Broadus on Chrysostom: Glory to God for All Things

The greatest of early Christian preachers, perhaps the greatest in all Christian history, was Chrysostom. His motto was, “Glory to God for all things.” He probably derived it from the story of Job, which was his favorite subject of devout meditation, and is mentioned in a large proportion of his eloquent sermons. You might fancy that it was easy for the young man to say, ” Glory to God for all things,” when he was growing up in Antioch, the idol of his widowed mother, with ample means, and the finest instructors of the age. You might think it easy to say this when he was a famous preacher, in Antioch, and afterwards in Constantinople, when ten thousand people crowded the great churches to hear him; though such a preacher could not fail to suffer profoundly through compassion for the perishing, and anxious effort to reclaim the wandering, and sympathy for all the distressed, as well as with many a pang of grief and shame that he did not preach better. But Chrysostom continued to say this, when the Court at Constantinople turned against him, when the wicked Empress became his enemy, and compassed his banishment again and again. When his friends would go to far Armenia and visit him in exile, he would say to them, “Glory to God for all things.” When he was sent to more distant and inhospitable regions, so as to be out of reach of such pious visiting, his letters were apt to end, “Glory to God for all things.” And when the soldiers were dragging him through winter snows, and, utterly worn out, he begged to be taken into a little way-side church that he might die, his last words, as he lay on the cold stone floor, were, “Glory to God for all things.”