SOURCE: "The Letters and Times of Basil of Caesarea, ART. IV," The North American Review, Vol. XC, No. 187, January-April, 1860, pp. 365-95.

[In the following, essay, the reviewer characterizes the collected letters of Basil as the most authentic surviving account of the late fourth-century Eastern church. The critic also discusses important aspects of Basil's life, including the period of his seclusion in Pontus and his tenure as Bishop of Caesarea. The abbreviation "Ep." used throughout stands for "epistle."]

The elder Pitt is said, in the later years of his life, to have deplored his elevation to the peerage, since he perceived that it had withdrawn him from the sphere of popular sympathy and affection, and thus forfeited the great element of his political and social power. The good and eminent men of early Christian times have had equal reason to lament that accession of historical dignity which has been attended with a like forfeiture of real and living power in the Church. The canonization which has made them titular "fathers" and "saints," while it has exalted them to a niche in the history of the Church, where they have been objects of distant and awful veneration, we had almost said of worship, has effectually eliminated them from all living contact with the heart, the memory, the thought and life of the Church.

It has fared especially hard with Basil in this particular. Though his birth and nurture were aristocratic, he was thoroughly, during his life, in spirit and in labors, a man of the people; and he says in a letter to Diodorus, that the highest aim of Christian authorship is "to leave behind one discourses which might be useful to the brotherhood." If we may accept his own declaration, he had no thought of posthumous fame as an author. He states in the same letter, which was written not long before his death, that his infirm health, and the scanty leisure allowed him by the active duties of his office, forbade the attempt to write. He lived heartily and laboriously in and for his own age, and is represented to later times principally by popular, and, as it would seem, extemporaneous homilies and expositions of Scripture, and by his extensive correspondence. But for the titles of "Father," "Saint," "Archbishop," and "the Great,"—for by all these orders and decorations ecclesiastical tradition has raised him to the highest rank of the spiritual peerage (prefixes and affixes, by the way, being alike unknown to his own time and to the two centuries following),—his fame in the Church would have been the natural, healthful, and influential memory of a good man, an eloquent preacher, a laborious pastor, a bold and somewhat sharp asserter of the faith of the Church, but at the same time an carnest advocate of her peace and unity.

By far the most important works which Basil has left to posterity are his letters. He was unrivalled among the great men of the fourth century in this description of writing. Athanasius surpassed him in dialectic and controversial skill and power. Chrysostom was, probably, his superior in eloquence. But neither the letters of Athanasius nor those of Chrysostom (though both of them wrote many which are in all respects worthy of their character and fame) will bear a comparison with those of Basil, either in the easy and captivating grace of their composition, or the variety and importance of their contents. What Voltaire said of the Provincial Letters of Pascal may with truth be affirmed of the letters of Basil,—"they abound in examples of every kind of eloquence." There is scarcely a question pertaining to the doctrine, government, worship, and life of the Church, agitated in that remarkable period,—when all the elements of historical Christianity were in a state of profound and universal fermentation, when the Church was in conflict with heathenism from without and dissent from within, when the imperial power acted at one time as a genial sunshine, stimulating even to an unhealthy luxuriance all the germs of her life, and at another as a sweeping tempest of hostility and persecution,—which is not handled in a profound and masterly way in the course of these letters; and yet they are thrown off with the ease and vivacity which marks the true epistolary genius; they are characterized by the high-bred urbanity and polish of a man who had received the best and most refining culture of his age from school, court, and travel, and they are pervaded withal by a warm, carnest, and elevated picty. In respect to historical materials, they are to the age of Basil what the letters of Cicero are to his,¹ and they derive an especial and inestimable value from the fact that they are an unstudied, actual, and therefore truthful aspect, of an age in relation to which the spirit of historical falsification has shown an almost unparalleled activity and boldness, stimulated as it has been by the powerful interests of a system, which for many centuries had the whole literature of the Church in its irresponsible keeping.

Basil, we say, was an epistolary genius. This kind of writing, to possess its true charm and power, requires a peculiar turn, talent, or temperament. Basil evidently possessed it. In a letter of Athanasius, you have before you in full panoply the theologian and controversialist. Chrysostom cannot lay aside the grave and stately tone of the orator and preacher. But Basil in his letters is a friend talking with a friend, who glides into the discussion of graver topics without losing his colloquial tone. A letter of Athanasius is a controversial tract; a letter of Chrysostom is a sermon; but a letter of Basil is a conversation,—written only because the absence of the person addressed forbids the use of the living voice. He was born to be a letter-writer. Friendship and friendly correspondence was a need of his nature. "Many and great," he says, in a letter to Ambrose, "are the gifts of our Master; such as we cannot measure for their greatness or count for their multitude. But to those who have a just appreciation of his favors, this must appear one of the greatest, that we who are at so great a distance asunder in space are permitted to meet and talk together in our letters." "Thus," he says again to the same person, "we may be near in spirit, though in our earthly residence utterly remote." If such words were addressed only to the princely Bishop of Milan, they might lie open to the suspicion of flattery. But he thus replies to a letter from Paeonius, an humble brother, whose name has come down to our times merely from its association with his own: "How much delight your letter gave me you may conjecture from the nature of its contents";—and concludes as follows: "Since you have begun to write, fail not to continue to do so. You will give more pleasure by sending me letters, than those who send much gold to the covetous." To Phalerius he returns his thanks for a present of fish, and adds: "I am yet more obliged to you for the letter which accompanied the present. Wherefore let me have more letters, and never mind the fish."²

The collection which bears the name of Basil contains three hundred and sixty-five letters. A few of them are, beyond all reasonable doubt, spurious, and a few more, by other hands, have probably crept into the collection. They appear to have been written during a period extending from A.D. 357 to 378, while the imperial throne was successively occupied by Constantius, Julian, Jovian, and Valens, the first of whom was an active supporter of Arianism; the second, a bitter and unrelenting persecutor of Christianity in every form; the third, during his very short reign, a professor and friend of the established faith; and the fourth, a zealous and persecuting patron of Arianism. It would be difficult to select a period of the same length during which the Church passed through so many sudden changes, and underwent such violent agitations, both in her dominant type of doctrine and in her relations to the state and the world.

The great advantage we possess for friendly intercourse, and, in fact, for every work and aim of civilized human existence, in the cheap, sure, and rapid conveyance of letters, is vividly brought to mind in almost every page of the correspondence before us. We write what we have to say to a friend, attach a cheap stamp to it, and commit it to the post, assured that it will be conveyed with all possible security and despatch to its destination, though across continents and seas, and through countries under different, perhaps hostile governments. It seldom occurs to us how very recent are the facilities which habitual enjoyment has made so necessary. They are, in fact, in anything like their present perfection, a peculiarity of our own time. It is less than a century since the mail was first carried in coaches running at regular intervals. The first mail-coach left London for Bristol on the 2d of August, 1784. The mails had been previously conveyed by carts with a single horse, or by boys on horseback. The following proclamation of Charles I. dates but little more than two centuries back (1635): "Whereas, to this time, there hath been no certain intercourse between the kingdoms of England and Scotland, the king now commands his postmaster for foreign parts to settle a running post or two to run night and day between Edinburgh and London, to go thither and come back again in six days." Enlarged postal arrangements were made by act of Parliament in 1657, "with a view to benefit commerce, convey the public despatches, and as the best means to discover and prevent many dangerous, wicked designs against the commonwealth by the inspection of the correspondence."

It seems curious and incredible, that, while the transmission of intelligence by relays of mounted couriers was in use among the Persians, and is accurately described by Herodotus, the high and liberal civilization of Greece and Rome should never have applied so simple an expedient to the popular benefit; and that, while kings occasionally gratified their impatience for news by such arrangements, the regular conveyance of letters for the general convenience was never thought of till the early part of the sixteenth century. Horse posts were at that date (under the reign of Maximilian I.) introduced into the Low Countries by a gentleman bearing the name of Francis de la Tour et Taxis, and were gradually but slowly introduced into other countries of Europe. So late was the plantation of that germ, which in about three centuries has expanded into a system which now binds together, by the regular and rapid interchange of intelligence, all the civilized nations of the world, and which, having subjected the powerful forces of steam and electro-magnetism to its service, promises at no distant period to put the whole human race in intimate and almost instantaneous connection. The introduction of posts for the carriage of letters has never been admitted to a place in the constellation of great inventions which distinguishes these latter centuries. Yet it would be difficult to mention one which has led on, step by step, to more brilliant discoveries, or has exerted a more powerful influence on the diffusion of knowledge, freedom, peace, and every constituent of human improvement and happiness. The rudely graven blocks of Costar did not more certainly initiate a train of inventions which has resulted in the gigantic operations of the steam-power presses of our day, than the horse posts of Francis de la Tour met the want and suggested the idea which have at length wrought out steam navigation and the electric telegraph, and are daily looking and striding forward towards new and yet more wonderful means for perfecting rapidity and accuracy of communication.

The extent of the correspondence before us appears the more astonishing, that it was kept up in the absence of all such conveniences. The conveyance of a letter, in the fourth century, continued to be the same simple affair as when, in an antiquity far beyond Homer, Bellerophon is said to have borne that which contained his own sentence of death,³ from the court of Prcetus to Lycia. There were indeed, in the early days of the Roman empire, carriages with relays of horses along the military roads, so that any one furnished with the imperial diploma could travel night and day to the remotest region of the empire.⁴ The cursus publicus, as this line of posts was termed, of the earlier Casars, reappears in the res vehicularia of Ammianus. One of the letters attributed to Julian, in this collection, invites Basil to "come with all speed to court, and to use the public conveyance in making the journey." But though public despatches were carried by these posts, they were never used for mails, in our sense of the word, or for the general conveyance of private letters. When Basil had occasion to transmit a letter, to however distant a place, he had no other resort (unless in the rare event of a trustworthy bearer presenting himself in the person of a casual traveller) than to send a special messenger to carry it, generally some "co-presbyter" or "co-deacon," and the tardy and precarious conveyance of his letters,⁵ even when thus despatched, and their frequent loss and interception, are oftrecurring subjects of complaint. To Theodora, a devout and noble lady of uncertain residence, he thus writes:—

"Excuse my tardiness in writing to you, my dear friend, as it is really caused by my uncertainty whether my letters have reached you. The faithlessness of messengers, added to the agitations and disorders which now pervade the whole world, cause a multitude of my letters to fall into other hands. So that I await your own complaints and censures and urgent requests for more letters, before I am quite sure that you have received those already sent."—"Ep. 173."

A correspondence carried on in the midst of such difficulties, and yet extending almost to the remotest limits of the still undivided Empire,—to Edessa and Carrha beyond the Euphrates in the East, and to Gaul in the West, to Mcesia, possibly Sarmatia, in the North, and Egypt in the South, and thus making the influence of its writer felt throughout the civilized world,—is indeed a surprising monument of a vigorous mind, and of a large and philanthropic spirit; the more so, since it was achieved, as we shall presently see, in a condition of health which would have excused a man of ordinary energy from exertion of any kind. So indefatigable a letter-writer can hardly be matched in literary history. With all the advantages of modern times for writing and sending letters, there is no living man, probably there has been none since the Reformation, who has filled so wide a sphere, and filled it so influentially, by his correspondence, as this energetic church-leader of the fourth century.

Basil, it is true, had incomparable incentives to so wide a range of correspondence, and incomparable advantages for it, in the political and ecclesiastical condition of the world at that time. Christendom and the civilized world then constituted one Church and one State. There were no denominations in the former, no independent nations in the latter. One imperial will on the shores of the Bosphorus gave laws to the world, from the confines of Persia to the Atlantic, and from the Danube to the deserts of Africa. The Church, with the exception of her remote missionary outposts, had the same limits with the Empire, and was undergoing a rapid assimilation to it in political spirit and form. There were, it is true, the geographical divisions of the East and the West, and the doctrinal distinctions of Arianism with its subdivisions, over against the general faith of the Church as established by the Council of Nice. But there were no sectarian lines. The Church visibly, formally, and nominally was one.⁶ This unity, at once political and ecclesiastical, brought the whole worldwide Church under the eye of such a man as Basil, active in intellect, fervent in spirit, intimately associated in his educational years with many of the leading men of the Church and Empire, conspicuous from the first for his abilities and zeal, self-released by the surrender of his property from all worldly cares and ties, and so thinking, caring, and living only for the Church and the Faith,—holding, too, so important a position as that of metropolitan of Cappadocia and leader of the Nicene interests after the death of Athanasius. Christendom is, in modern times, so divided by national lines, and mustered into sectarian encampments, that no one man, however eminent, can hold such a relation to the whole Church as that which was occupied by Basil in the fourth century.

The great variety of persons to whom these letters were addressed increases their interest and value. To say nothing of his correspondence with the Emperor Julian, which is of doubtful authenticity, and the single letter to Theodosius, which is clearly spurious, here are letters to persons of every political and social rank, from generals, counts, and governors of provinces to persons of the humblest grade; letters to the bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, Thessalonica, Milan, and other metropolitan churches, and to Christian ministers whose names are unnoticed in history, and their residences unknown to geography; letters to cities, senates, and bodies of magistrates; to national communities of Christians, to the bishops of the East and to the bishops of the West, to the bishops of the country and to the bishops of the sea-shore, to Christian congregations and to associations of recluses; letters to students, sophists, soldiers, courtiers, and exiles,—to widows, lapsed virgins, and "strong-minded women"; letters of introduction, of friendship, of counsel;—some, not more than three or four lines in length, containing some passing incident or expression of kindness, and not unfrequently of playful raillery,—a mere link to keep unbroken the chain of correspondence,—and others elaborating at great length some theological distinction pertaining to the controversies of the time, or clearing up some obscure passage of Scripture or case of conscience for the relief of an inquiring correspondent. Here we have an intercession with the government for poor miners, who found their taxes oppressive; there, a deprecation of imperial severity in behalf of a censitor whose accounts had become embarrassed; again, a solicitation of court patronage (never asked for himself) in behalf of a decayed gentleman; and yet again, an energetic remonstrance with despotic poewr against a gerrymandering scheme for cutting up Cappadocia. There are letters of advice to the young, of rebuke, tempered with true Christian lenity, to the fallen, and of eloquent consolation to the afflicted. So wide a range of subjects and of correspondents shows how the writer, though "pinned to his bed,"⁷ as he expresses it, by almost continual illness, and scarcely able in the later years of his short life to attend a meeting of the synod in the next province without mortal peril, yet contrived to live all over the Church and Empire by his letters,—how keenly he watched every cloud that appeared above the horizon of the Universal Church,—and how widely and warmly he sympathized with every interest of humanity.

"The letters of St. Basil," says Dupin, "are the most learned and the most curious of all his books, and perhaps of all ecclesiastical antiquity. They are written with inimitable purity, majesty, and eloquence, and contain an infinite number of things. One may see there all the history of his time described to the life, the different characters of men, the opposite interests of parties, the motives which actuated both sides, and the intrigues which they made use of for carrying on their designs. The state of the Eastem and Western Churches is there described in lively and natural colors. He handles an infinite number of questions of doctrine, of discipline, and of morality, which he decides with much learning and prudence. There one may find many letters of consolation or exhortation, which are very edifying and pathetic; and even those which are complimentary are full of wit, and abound in solid and useful thoughts."

The absence of chronological order, and the frequent omission of other material circumstances, in the ancient editions of these letters, has been matter of general complaint. The modern practice of affixing invariably place, date, address, and signature⁸ to a letter, if used by the ancients, would have saved a vast amount of critical sifting and weighing in the chronological adjustment of such documents, without which they are of course almost valueless to history. But these are among those simple but inestimable expedients which have been suggested by the long experience of mankind, minute accessories of a highly finished civilization, the perfection of which, like that of a great and complicated machinery, has been attained through a long series of successive inventions. To have dated a letter in ancient times, would indeed have been a difficult matter; as there was no generally recognized era from which to reckon, the birth of Christ having been first used as an era about the beginning of the sixth century, and thenceforward gradually becoming the chronological centre whence all time was calculated and every document dated.

For ascertaining the place as well as time of an ancient letter, we are thrown entirely on internal evidence. It seems curious and unaccountable that the writer should not have told where he was when his letter was written. All we can say is that he did not, except in special cases and for special purposes. The letters of Plato, Cicero, Pliny, and Basil are utterly without designation of place, unless it be mentioned incidentally. Those of Basil, whether from primitive omission or later carelessness, are sometimes unaccompanied by the name of the writer or the person addressed. Dupin tried his hand at amending the "Vetus Ordo," which was mere confusion. The "Novus Ordo" of the indefatigable Benedictines is the last result of critical labor and skill in their adjustment. It is certainly an advance on anything of an earlier date. But it is the judgment of Romanists and monks, who, however learned and candid, could not be supposed without bias in a matter having important historical bearings on their Church and order.

In this "New Arrangement," the letters of Basil are distributed into three "Classes";—the first, consisting of forty-six, supposed to have been written before his episcopate, between A.D. 357 and 371; the second, containing two hundred and forty-six, written during his episcopate, from A.D. 370 to his death; the third, including the letters of uncertain date and doubtful authorship, and those bearing unquestionable evidence of other hands or later times.

Of Lives of Basil there has been no lack. Damascenus cites one by Helladius, his successor in the bishopric of Casarea. It is lost. Another has been attributed to Amphilochius. No man knew more profoundly the secrets of his soul, or was better able to appreciate his character at every point, than the excellent Bishop of Iconium. But the work which bears his name is allowed on all hands to be a late and poorly executed imposture. Gregory of Nyssa, his brother, and Gregory of Nazianzus, his intimate friend, both pronounced at his death funeral orations, which include biographical notices. But funeral orations are not very trustworthy sources of true biography. The naked facts they state are not to be questioned; but in an estimate of the character of Basil, and of the influence of persons and events in forming it, more reliance is to be placed on the modest photograph of his own letters, than on the highly colored portraits of his brother and friend, both of which are disfigured by the exaggeration and superstition then so prevalent, from which no eminent man of the time appears to have been so free as Basil.

He was born in Casarea of Cappadocia about A.D. 329, of a noble and opulent family. His ancestors had been distinguished for the offices they had borne in the army and state, but were more illustrious in the memory of the Church for their firmness in confessing Christ even to exile and death. His maternal grandfather is said to have suffered martyrdom. His ancestors on the father's side were driven from their country by persecution, and wandered about in the "deserts and mountains," the "dens and caves," of northern Pontus. Better times and Christian emperors had restored them to their worldly possessions before the birth of Basil. His early education was conducted by his father, who bore the same name with himself, and is represented by both the Gregories as a person of extraordinary endowments as well as piety. It is remarkable enough that Basil has nowhere mentioned him, nor his sister Macrina, who is also represented by the Gregories as having exerted a most important influence in the formation of his character, while he is profuse and fervid in his acknowledgments to his grandmother and mother. From the private tuition of his father he passed into the public school or university of Caesarea, then a renowned seat of learning, resided for some time at Constantinople, and finished his education at Athens. He appears to have gone to Athens about the year 351, at the age of twenty-two, and to have left it in 355. Here he became acquainted with Julian, afterwards Emperor, and formed that close intimacy with Gregory Nazianzen which continued for life. He appears thus to have devoted a considerably longer period to study than is included in a full cursus of school and college education in these days. He had, however, given evidence of extraordinary talents (if we may believe the Gregories) before he entered on it; and the reputation which went before him from Constantinople to Athens, as Nazianzen assures us, joined with a certain shyness and austerity of manner, and probably his always infirm health, induced the students of the latter university to dispense, in his case, with hazing, or whatever initiatory torment was then in vogue. When he had completed his studies at Athens, he travelled extensively.⁹ Egypt, Palestine, Celesyria, and Mesopotamia were among the countries he visited, induced principally by the desire of seeing the religious life of the far-famed anchorites who abounded in those regions, for he was then agitated by deep spiritual anxieties and longings which had not yet found repose in Christ.

About this time he lost his younger brother, Naucratius. This young man, according to Nyssen, after giving brilliant evidence of rare talents as an orator, had suddenly been "inspired by divine grace with disgust for the world," and had withdrawn into seclusion among the mountains of Pontus. The residence of his mother and sister was near enough to enable him to continue in the observance of filial and fraternal offices. A favorite servant, Chrysaphius, was his perpetual attendant. His principal occupation was to catch fish for the maintenance of some old and infirm recluses who lived around him. After living five years in this retirement, he was one day brought home dead with his attendant. The fertile imagination of Nyssen does not fail to throw a suggestion of mystery and miracle over his sudden death.

This event may have served to give a more serious turn to the thoughts of Basil. Nyssen says that his sister Macrina, observing that he aspired with idolatrous enthusiasm to the culture of eloquence, and was elated with an intellectual pride which looked down with austere contempt even on earthly greatness and honor, sought earnestly to draw him to a Christian life, and succeeded the more easily on account of the satiety and disgust he already felt for the world.¹⁰

Basil himself speaks only of an interior efficacy¹¹ in the following account of his conversion, which occurs in a letter written long afterward to Eustathius of Sebaste:—

"After I had spent a long time in vanity, and wasted nearly all my youth in laboriously doing nothing,—inasmuch as I had passed it in the acquisition of that wisdom which God hath made foolish,—at length, awaking as from a deep sleep, I beheld the marvellous light of the truth of the Gospel, and I saw how utterly worthless is the wisdom of the princes of this world, who shall come to naught. I then wept much over my miserable life, and prayed that a hand might be extended to me to guide me to the doctrines of godliness. And, first of all, my care was to correct my way of life, which had been perverted by long association with evil men. And then when I read the Gospel, and learned therein that it is a very great help towards perfection to sell one's goods and make distribution to the poor brethren, and to live absolutely without care of this life, and to have the soul distracted by no sympathy with the things that now are, I prayed that I might find some brother who had chosen this way of life, so that with him I might pass together over this short wave of existence. And indeed I found many such at Alexandria, many in the rest of Egypt, others still in Palestine and Cælesyria and Mesopotamia: whose temperate way of life I admired; I admired, too, their fortitude in labors; I was amazed at the intense fervor of their prayers, and how they overcame sleep, and were bowed by no physical necessity, but maintained always a lofty and indomitable temper of soul, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, paying no attention to the body, nor allowing themselves to waste any thought upon it, but, living as if in the body of another, they showed indeed what it is to sojourn among the things here and to have one's conversation in heaven. I admired what I then saw, and esteemed the life of those men happy, because they show what it is in reality to bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, and I prayed that I too, as far as it was attainable by me, might resemble those men."—"Ep. 222."

He appears to have planned with his friend Gregory, while at Athens, a retirement from the world for the purposes of study and devotion. Gregory declined the immediate execution of the project on account of the age and infirmities of his parents, which he thought made it wrong for him to absent himself from them. Basil, therefore, determined to accomplish his purpose alone.

This "secessus" of Basil¹² is a matter of considerable historical interest. It forms the principal ground on which he is represented by later historians as the father and founder of monastic institutions in that highly organized and widely extended form which gave them so powerful and baneful an influence in the subsequent history of the Church. This theory is neither true to history nor just to the character of Basil. To say the least, no adequate proof can be brought to sustain it from his own letters, though the Benedictine editors have done their best, by means of title, translation, margin, notes, and index, to bring them to that complexion. The ultimate ground of proof must of course be the example of Basil in his own "secessus." He alludes to it so often in the course of his letters, that there is no difficulty in showing how little it had in common with the monastic life of later times.

Impatient, he says, of the delays of his friend, he went off to explore Pontus in quest of a hermitage. He found a place in every way suited to his purpose on the banks of the river Iris. He thus describes it in a letter to his friend:¹³—

"I believe I have at last found the end of my wanderings; my hopes of uniting myself with thee—my pleasing dreams, I should rather say, for the hopes of men have been justly called waking dreams—have remained unfulfilled. God has caused me to find a place, such as has often hovered before the fancy of us both; and that which imagination showed us afar off, I now see present before me. A high mountain, clothed with thick forest, is watered towards the north by fresh and ever-flowing streams; and at the foot of the mountain extends a wide plain, which these streams render fruitful. The surrounding forest, in which grow many kind of trees, shuts me in as in a strong fortress. This wilderness is bounded by two deep ravines; on one side, the river precipitating itself foaming from the mountain forms an obstacle difficult to overcome; and the other side is enclosed by a broad range of hills. My lodge is so placed on the summit of the mountain, that I overlook the extensive plain, and the whole course of the Iris, which is both more beautiful, and more abundant in its waters, than the Strymon near Amphipolis. The river of my wilderness, which is more rapid than any which I have ever seen, breaks against the jutting precipice, and throws itself foaming into the deep pool below,—to the mountain traveller an object on which he gazes with delight and admiration, and valuable to the native. for the many fish which it affords. Shall I describe to three the fertilizing vapors rising from the moist earth, and the cool breezes from the broken water? Shall I speak of the lovely song of the birds, and of the profusion of flowers? What charms me most of all is the undisturbed tranquillity of the district; it is only visited occasionally by hunters; for my wilderness feeds deer and herds of wild goats, not your bears and your wolves. How should I exchange any other place for this! Alcmæon, when he had found the Echenades, would not wander farther."—"Ep. 14," Gregorio Sodali.

In this romantic retreat, which he assures his friend surpasses the island of Calpyso, as described by Homer, he by no means lived from

A scrip with herbs and fruit supplied,
And water from the spring.

How well he was attended there comes to light incidentally from a letter to Candidianus (a magistrate, perhaps the governor of the province, and evidently associated with him by literary and friendly ties), in which he claims redress for an outrage on his dwelling.

"A servant of mine lately died. One of the peasants living in my neighborhood here at Annesi, without even the pretence of a claim on him, without any previous notice or request to me, assailed my dwelling with a band of rude fellows like himself, broke open the doors, beat the women servants in attendance, and carried off everything, taking part for himself, and leaving the rest to be plundered by his companions."—"Ep. 3."

He demands the protection of Candidianus, and says that he must be perpetually exposed to such outrages, unless they are repelled by the energetic interposition of his official friend. He adds, however, that he would be satisfied if the man were "arrested by the pagarch, and shut up in jail a little while."

We do not expect to find men-servants and women-servants in attendance upon the abode of a veritable anchorite. Its contents would be hardly worth plundering. The last request, too, scarce breathes the spirit of a monk or a martyr. The beginning of this same letter "to Candidianus" is as little redolent of monastic austerity.

"My impressions on receiving your letter were worth telling. I shrank from it, expecting that politics, or public business, would be its burden; and while I was breaking the wax, I looked at it with a dread such as no Spartan under impeachment ever felt on handling the scytale. But when I had opened and read it, I had a good laugh,—partly from relief on finding that it contained no news, and partly from a comparison of your condition with that of Demosthenes. When he was obliged to take charge of a chorus, he said that he ought no longer to be called Demosthenes, but Choragus. But you, who have more than ten thousand soldiers in charge, write me in the same quiet strain as usual, and are as much as ever addicted to your books."

"Annesi," which he mentions above as the place of his retirement,—and the name occurs nowhere else but in two of his letters,—appears to have been a hamlet on the Iris, perhaps an estate belonging to his family; for just beyond the river was a residence of his mother, with whom he was "in communion night and day," not on subjects suggested by natural affection, but on those "spiritual things" which were uppermost in both their hearts. It was by this good, kind mother that his residence on the Iris was furnished and supported. Her society and her liberal arrangements for his comfort alike forbid the idea of a properly monastic isolation and austerity.

Such a retreat, surrounded by scenery of romantic beauty, in a most comfortably-appointed home, with beloved and accomplished relatives within call, and cheered by occasional visits from his friends, is quite another thing from the "hairy gown and mossy cell," and studied self-privations and self-tortures, which were essential to the later monachism. And when we add, (a circumstance to which Basil gives a tempting prominence in his description to Gregory,) that the region abounded in deer and fish, we cannot help thinking there would be no lack of cenobites, even in these self-indulgent days, who would relish just such a "secessus," and who go annually to Moosehead Lake and the Adirondacks in quest of a retirement not materially differing from this far-famed hermitage of Basil on the banks of the Iris.

That passionate delight in nature which the delicate criticism of Humboldt has traced in the writings of Basil, added to a natural love of retirement so strong that, he says, he "shrank from publicity," and "courted solitude," and "no life seemed to him more happy than one of complete seclusion from the world,"—probably had much to do with his retired sojourn in Pontus. The general impulse which, from Egypt and the East, was then spreading to other parts of Christendom, doubtless strengthened these constitutional tendencies. But often as he has alluded to that period of his life in his letters, he nowhere speaks of the maceration of the body by privations and austerities as forming any part of his design. He went into retirement, he says, "to form his plan of life," and "to escape the tumults of political life."

"A longing came upon me," he writes, "for divine truth, and undisturbed meditation upon it. How, thought 1, can I subdue the depravity which dwells within us? Who shall become Laban to me, and shelter me from the pursuit of Esau? Who shall take me by the hand and lead me to the highest wisdom?"—"Ep. 8."

How far the hopes of spiritual melioration which had drawn him into retirement were fulfilled, may be learned from a very fine passage in one of his letters to Gregory. To Basil's tempting description of his retreat, Gregory had replied, that it did not so much matter where he was, as what he was about, and how he was succeeding in the object which they both had at heart. Basil rejoins:—

"I knew your letter as people know the children of their friends by their likeness to their parents. That remark, that the charms and advantages of my retreat could not tempt you to join me unless you knew the way I was passing my time and the progress I was making, was just like yourself,—a true expression of that spirit which esteems the things of this life as nothing in comparison with the blessedness laid up for us in the promises. Well, then, what I am doing night and day in this remote solitude I really am ashamed to tell you. For I forsook the crowd and bustle of the city as the occasion of innumerable ills, but I have not been able to leave myself behind. I am, in truth, like people at sea, unaccustomed to navigation, and therefore ill at ease and sea-sick, who fret at the great size of the vessel, as if that were the cause of the rolling and pitching, and so get out into a cock-boat or pinnace, and still roll and pitch and retch, and are as sea-sick as ever; for their discomfort, with the disturbed bile which causes it, goes along with them. My case is very much the same. For carrying about with me as I do my indwelling lusts,¹⁴ I am everywhere in the like disquietude. So that I have derived no great advantage from this solitude."—"Ep. 2."

A memorable confession, which ought to have gone far to correct any monastic tendencies in his writings or his example.

Basil's ideas of Christian culture and virtue, and of the Christian life, are such as cannot be reconciled with the maxims and the spirit of fully-developed monachism. Take, for example, the following fine letter "To a Soldier":—

"My late journey left me many occasions of gratitude to my gracious Lord, and I esteem as one of the greatest of them, the opportunity it afforded me, honored sir, of forming your acquaintance. In you I beheld a man giving actual proof that, even in a military life, it is possible to maintain, in its utmost fervor and constancy, the love of God, and that a Christian should be distinguished, not by the peculiarity of his dress, but by the disposition of his soul. My intercourse with you inspired me with great affection for you; and the pleasure it gave me is renewed at every remembrance of it. Quit thyself, therefore, like a man; be strong; give all diligence to cherish the love of God and to increase it many fold, that the ministration of his blessings to you may also abound more and more. Of your kind remembrance of me I need no other proof than the testimony of your actions."—"Ep. 106."

A gentleman who had resigned an important magistracy from the love of retirement he thus exhorts to resume his office, for the glory of God and the public welfare:—

"You write me that public life is annoying and oppressive to you. I knew it before. It was long ago observed, that those who are laboring to form themselves to virtue are disinclined to public offices. The life of magistrates is in this respect like that of physicians. They behold sad sights, and go through painful experiences. They feel the calamities and sufferings of others as if they were their own. I speak, of course, of those magistrates who deserve the name. For those who look upon life as a mere mercantile speculation, who are ever on the watch for gain, and dote upon honor and notoriety,—such men esteem it the greatest blessing to be an officeholder, since it enables them to advance their friends, to crush their enemies, and to gratify their own wishes. But you are not a man of that stamp. You have withdrawn of your own accord from a high political station; and when it was in your power to rule a city as if it were a single family, you have preferred a tranquil and untroubled life, esteeming a quiet and humble lot a greater blessing than the haughty elevation which others prize so highly. But since it is the will of the Lord that Iboris should not be under the rule of knaves and hucksters, and that the appraisement and taxation should not be like the dealings of a slave-market, but that every man should be registered, rated, and taxed fairly and according to justice, accept the office, however disagreeable it be to you, as giving you an opportunity of pleasing and of serving God. Fulfil it without the fear of power or the contempt of poverty; but maintaining towards those you govern an equity more delicate than the poise of the most accurate scales. So shall your zeal for justice be manifest to those who have confided the office to you, and you will win the general esteem. Or if you even fail of that, our God will not forget you, who encourages us to good works by the promise of great rewards."—"Ep. 299."

These letters certainly do not breathe the spirit of an eremite. That Basil felt and yielded to the influence then moving over Christendom like a breeze which gradually stiffens into a furious and resistless gale, is not to be doubted. His own temporary seclusion, the association for religious culture formed under his auspices at Cæsarea, and many things in his letters, as well as other writings, prove this. But, without attempting nicely to estimate his historical relations to the monachism of the Middle Age, we only affirm that what he taught and practised was a totally different thing. He assumed no religious vows, and we may naturally conclude that he imposed none upon others; his system did not include community of goods; he says nothing in disparagement of marriage, or of domestic and social affections and duties, and his societies (if he really formed any besides that which he mentions at Cæsarea) appear to have been associations more or less isolated from the world, and passing their time in prayer, praise, and the study of the Scriptures, laboring with their own hands to support themselves and to minister to the poor.¹⁵ We do not discern in this system the severer features of the later monachism.

About seven years seem to have intervened between the completion of his course at Athens and his full entrance on the Christian ministry. He does not appear to have been ordained presbyter till the year 364, when he was thirty-five years old. This scrupulous tardiness in assuming the ministerial office was a characteristic of the period. Basil, however, was not idle the meanwhile. He wrote his Moralia, perhaps his books against Eunomius, within that interval. He kept up an extensive correspondence. He was probably employed as a teacher of youth, his admirable Discourse to the Young on the study of the ancient Greek writers having been evidently addressed to young men under his care. Several of his letters appear to have been written to his pupils and to their parents. How long a portion of this interval he passed in his retirement in Pontus it is impossible to determine. In one of his letters to the Neo-Cæsareans he alludes to his having spent several years at a retired and modest residence of his family near their city, which had been inherited by his brother Peter, to escape the tumults of the world, and give himself to undisturbed study and meditation. We cannot well find room for these "several continuous years" in any other part of his life than the interval between his departure from Athens and his entrance on the ministry at Cæsarea.

The letters contained in the second "Classis" are supposed to have been written during the episcopate of Basil. His predecessor in that office at Caesarea was Eusebius. Basil several years before had received some affront from him which induced him to withdraw from the scene of his labors at Cæsarea and indulge his love of retirement by another "secessus." A reconciliation was, however, brought about by the good offices of Gregory, and Basil, says Gregory, had so commended himself after his return by his reverential deportment and pastoral assiduity, that the good, though somewhat infirm and mutable Eusebius, "peacefully breathed out his soul in the arms of Basil," about A.D. 370.

Great was the anxiety with which the election to so important a place was anticipated. The bishops were still chosen by the general suffrages of the congregation. The language of Ammianus in describing the competition of Damasus and Ursinus for the bishopric of Rome indicates that the popular sovereignty was still acknowledged even there.¹⁶ A letter of Basil himself to the people of Neo-Cæsarea on the death of their bishop thus summons them to a conscientious and earnest discharge of their collective duty of providing a successor.

"Fierce wolves, hiding their treacherous nature under sheep's clothing, are everywhere rending the flock of Christ. Against such you must defend yourselves by the guardianship of some watchful pastor. To seek him is yours,—and in doing this, purify your souls from all strife and love of leadership; to point him out to you is the Lord's,—who since the great Gregory presided over your church, down to him who has just departed, has ever added and adapted one to another, so as to make the history of your church beautiful as a setting of very precious stones. You are not therefore to despair of the future. For the Lord knoweth them that are his, and can bring before us those whom we look not for.… I adjure you, therefore, by your fathers, by the pure faith of your church, by this excellent man whom you have lost, to stir up your souls, and, each one esteeming the matter in hand his own proper concern, and remembering that he must share in the consequences of the measures now taken, whether for good or evil, not to devolve on his neighbor the care of the common interest; and afterwards, in consequence of each one making light of his share of responsibility, all unconsciously draw upon themselves the calamitous consequences of neglect."—"Ep. 28," Ecclesiœ Neo-Cœsariensi Consolatoria.

Basil ends a letter of consolation to the church of Ancyra, under the like circumstances, with these words,—after dwelling on the happy unanimity which the church had enjoyed under the care of its deceased pastor: "There is no small peril lest the strifes and dissensions which spring up at the election of a bishop should overturn all his work."

It was not uncommon for vacant churches to invite bishops of approved piety and wisdom to assist them in the choice of a pastor. A bishop deemed it in every way appropriate to his office to visit a church bereaved of their pastor, and offer them his sympathy and counsels. When the church was that of a metropolis, as in the case of Cæsarea, the presbyters sometimes sent such invitations. Both the clergy and people of Cæsarea had on this occasion requested the good and venerable Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus, father of Basil's friend of the same name, (for a bishop might still honestly be a father,) to come without failure to Cæsarea, and use his influence to bring the pending election to a good result. This urgent request called forth the following letter from Gregory to Eusebius of Samosata.

"O that I had wings like a dove! 0 that this aged frame might renew its youth, so that I might hasten to you, my dear friend, and at once gratify the longing I have to see you, and disclose to you the sorrows of my soul, and through you find some consolation in my troubles! The good Eusebius has gone to sleep! And no small anxiety has come upon us lest those who have for some time been lying in ambush for the church of our metropolis, and trying to fill it with the tares of heresy, may seize on this opportunity and root out the seeds of piety which have been sown in the souls of men, and replace them with their own mischievous doctrines, and so break up the unity of this church, as they have of many others. And since I have received letters from the clergy entreating me not to be out of sight on so important an occasion, I have looked about in every direction, and have bethought myself of you, dear brother, and of your pure faith, and of the zeal which you always have for the churches of God. And for this cause I have sent the beloved Eustathius, our fellow-deacon, to entreat you, reverend sir, and to importune you, to add this also to all your labors for the churches; and to refresh my old age by your fellowship; and to establish in this church of pure faith that piety which is spoken of throughout the world, by giving to it along with me (if I shall be deemed worthy to share the labor with you) a pastor after the will of the Lord, who shall be able to guide his people. We have, in fact, before our eyes a man who is not unknown to you. If we shall succeed in obtaining him, I feel sure that we shall acquire great confidence towards God, and confer a very great blessing on the people who have summoned us. I entreat you, therefore, again and often, to put aside every hinderance, and to come before the severities of the winter have set in."

The candidate so mysteriously hinted at by the good Gregory in the above letter—it was perilous in those days to put confidential matters on paper¹⁷—was Basil. Eusebius obeyed the summons of his friend, and, with the two Gregories, exerted himself to procure the election of a candidate equally known and esteemed by them all. The extremely feeble health of Basil was objected; but the elder Gregory reminded the people that they were going to choose, "not a boxer, but a bishop," and that "the strength of the Lord was made perfect in the weakness of his servant." The choice fell upon Basil; and in the year 370, when he was about forty-one years old, he entered on the charge of the metropolitan church of Cæsarea.

How assiduously he fulfilled this office, with what unwearied exertions as a preacher, a pastor, and a curator of the young and the poor, he ministered to his own immediate flock; with what public spirit he watched over the interests of his country, and labored to shield it from oppression, and to advance its welfare by the exertion of his influence with the great; how earnestly he toiled for the unanimity and peace of all Christendom, seeking a "Broad Church" comprehension which should bind together the East and the West in the bonds of a common faith, communion, and affection; with what a large humanity he strove to do good to men everywhere, always on the principle that the Gospel includes a remedy for every disorder and misery of mankind,¹⁸—these letters and his other works, as well as the funeral eulogies of his friends and the testimonies of Church historians, give ample proof.

Many interesting details of his ministrations come to light in his letters and homilies. They quite surpassed anything in modern times, in the way of frequent services. He held morning and evening services in his church for prayer, praise, and exposition of the Scriptures. The terms used will by no means admit of being understood in our sense of forenoon and afternoon assemblies. They were held at the dawn and close of the day. He says in one of his homilies, that he brought the service to a close in order that those who were occupied with labor for their daily subsistence might go to their customary occupations, meditating the meanwhile on what they had heard, and seasoning their repasts with the recollection and discussion of it, and return, with minds released from worldly cares, to "an evening banquet on the word of God." Their assemblages could not, therefore, have been held exclusively on the Lord's day, which was appropriated to rest and worship. Some of his most elaborate and admired productions were delivered at these morning and evening meetings. His homilies on the Creation are among them. A free and colloquial tone pervades all his public discourses, and they appear to have been delivered extemporaneously.¹⁹ He speaks of the eagerness with which the people crowded to hear the word of God, and yet there were some who stood around him to mock and ridicule. On one occasion he accounts for his late appearance at the service by saying that he had just come from ministering to a distant church,—a proof that he fulfilled the office of a bishop in the primitive way, by doing at the same time "the work of an evangelist." Even here, too, we are reminded of the ill-health under which he constantly labored, when he tells the congregation that "the failure of his voice by reason of the infirmity of his body" compelled him to bring his discourse to an end.

The Neo-Cæsareans accused him of introducing novelties into divine worship in his church at Casarea. His defence, completed from incidental notices in his homilies, presents us with a very full and distinct picture of the service. "With us," he says, "the people go at the dawn, before it is light, to the house of prayer, and in labor and affliction and continual tears confess their sins to God. At length they rise from prayer," (which would thus seem to have been offered in a kneeling posture,) "and engage in singing psalms." He speaks of prayers at the dawn and in the evening as a customary practice in the churches. He says that there arose from his congregation a mingled sound of the voices of men, women, and little children, as the sound of many waters, adoring God. It is quite plain, therefore, that the whole congregation took an audible part in the service. He insists much on the use of the voice by every member of the congregation in public worship, often citing that passage, "In his temple doth every one speak his praise." But there were no forms of prayer. He recommends that each one should compile from the Scriptures prayers adapted to his own wants. Every worshipper was supposed to offer up the congregational confession, with a mental application to his own particular sins.²¹ The communion was administered four times a week. Litanies or confessions of sin, it appears, were also a part of public worship in the church of Neo-Casarea. Thus Basil replies to his accusers:—

"You accuse me of innovation because I have introduced certain changes in the worship of the Church. You say, such things were not in use in the time of the great Gregory. But neither were the litanies which are now part of your worship. I do not say this to accuse you. I could wish that you all passed your lives in tears order, for those who have the care of the church, the attendants on divine service,—the common use of which is open to you, our rulers, and your suites. And whom do we wrong when we build lodging-places for strangers,—both those who are mere passers-by, and those who are sick, and therefore need attendance and medical treatment,—and when we provide all that is necessary to their comfort and relief, such as nurses, physicians, bearers, escorts? Such arrangements must necessarily include various arts, both those which are needful to life and those which have been invented to adorn and elevate it, as well as houses and shops for mechanics and artisans. All these buildings are an ornament to the place, and a reputable thing for our governor, to whom the credit of them redounds.… And let not your excellency suppose that this is a mere scheme of ours; for we are already at work, and have accumulated the materials. So much for my defence before you as governor of Cappadocia. But as to the carpings of malicious fault-finders, the vindication which I owe you as a Christian and a friend who has my reputation at heart,—I shall not attempt that now, for my letter has already exceeded the due length; and besides, some things which I have to say it is not safe to intrust to a lifeless letter. I shall have an interview with you erelong. But, lest your kind estimation of me should suffer some interruption from the calumnies of certain persons in the mean time, do as Alexander did. When an information was presented to him, it is said, against one of his officers, he turned one ear to the accuser and closed the other firmly with his hand, signifying that he who would form a just judgment must not give himself up altogether to the party who gets the first hearing, but reserve half of the audience, without preoccupation or prejudice, for the absent defendant."—"Ep. 94."

The governor seems to have interposed no further opposition to the bold and vigorous bishop, and that the execution was at least equal to the project appears from the following passage in the funeral discourse of Gregory Nazianzen, where he speaks of this extensive suite of buildings as one of the monuments of the large philanthropy of his friend.

"Step forth beyond the walls of the city, and you will see a new city, that treasure of piety, that deposit of wealth, where not only the superfluities of the rich but the necessaries of the poor were, by his exhortations, accumulated; thus shaking off moths, disappointing thieves, escaping the decays of time;—where sickness is at once nursed and instructed, where sympathy is exercised, and misfortune itself becomes a blessing. What, now, in comparison with such a work, the sevengated Thebes, and all the glories of Egypt, and the Babylonian walls, and the Carian Mausoleum, and store of Corinthian bronzes, and temples once vast and magnificent, now deserted and ruinous, which conferred nothing but a short-lived celebrity on their builders."²²—Op. Greg. Naz. Tom. I. pp. 316 et seq.

It appears, then, that he derived the means for the great outlay which such a scheme required from the free contributions of Christians. Gibbon's statement, that the "Emperor subscribed the donation of a valuable estate" towards the object, does not appear to be supported by any historical evidence. If imperial bounty had borne so large a share in the expense, Gregory, from his relations to Constantinople and the court, would doubtless have noticed the circumstance. It is inconsistent, too, with Basil's letter to Helias, in relation to this very matter, where he simply expresses the hope that "our great sovereign, observing the solicitudes that press upon us, will leave us to administer the churches by ourselves,"²³ but neither acknowledges nor asks any assistance from the royal treasury. The whole enterprise stands forth as a gratifying proof of the power of the "voluntary principle," even under the despotic system of the fourth century.

Such gigantic enterprises contrast strangely with his own personal poverty. He speaks of "this poverty wherein I abide with God." In a letter to some unknown friend he alludes to his foster brother, "who," he says, "is at much inconvenience for my support, inasmuch as I have, as you well know, no private property, but am supported by my friends and relatives." These letters are supposed to have been written before he entered on his episcopate. But some of those which were written afterward are in the same strain. To the collector of revenues he says: "No man knows my poverty so well as your excellency, who have sympathized with me and borne with my unavoidable delays, to the utmost possible extent, without allowing your kind heart to be turned from its purpose by the threats of those in power." His letters were retarded by the want of a scribe or copyist. He excuses himself for retaining a volume sent him by Diodorus on the same plea, adding, "I have not yet been able to obtain the services of a copyist,—to such a degree of poverty have the boasted riches of Cappadocia been reduced."

He here alludes to the disastrous effects of the division of Cappadocia. That extensive province, corresponding formerly to the ancient kingdom of Cappadocia, was divided by the Emperor Valens, about A.D 372, into two parts, Cappadocia Prima and Secunda. Basil's opposition to the measure has been imputed to prelatical ambition, chagrined by the curtailment of his diocese and the diminution of his suffragans. His own correspondence in relation to it would lead us to form a more charitable opinion of his motives. His account of the effects of the division on the once opulent and splendid metropolis, Caesarea,²⁴ his own native city and the scene of his labors, is as follows:—

"Those assemblies, lectures, and coteries of learned men about the forum,—all, in fact, that erewhile made our city famous, are no longer here. The barbaric rudeness of multitudes of Scythians and Massagetac has taken their place. The voice of exactors and the cry of the oppressed under the strokes of the scourge are the sounds we now hear. The porticos everywhere re-echo the dismal sound. The Gymnasia are shut up, the streets no longer illuminated. A part of the Senators have forsaken the city, preferring a perpetual exile at Podandum to a residence at home."—"Ep. 74."

The death of that loving and generous mother, whose society cheered and solaced him, while her thoughtful kindness mitigated the severities of his voluntary poverty, is thus alluded to in a letter to "the friend of his soul," Eusebius of Samosata:—

"If I should tell you of all the causes which to this time have hindered me from coming to see you, as I wished to do, it would be an endless story. One attack of sickness after another, a severe winter, continual occupations,—all these are well known to you, my excellent friend, and so I forbear to repeat them. But now I have a new sorrow. She who was the only consolation of my life, my mother, has, for my sins, been taken away from me. Do not now smile that a man of my age should bewail his orphanage. But pardon me rather for bearing with so little fortitude the loss of one whom the whole world that survives cannot replace to me. Again, therefore, sickness is upon me: again I am laid on my bed, and the little strength left in me so utterly shaken, that every hour that passes I am ready to look upon as the last. The churches are in a condition very much like that of my body,—no good hope appearing,²⁵ and things tending ever from bad to worse.… Wherefore, faint not in prayer, nor cease to importune God in behalf of the churches."—"Ep. 30."

None of these letters, probably, are more illustrative of the man and of the times than those which were written in the ordinary fulfilment of the cure of souls,—a work which, physically disabled as he was, he must, to an unusual extent, have performed with the pen and in the shape of letters. Of this class is the following, "To Harmatius,"—a Pagan highly esteemed for his social virtues,—whose son had been converted to Christianity. Basil thus deprecates the displeasure of the father, and pleads for the liberty of the son. The absolute power with which the Roman law invested the father will account for the earnestness of its tone.

"Do not consider me intrusive, if I intercede with you in behalf of your son. In all things else I admit that you justly claim his obedience; for he is in subjection to you as it respects the body, both by the law of nature and by these civil relations which bind us together. The soul, however, which is derived from a diviner source, we must regard as subject to another, and that it owes an obedience to God which has priority of all other obligations. Since, then, your son has chosen our God, the God of the Christian, the true God, in preference to the numerous divinities whom you worship through material symbols, be not offended with him; rather admire his moral courage, that he has thought it of greater importance to become one of the household of God through the knowledge of the truth and a holy life, than even to comply with the promptings of filial fear and reverence. Nature itself will plead with you, and that mildness and humanity which characterizes you on all occasions, not, for a moment even, to make him the object of your resentment. Do not reject also my intercession in his behalf, rather, I might say, the intercession through me of all your fellow-citizens, who, because they love you, and pray for all blessings upon you, really thought, when they heard of your son's conversion, that you had yourself become a Christian. Such a general joy did the sudden news of the event diffuse through the city."—"Ep. 276."

Casarius, brother of Gregory Nazianzen, had an extraordinary escape from the great earthquake which overwhelmed Nice, A.D. 368. Though embedded in the masses of ruined buildings, he was uninjured. Basil addressed to him, on the occasion, the following letter:—

"Thanks to God who has shown forth his marvellous works in you, and from so great a death has preserved you to your country,²⁶ and to us who love you! It remains for us not to be unthankful or unworthy of such signal kindness, but to publish, as far as we can, the wonderful works of God, and to sing the praises of that goodness we have experienced; and not in words only to make grateful returns for it, but in act and life. You have already served God. Serve him, I entreat you, yet more earnestly; ever increasing in his fear, and going on to perfection, that we may be wise stewards of that life which he has given us to dispense. For if it is enjoined on all to present themselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, how much more on those who have been lifted up from the gates of death! And this, I think, will be best accomplished, if we resolve always to retain that state of mind which we had in the very moment of peril. For then I think the mind is deeply penetrated with the thought of the vanity of life, and that there is nothing stable or trustworthy in human things, which are liable to such quick vicissitudes. Then, too, repentance is awakened by the review of the past; and for the future, a purpose, if our life is preserved, of serving God and watching over ourselves with all diligence. Such, or something like them, were, I suppose, the thoughts which passed through your own mind, if the apprehension of impending death left you the power of reflection. We are, therefore, under a debt to God which a grateful life must pay. Full of gratitude that God has given you back to us, and deeply anxious too for the consequences of the event, I have ventured to make these suggestions to you. Receive them kindly and favorably, as you have always done what I have spoken to you in person."—"Ep. 26."

A Christian lady desired an interview with him in some unexplained affliction or perplexity. He thus replies:—

"I hope to find a convenient day for the interview you request, after certain meetings which I am about to appoint in the hill country. No other opportunity of meeting you, except it be in the way of public ministration, appears, unless the Lord should order it, beyond my expectation.… But since you have the teaching and consolation of the divine Scriptures, you will not need me nor any other to assist you to the perfect discovery of duty, having the all-sufficient counsel of the Holy Spirit, and his guidance to that which is best."—"Ep. 283," Ad Viduam.

In this multifarious correspondence the Christian and the Christian minister seldom disappear. Even the shortest notes often contain a direct and fervid exhortation to piety. From secular or church business, and from the language of friendship or of compliment, he passes, without apologetic transition, to "this one thing," as if with a majestic assertion at once of his right and duty, to "warn every man and teach every man," "in season and out of season."

He had borrowed some mules from a noble lady. To the courteous acknowledgment with which he returns them, he adds some brief spiritual admonitions; among others, "continually to keep before her eyes her departure from this world, and to have her whole life in harmony with the defence which must then be made before a Judge who cannot be deceived, and who will reveal the secrets of all hearts in the day of his visitation. Present my salutations," he adds, "to your noble daughter. I entreat her continually to study the oracles of God, that her soul may be nourished in good doctrine, and that she may grow in mental even more rapidly than in bodily stature."

A note of some half a dozen lines, without epigraph, but apparently addressed to some friend who had risen to high political position, thus concludes:—

"I pray God to advance you more and more in honor and dignity, and to make your virtue a blessing to us and to your whole country. And I exhort you, in all your life, to remember God who created you and has raised you to honor; that, as you have had a brilliant career in this life, you may also obtain the heavenly glory; for which we must do all things and shape our whole life to that blessed hope."—"Ep. 326."

A letter bearing the inscription, "To Chilo, his Disciple,"²⁷ contains the following counsels:—

"By little and little withdraw from the world, abolishing gradually thy circle of habits and acquaintance, lest, making war upon all pleasures at once, thou bring upon thyself a host of temptations."—"Ep. 42."

This breathes, though in a moderate form, the ascetic spirit. Perhaps it may be found, to a fully equal extent, in Leighton's "Rules and Directions for a Holy Life," which are quite as much out of tone with his sermons and commentaries, as the Regulœ of Basil, and some passages in his letters, with the general strain of his writings. He adds:—

"With manifold temptations is the believer tried; with worldly losses, calumnies, controversies, persecutions. Under all these be thou quiet, not forward in speech, not contentious, not disputatious, not desirous of vainglory, … ever ready to learn rather than to teach."

His letters of consolation are among the finest in the collection; and certainly manifest a warmer sympathy with domestic losses and sorrows than could be expected from a thoroughgoing ascetic. Here are some of the consolations which he addresses "To Nectarius," on the death of an only son in infancy:—

"God only knows how he apportions to each one that which is best, and why he sets such unequal limits to our life. It is utterly inscrutable to men why it is that some are removed hence so soon, and others left to toil and suffer on for a long while, in this troublous life. We must therefore adore, in all things, the kindness and love of God towards man, and not think hardly of his allotments; calling to mind the noble sentiment uttered by that great combatant, Job, when he saw ten children crushed in a moment at the same table: 'The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so hath it happened.' Let us make that admirable state of mind our own.… We have not been bereaved of the child; we have but given him back to Him who lent him. His life has not been extinguished, it is only transfigured into a better. The earth has not hid our beloved one, heaven has received him. Let us wait a little, and we shall be with him whom we moum and long for. The time of separation will not be long, since we are all on the way—this present life—which leads to the same resting-place. One has already arrived there, another is just entering, another presses on,—all will soon reach the same end. If he has finished the journey sooner, yet we are all accomplishing it, and the same abode awaits us all. May we, too, by purity and simplicity of heart, be prepared for the rest which is the portion of babes in Christ."—"Ep. 5."

He thus consoles the mother of the same child:—

"To the Wife of Nectarius.

… Not without a Divine Providence are the things that befall us, since we have learned in the Gospel, that not even a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Father. So that whatever has happened has been by the will of Him who created us. And who hath resisted God? Let us rather accept what he allots.… Great is your sorrow, I confess that. But… when you became a mother, and looked on your child, and gave thanks to God, you knew full well that, a mortal mother, you had given birth to a mortal son. What wonder is it, then, if a mortal has died? 'But,' you say, 'it was so untimely, that is what afflicts us.' We know not but it has happened in very good time. Since our knowledge is far too narrow to make us capable of choosing what is for the true interest of souls, and to mark out the limits of human life. Look around on the whole world in which you dwell, and consider that all things visible are mortal. Look up at the heavens, they shall pass away; at the sun, even that shall not remain. All the stars, all animated creatures on land and in water, all the beautiful things of earth, the earth itself, all are corruptible, all, after a little while, will be no more. Let the thought of these things mitigate your affliction. Do not look at your bereavement by itself. It will be insupportable. But when you compare it with the general human lot, you will find relief in the comparison. One consideration I add of great force,—spare your husband. Be a consolation to one another. Do not make his sorrow heavier by consuming yourself with grief. After all, I well know that words have little power to comfort. Prayer is our only refuge in such a calamity. And I do therefore pray the Lord himself, by his unutterable power, to touch your heart, and to kindle up the light of good thoughts in your soul, so that from within you may have suggestions of consolation."—"Ep. 6."

His comforting words "To Maximus," on the death of his wife, could hardly have come from a monk:—

"I have been intimate with your excellency from our first acquaintance, and also with that happy spirit which has departed. And verily I thought I saw that expression in the Book of Proverbs fulfilled in you, the wife is fitted by God to the husband.²⁸ So were your qualities mutually adapted, that each, as it were in a mirror, presented an individual image of the other.… But grieve not at your present loss; rather give thanks to Him who bestowed your former happiness. For to die is the lot of all who are partakers of this nature. But to live happily with a good wife is the lot of few, even of those who are deemed fortunate. In fact, the very tears with which you deplore your separation are no small proof of the goodness of God, if you look at the matter rightly. For I have known many people who have welcomed the dissolution of an ill-assorted marriage as the laying aside of a burden. We are parts of a perishing creation, and only receive what falls to us of the common lot. Marriage itself is a suggestion of death, since it was not given for continuance, but is the plan of the Creator to perpetuate life by the succession of the race. Nor let us moum that she was so soon taken from us, nor envy her that she was not required to drink the whole cup of this life's sorrows, but, like a flower in full bloom, left us while we still loved and delighted in her. Above all, let the doctrine of the resurrection draw away your mind from brooding over its grief, for you are a Christian, and live in the hope of future blessings. Let reason shake off the burden of sorrow, and take thought how, for the time that is left to us, we may so live as to be well-pleasing to the Lord."—"Ep. 301."

These letters abound in historical and antiquarian suggestions, as might be expected in letters not written for the mere sake of letter-writing, but to meet the claims arising from wide and actual relations with the living world.

It appears from "Ep. 298" that Priessnitz must relinquish the honor of having originated the water-cure. There was an institution, it would seem, with all the pretension of Grafenberg, in the fourth century. Basil was evidently no convert to hydropathy.

"I am surprised that the delusion of this man has infected you, and that you have come to believe in the efficacy absurdly ascribed to water; and that, too, while there is no substantial testimony to confirm the report. There is not one of those who have been there who has received any of the bodily relief he hoped for, small or great; unless it be some little alleviation from accidental causes, such as men often find from sleep, and other processes, from the mere efficacy of the laws of life. But this man, renouncing charity, persuades silly people to ascribe effects which are quite accidental to the efficacy inherent in water. Experiment will show you, if you choose to make it, that my opinion is right."

The imperial patronage inaugurated by Constantine by no means, it would seem, secured Christian ministers from severe straits for the means of support. He speaks of an excellent and very able man, (whom he recommends as eminently suitable for a bishopric to which a friend had requested him to name a candidate,) who "had not wherewith to get his bread, but wove out a subsistence by the labor of his hands." This may have been a case of voluntary poverty. But he says elsewhere, that "the majority of the numerous body of the clergy" of Casarea, though they "did not embark in merchandise, labored in the sedentary arts, and thence obtained the means of daily subsistence."

The cheerful tone which everywhere pervades this correspondence is one of its most remarkable aspects. Earnest and strenuous as he was, suffering too from almost constant bodily pain and weakness, assailed by a tempest of calumny which never seemed to slacken till at his death it changed into an equally extravagant and indiscriminate adulation, feeling all the inconveniences of the poverty to which he had voluntarily subjected himself, and profoundly afflicted by the divisions and calamities of the Church, the hilarity of his spirit shines out through circumstances of the deepest gloom. A large element of his cheerfulness would seem to have been a humor which, as Gregory says, shed a fascinating charm over his conversation, and of which there are many traces in his correspondence. "I put," he says, "the agreeables and disagreeables into the opposite sides of the scale, and when the latter seem to preponderate, I throw my will into the better side." He tells the Neo-Cæsareans, (who showed a singularly bitter and implacable spirit towards him,) that, full as they were of dissensions on all other subjects, they were unanimous in hating him. Vexed and afflicted as he was by the division of Cappadocia, he cannot suppress a joke on the subject, saying, that "the imperial project of dividing Cappadocia was like cutting in two a horse or an ox with the expectation of making two out of one." Cassian reports that a Senator named Syncletius proposed to adopt the life of a recluse, and to surrender his property; but, upon further reflection, concluded to retain a sufficient provision "for a rainy day." "Syncletius," said Basil, "you have spoiled a gentleman and not made a monk." To his physician, Meletius, he expresses his regret that he cannot "migrate with the cranes, and escape the discomforts of winter."

A better and more abiding source of cheerfulness he seems to have found in the anticipations of that "long and ageless life," the hope of which animated him in all labor and cheered him in all calamity.

As years advance, the indications of increasing suffering and failing energies multiply. He speaks of "long diseases urging on to the inevitable end,"—of being "used up³⁰ by fever and complaint of the liver,"—"oppressed by old age," though in years he scarcely reached the prime of life. He closes a short note by saying, "I have just enough of life to breathe." To Amphilochius, his "beloved son," he addresses this touching request: "I entreat you, pray first of all that the Lord would grant me release from this burdensome body, and that he would give peace to his own churches."

His laborious and suffering life came to an end, before he had completed his fiftieth year, A. D. 379. His last words, as reported by Gregory, were; "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit."

Upon the whole, Basil seems justly entitled to the fame of a Christian hero,—by no means free from the ascetic trammels of his time, nor untainted by those incipient tendencies to wrong which were afterwards developed into such enormous evils, but still a great teacher and a bold confessor of Christian truth, and a shining example of Christian virtue.

Notes

¹ "Quas qui legat, non multum desideret historiam contextam eorum temporum."—Cornelius Nepos in Vit. Attici, 16.

² Rather a free translation, perhaps, of… ("Ep.329.").

³ If the. … [text] (Iliad, VII. 155 sqq.) was a letter.

⁴ This system appears to have been organized by Augustus. Suetonius, Octavius, 49.

⁵ He speaks of the severe and protracted winter having interrupted his correspondence with Theodotus. (Ep. 121, Theodoto Episcopo, &c.)

⁶ "All who hope in Christ," says Basil ("Ep. 161"), "are one people, … all who are Christ's are now one Church, … though it be named from different places." The only denomination, then, was that derived from place.…

⁸ The ancient letter seems to have been identified by the handwriting of the author. Basil ("Ep. 223"), defending himself against a charge founded on a letter said to have been written while he was at Athens to Apollinarius, says that the very letter itself which formed the ground of the charge was doubtful. "They could not know it," he adds … (ex subscriptionis signis), "inasmuch as they had not in their possession the original letter, but a copy." This shows that the … [names] were not the signature as understood by us, i. e. the name subscribed, but the proof of authorship by the handwriting. When an amanuensis was employed, an autograph postscript was the sign of genuineness. So Paul (2 Thes. iii. 17) says, "The salutation by the hand of me, Paul, which is the sign in every epistle,"—"a token whereby all my letters may be known." (Conybeare and Howson.) This was like putting an autograph signature to a letter written by another hand.

⁹ … ("Ep. 204.") The allusion must be to this period of his life, for in later years he tells us that his infirmities fixed him in one spot "like a tree planted in the soil."… That he sometimes, however, made tours of Christian labor and visitation through the different regions of Asia Minor, is evident from some even of his latest letters, e. g. "Ep. 216."

¹⁰ Vit. Mac., p. 181. In his discourse on the Resurrection, which was occasioned by the death of Basil, he calls this accomplished and excellent lady at once "the sister and teacher" of his departed brother.… She survived him; and this discourse on the Resurrection is in the form of a conversation with her. Its abstruse and metaphysical ideas are a proof of the extent to which the culture of Christian females was carried in the fourth century. Basil too ("Ep. 223") says that his mature Christian knowledge and faith were nothing more than a development of the sentiments implanted in his mind … by his mother and grandmother. The discourse on the Resurrection is preserved in Wolfii Anecdota Grcca, Tom. II.

¹¹ Which he calls elsewhere "the grace of him who hath called us with a holy calling to the knowledge of himself." The expression occurs in the course of a retrospect of his early religious life, "Ep. 204," Ad Neo-Casarienses.

¹² Called by himself [apokhoresis eskhatia].

¹³ The passage here quoted is inserted by Humboldt in his Cosmos, as an instance of the high appreciation and enjoyment of nature which is discernible in the writings of the Christian Fathers. He thus introduces it: "I begin with a letter of the great Basil, which has long been an especial favorite with me."

¹⁴ … This description of his inner life may be compared with a remark of his cited by the Benedictine biographer from Cassianus: "Fertur S. Basilii Cwsariensis episcopi districta sententia: Et mulierem, inquit, ignoro, et virgo non sum."

¹⁵ Such at least was the theory.… ("Ep. 207.") Gregory says ("Ep. 8") they would have starved if their wants had not been supplied by the timely bounty of Basil's mother. The later history of manual-labor institutions has been much the same.

¹⁶ Amm. Marc. Valentin. et Valens, XXVII. 3. This election took place A.D. 367.

¹⁷" So Basil says ("Ep. 9"), and warns his friend to come to him for a personal interview.…

¹⁸ He says ("Ep. 261") that "our Lord went through all things pertaining to ministration to the race of men".…

¹⁹ …"Ep. 223." …

²¹ … No other confessional is hinted at by Basil than "the throne of grace."

²² "This noble and charitable foundation," says Gibbon, alluding to the same work, "(almost a new city), surpassed in merit, if not in greatness, the pyramids, or the walls of Babylon."—Dec. and Fall, Vol. IV. p. 269, n.

²³ … ("Ep. 94.") We remember no instance in which Basil, either for himself or for the Church, asks any favors from the government. He was in spirit, and in practice as far as the age would permit, a "voluntary." His letter "to Demosthenes," "Ep. 225" (cf 238), shows a vivid sense of the degradation and weakness incurred by the Church in accepting the patronage, and of course the dictation, of the state. It began already to be apparent, to use the striking words of Bunsen, that "evangelical and apostolical freedom received its death-blow from the same police crutch which had been given it for support."

²⁴ "Cesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, was supposed to contain four hundred thousand inhabitants."—Gibbon, Vol. IV. p. 439.

²⁵ … often used of the first light of the dawn.

²⁶ Casarius held an important post in Bithynia.

²⁷ In the Codex Regius 2895, this letter is ascribed to St. Nilus, who lived a century later; and it certainly presents ascetic ideas in a more developed form than the unquestioned writings of Basil.

²⁸ Sept. translation of Prov. xix. 14. …

³⁰ … "Ep. 138." Liver-complaint he calls his "old affliction," which, he says, "excluded me from food, drove sleep from my eyes, and held me on the confines of life and death, allowing me to live just so much as to be sensible of the pains it caused me."—Ibid.