BY THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 29 



and in the distance the sea, towards which, the wandering 

 cloud is sailing, my mind is possessed with a sadness which 

 is not devoid of enjoyment. When, in autumn, the fruits 

 disappear, the leaves fall, and the branches of the trees, 

 stripped of their ornaments, hang lifeless, in viewing this 

 perpetual and regularly recurring alternation the mind 

 becomes absorbed in the contemplation, and rapt as it 

 were in unison with the many-voiced chorus of the won- 

 drous forces of nature. Whoso gazes through these with 

 the inward eye of thejoul feels the littleness of man in the 

 greatness of the universe" ( 49 ). 



While the early Christian Greeks were thus led, by 



glorifying God in a loving contemplation of nature, to poetic 



descriptions of her various beauty, they were at the same 



time full of contempt for all works of human art. We find in 



Chrysostom many such passages as these : "when thou lookest 



on the glittering buildings, if the ranges of columns would 



seduce thy heart, turn quickly to contemplate the vault of 



heaven and the open fields, with the flocks grazing by the 



water's side. Who but despises all that art can shew whilst 



he gazes at early morn, and, in the silence of the heart, 



on the rising sun pouring his golden light upon the 



earth ; or when seated by the side of a fountain in the cool 



grass, or in the dark shade of thick foliage, his eye feeds 



the while on the wide-extended prospect far vanishing in the 



distance" ( 50 ). Antioch was at this period surrounded by 



hermitages, in one of which Chrysostom dwelt- it might 



have seemed that eloquence had found again her element, 



freedom, on returning to the bosom of nature in the then 



forest-covered mountain districts of Syria and Asia Minor. 



But when, during the subsequent period, so hostile to alf 



