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A POPULAR PREACHER : MAXIMUS 'I'YRIUS

But leave these pictures with their fables, and pass to a man who did not live in the primeval reign of Cronos, but in the midst of our iron generation, a man whom Zeus and Apollo set free. He was not an Athenian or Dorian. Solon did not train nor Lycurgus bring him up-neither locality nor laws elect the virtues. He came from Sinope on the Black Sea. Taking counsel of Apollo he freed himself from all adversity, divested himself of its fetters, and roamed the world at liberty, like a bird endowed with reason. He feared no tyrant, knew no compulsion of law. Civic duty did not engage, nor family impede, nor marriage confine, nor agriculture detain, nor military service disturb, nor commerce distract him. He laughed at all such lives and men, as we laugh at little children when we see them engrossed over a game of knuckle-bones, exchanging blows and robbing each other. He lived the life of a free and fearless king. Temples and gymnasia and sacred groves were his palaces. All earth and her fruits and the streams, her offspring, more profuse than any Lesbian or Chian vintage, were his abundant, secure, and undisputed wealth. Like a lion, he was the intimate and darling of the air. He did not evade God's seasons or make contrivances against Him by devising artificial heat in winter, or in summer longing for coolness. So habituated was he to the nature of the universe that this life made him sound and strong, and he reached an extreme old age, without needing medicine, cautery, the surgeon's knife, the prophet's prophecies, the priest's purifications, the wizard's charm. Greece was at war : each state attacked its neighbour,
Who of old met in melancholy war.
He alone kept truce, unarmed in a world of arms, confederate with all those fighters. The criminal, the despot, the slanderer left him alone. He confounded the wicked, not with verbal quibbles, the most wretched form of confutation, but with the contrast of deeds, the most profitable and peaceful of arguments.