the practical spirit of James, and of the fervor and loveliness of John. The Scriptures were his daily food, and he again and again recommended their study to laymen as well as ministers. He was not an ecclesiastical statesman, like St. Ambrose, not a profound divine like St. Augustin, but a pure man, a practical Christian, and a king of preachers. “He carried out in his own life,” says Hase, “as far as mortal man can do it, the ideal of the priesthood which he once described in youthful enthusiasm.”