294 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
doctrinal and ethical teaching before the people, its importance, 
naturally, was at once recognized. On Sundays and festival days 
the sermon had its own fixed place, usually following the reading 
of the Scriptures, in the regular order of worship. Nor was the 
preaching confined to such occasions. Many of Augustine’s homilies 
attest the fact that at certain seasons of the year he was wont to 
preach almost daily, sometimes, we are told, five times a week. 
Moreover, long series of sermons on various books of the Bible, 
like Augustine’s on the Psalms, or Chrysostom’s on Romans, were 
common; for even those leaders on whom the cares of administration 
bore most heavily did not shght their parochial work. Instant they 
were both in season and out of season; during the period when 
the new religion was still subject to persecution, the foundations 
of Christian homiletics were strongly laid, and when persecution 
ceased, the pulpit orator became an acknowledged leader of society.! 
The earliest sermons were very simple, if not quite extempora- 
neous, expositions of the Scriptural lessons that preceded them, 
with a few words added of pertinent admonition and exhortation. 
This combination, however, of explanation and application, which 
the example of Origen had fully established, proved susceptible 
of rich development. Gradually the structure and composition of 
the sermon were given more thought; its appeal under the influence 
of the powerful Tertullian became more direct and forceful; and 
its scope, in the fourth century, was broadened by the introduction 
of doctrinal teaching. In all these respects the sermon grew in 
power till its high, but perfectly normal, culmination was reached, 
for the Greek church in the impassioned eloquence of Chrysostom, 
and for the Latin church in the clear, practical addresses of Au- 
gustine, the profoundest theologian of his age. Through all classes 
of society in Antioch and Constantinople, Chrysostom’s denunciation 
of vice and pleading for righteousness exerted an influence that 
made him feared and hated by evil-doers, but loved by his people. 
From his pulpit in the west, Augustine battled against heresy and 
sin with a power that often left his hearers in tears. 
This, the high-water mark of early Christian preaching, was soon 
to be succeeded by long centuries of decline and impotence.? The 
right to preach was vested in the bishops alone, and although they, 
when prevented from performing such service by sickness or en- 
forced absence, were allowed to license substitutes,* the number of 

1 Dargan, 63-64. 2 Milman, Bk. 9, chap. 9. 
3 Lecoy de la Marche, 21—26. 
