son Arcadius—although both of them were pagans. Altogether it may be concluded that, while he did not restrain the growing popular violence directed against the buildings and images of pagan worship, and even took action to suppress the ritual, he bore no grudge against persons and was quite ready to appreciate the good qualities of adherents of the old religions. The empire which had been united for a time was divided at his death (a.d. 395) between his two weak sons, Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East. The latter was a puppet in the hands of his unscrupulous minister Eutropius, who induced him to marry a beautiful Frank maiden Eudoxia.
Meanwhile the one really great man in the Eastern Church was being brought into public notice as much by his stern fidelity as by his unparalleled pulpit gifts. This was John, first known as a presbyter at Antioch and always described by this simple name during his lifetime, but now recognised by his posthumous title, Chrysostom. Antioch was the seat of a school of Bible study, the method of which was very different from that cultivated at Alexandria. Following the example of the grammarians in their treatment of Homer and of Philo in his adaptation of the Old Testament to current philosophical ideas, the Alexandrian Christian scholars took great liberties with the Scriptures—the New Testament as well as the Old—in freely allegorising them. The scholars of Antioch, on the other hand, pursued the method of grammatical and historical interpretation. For this reason, while we are often amused at the ingenuity of the Alexandrian interpretations of the Bible, we find Antiochian expositions of permanent value as guides to a correct understanding of Scripture. No commentator is of more use in this respect than Chrysostom. He is the prince of expository preachers. The modern expositor is a debtor to the great presbyter of Antioch for many suggestive ideas which he thinks he owes to Westcott, Lightfoot, Alford, or Matthew Henry, but which if he had the patience to trace the stream up to its source he would see to have sprung from the sound perceptions of Chrysostom.
