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THE FEARLESS BISHOP:

BASIL THE GREAT.

THE honourable appellation of "the Great," by which Basil of Cæsarea is known, boasts the unchallenged prescription of fourteen centuries. It is explaining not impugning it to remark, that it does not imply superiority to all patristic celebrities, whose names are undistinguished by the same epithet; while on the other hand his words and works stamp him great, not only among all the Basils of ecclesiastical history, but among preachers, writers, and Christians.

He is one of the fortunate few whose merits have met with full appreciation. For this he is not a little indebted to the eulogies composed after his death by Gregory of Nyssa, his brother, and Gregory of Nazianzum, his bosom friend, Ephraem Syrus, and Amphilochius.

The partial hand of friendship and the exaggeration of rhetoric are visible enough in Gregory of Nazianzum's monody on his friend. He has succeeded in producing a portrait of almost ideal beauty crowned with academic and clerical laurels,

whose fresh and fadeless leaves gleam in the radiance of a halo of saintly glory. Almost the one blot on his fair escutcheon, the one wen on that goodly countenance,-all of shade that is given us to relieve such a mass of light and colour,—is the mistake he committed in conferring on Gregory himself, afterwards thought worthy of the first see of the East, the insignificant bishopric of Sasima. After passing in review the illustrious saints of the Old Testament, from Adam to John, to show that Basil might bear a comparison with any of them, and united in himself the excellences of all, and then declaring him to be the equal of the Apostles, we are not much surprised to hear his eulogist wind up by saying, "Why should I say more? His faults, which belonged to the body and nature rather than to the soul, would have been called virtues in others. If any man thinks that he imitates him, he will be found to be as inferior as a shadow is to a statue, an echo to the voice."

The materials derived from Gregory and other sources, although they come short of demonstrating Basil to be the quintessence of human excellences, establish his claim to a place among the good and great. Born A.D. 329, and dying A.D. 379, his life extended over the eventful halfcentury which began with the closing years of the reign of Constantine the Great, and, running through those of Constantius, Julian, and Valens,

ended with the first year of Theodosius. His father was called Basil, and his mother Eumelia. Their children were one daughter, Macrina, and four sons, Basil, Gregory, Peter, and Naucratius, three of whom became bishops,-Basil, the subject of the present sketch, at Cæsarea, Gregory at Nyssa, Peter at Sebaste. The prestige and traditions of his family and the training of his home manifestly had much to do in determining his future career. His grandfather and kindred, who belonged to Neo-Cæsarea in Pontus, had fled from the persecution of Maximin, and lived for seven years in a cave among the mountains. To an influence, such as many of the Christian females of that period were fitted by their piety and intelligence to wield-such as Monica exerted on Augustine, and Anthusa on Chrysostom,-Basil was much indebted. His grandmother Macrina, who had been a confessor of the truth, and was celebrated for her knowledge of the Scriptures, instilled into his mind the lessons she had learned from the lips of Gregory Thaumaturgus, the wonder-worker of Neo-Cæsarea, who had been her pastor. She had treasured up in her heart the words of that apostolic man, and she could tell young Basil, with his sister and brothers, all about the cave and the horrors of the bloody persecution, and the wonders wrought, and the words spoken, by the revered Gregory. He fondly and fre

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quently mentions both, and expressly states, in a letter to the Neo-Cæsareans, that he had learned his creed in the words of their venerable bishop from the lips of Macrina, and from it had never swerved. The lives of both were written by his brother, Gregory of Nyssa. Many other circumstances concur to show that the grand old form of Thaumaturgus pictured by his admiring disciple to the ardent imagination of the boy, occupied a sacred place among the treasures of memory, and fired him with noble aspirations. He was carefully instructed in the elementary branches of education by his father. In the influences amid which his boyhood was passed, we see ground for Gregory of Nazianzum's common-place illustrations of the child being father to the man, and can trace not obscurely the first rude draught of what, after passing through various hands, became the accomplished scholar, the faithful bishop, the champion of the Nicene Creed, and the apostle of the cœnobite life.

Thirsting for knowledge, and ambitious of learning the art of speaking, he passed from his father's hands to the public schools of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, then one of the most celebrated seats of learning, where he was noted for the gravity of his manners, and won high distinction in all the branches of academic study. He next spent some time in Constantinople. The most renowned