LIFE OF ST. AUGUSTINE,

BISHOP OF HIPPO.

CHAPTER I.

In early days the conscience has in most
A quickness, which in later life is lost;
Preserved from guilt by salutary fears,
Or guilty, soon relenting into tears:
Too careless often, as our years proceed,

What friends we sort with, or what books we read.
... Taught at schools much mythologic stuff,
But sound religion sparingly enough.

COWPER.

CHARACTER OF AUGUSTINE-HIS CONFESSIONS-HIS BIRTHPATRICIUS AND MONICA-AUGUSTINE WHEN ILL DESIRES BAPTISM-HIS EDUCATION-EARLY FAULTS-HIS STUDIES -AUGUSTINE DEPRECATES TOO EXCLUSIVELY CLASSIC

STUDIES.

No one, perhaps, of the many holy bishops and saints of the Church, has excited more general attention, or elicited more sincere affection and admiration, than St. Augustine, whose life we now approach.

One principal cause of this is to be found, no doubt, in the feeling of sympathy established between him and the readers of his "Confessions," which being the outpourings of a deeply religious mind, under strong pressure of temptation and sin, must naturally find an echo in many breasts. It is truly said, that "there is a charm in seeing ourselves reflected"; and we may indulge a charitable hope, that some of those who have seen their sin reflected in the mirror held up by this saint, have not stopped there, but beheld not as a shadow only, but in subtance, a repentance as full of good works as his.

66

Augustine, by the extraordinary adaptation of his genius to his own age, the comprehensive grandeur of his views, the intense earnestness of his character, his inexhaustible activity, the vigour, warmth, and perspicuity of his style, had a right to command the homage of Western Christendom. He was at once the first, universal, and the greatest and most powerful of the Christian Latin writers.

"The gentleness of his childhood, the passions of his youth, the studies of his adolescence, the wilder dreams of his immature Christianity, the Manicheism, the intermediate state of Platonism, through which he passed into orthodoxy; the fervor with which he embraced, the vigour with which he developed, the unhesitating confidence with which he enforced his final creed; all affected, more or less,

the general mind. His 'Confessions' became the manual of all those who were forced by their temperament, or inclined by their disposition, to brood over the inward sensations of their own minds; to trace within themselves all the trepidations, the misgivings, the agonies, the exultations of the religious conscience; the gradual formation of opinions, till they harden into dogmas, or warm into objects of ardent passion. . . . . Men shrunk from the divine and unapproachable image of Christian perfection in the life of the Redeemer, to the more earthly, more familiar picture of the development of the Christian character, crossed with the light and shade of human weakness and human passion."*

"The Confessions," says the editor of the English translation, “have ever been a favourite Christian study.... and are of deep interest, presenting, as they do, an account of the way in which God led, perhaps the most powerful mind of Christian antiquity, out of darkness into light, and changed one, who was a chosen vessel unto Himself, from a heretic and seducer of the brethren, into one of the most energetic defenders of Catholic truth. . . . His proposed subject apparently was God's protection and guidance, through all his infirmities and errors, to Baptism, wherein all his transgressions were blotted

*Milman.

out; that so others, who were in the same state in which he had been, might not sleep in despair and say, I cannot.'

St. Augustine was born November 13, A.D. 354, at Targaste, a small town of Numidia, in Africa, within the diocese of Hippo. His family seems to have been one of high respectability, but of no great wealth. His father, Patricius, was a heathen, and although possessed of many worldly virtues, and devoted to the welfare of his children, yet he seems to have been devoid of that pre-eminently Christian virtue, a meek and quiet spirit; and his hasty temper caused frequent pain to his wife Monica, whose pure and holy character has made her worthy of being reckoned among the saints. It is to her unceasing affection and vigilance, and still more to her fervent prayers, we may, under the blessing of the Almighty, attribute the final arrival of her son, after so long wandering, at the haven where he would be. He himself says to her," You, through whose prayers I undoubtingly believe and affirm, that God gave me that mind that I should prefer nothing to the discovery of truth;—wish, think of, love, nought besides. . . to whom I owe all which in me is life."

Augustine loves to dwell upon the excellencies of his mother, and describes her as even in childhood

* Preface to the Confessions of St. Augustine.