2.  And yet, if he whom you mourn had not reached extreme old age, certainly, as regards his government of your church, he was allowed no narrow limit of life.  He had as much strength of body as enabled him to show strength of mind in his distresses.  Perhaps some of you may suppose that time increases sympathy and adds affection, and is no cause of satiety, so that, the longer you have experienced kind treatment, the more sensible you are of its loss.  You may think that of a righteous person the good hold even the shadow in honour.  Would that many of you did feel so!  Far be it from me to suggest anything like disregard of our friend!  But I do counsel you to bear your pain with manly endurance.  I myself am by no means insensible of all that may be said by those who are weeping for their loss.  Hushed is a tongue whose words flooded our ears like a mighty stream:  a depth of heart, never fathomed before, has fled, humanly speaking, like an unsubstantial dream.  Whose glance so keen as his to look into the future?  Who with like fixity and strength of mind able to dart like lightning into the midst of action?  O Neocæsarea, already a prey to many troubles, never before smitten with so deadly a loss!  Now withered is the bloom of you, beauty; your church is dumb; your assemblies are full of mournful faces; your sacred synod craves for its leader; your holy utterances wait for an expounder; your boys have lost a father, your elders a brother, your nobles one first among them, your people a champion, your poor a supporter.  All, calling him by the name that comes most nearly home to each, lift up the wailing cry which to each man’s own sorrow seems most appropriate and fit.  But whither are my words carried away by my tearful joy?  Shall we not watch?  Shall we not meet together?  Shall we not look to our common Lord, Who suffers each of his saints to serve his own generation, and summons him back to Himself at His own appointed time?  Now in season remember the voice of him who when preaching to you used always to say “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.” Phil. iii. 2.  The dogs are many.  Why do I say dogs?  Rather grievous wolves, hiding their guile under the guise of sheep, are, all over the world, tearing Christ’s flock.  Of these you must beware, under the protection of some wakeful bishop.  Such an one it is yours to ask, purging your souls of all rivalry and ambition:  such an one it is the Lord’s to show you.  That Lord, from the time of Gregory the great champion of your church down to that of the blessed departed, setting over you one after another, and from time to time fitting one to another like gem set close to gem, has bestowed on you glorious ornaments for your church.  You have, then, no need to despair of them that are to come.  The Lord knoweth who are His.  He may bring into our midst those for whom peradventure we are not looking.