diverse parties. No writings furnish an ampler variety of food-for the human spirit in its yearnings after mystery, for the heart in its deep desires, for the understanding in its study of the truth, for the practical life in its pursuit of holiness. None have stamped their impress upon so wide a range of Christian literature: none so precious to the elect, none so respected by the reprobate. His terse, epigrammatic, golden sayings sparkle in every devout treatise for a thousand years. "No sermon without Augustine," says the Spanish proverb. His writings have had more labour expended upon them than any other, after the Apostles': they suffer little by the lapse of time, even though time may disclose their errors. As a whole, they have never been disparaged but by ignorant bigotry. With all their errors and germs of error, they are a heritage which every generation learns from its predecessor to prize more deeply, and explore more profoundly. And the life of Augustine, as we shall see, is as worthy of study as his works.

His life was a long one, extending from A.D. 353 to A.D. 430. It is divided into two almost equal parts, the line of demarcation being his conversion in his thirty-third year,—a line drawn in his case with peculiar clearness, and once for all. The entire thirty-two years which preceded his baptism may be regarded as the period of his call and slow return to God. Christ was an object before his thoughts from his earliest infancy : the Holy Spirit pleaded and strove with him through all his wayward youth; but he remained wandering in the far country, concerning which he afterwards so beautifully said, Regio longinqua est oblivio Dei,resorting to every expedient which both flesh and spirit could devise to uphold rebellion against the truth, and tasting all the bitterness of that rebellion. Slowly, by a circuitous way, and one in which he was many times cast down by Satan, the Holy Spirit brought him to his Saviour-a young but profoundly experienced sinner, versed, beyond most converts, in the secrets of iniquity. He was, when won, effectually won: the spirit thus gained at so much cost was a prepared and devoted instrument, ready for all the work of Christ. His conversion divided the two halves of his life as decidedly, if not as suddenly, as that of St. Paul. From that time, for more than forty years, Augustine maintained an unswerving concentration of purpose. Christ in His church was the supreme Lord of his whole being. Three years he spent, like one greater than he, in seclusion; four years, as a Presbyter in the church of Hippo; and thirty-six, as its Bishop.

In the earlier part of his Christian life he wrote his "Confessions," containing a penitent review of his own follies and God's mercies from the beginning till his baptism. At the close of his life he wrote the “Retractations," containing a review and revision of his writings, undertaken in a solemn conviction of his responsibility to the Supreme Judge. Had he added a third similar work, one which might have reviewed his public life, his share in the controversies of the time, his struggles against the growing corruption of the church, his ministerial cares, the process of his

sanctification, his anomalous position between the Donatists and the civil power, and all the matters of profound interest which must have filled such a life as his-how precious would this second book of Confessions have been! It might have redeemed his character from some of the few imputations under which it has suffered it would certainly have completed the picture of one of the most eventful lives ever spent upon earth. As it is, we can gather, from the "Confessions," his writings generally, and a memoir by one of his contemporaries, a more minute and finished exhibition of Augustine's private and public relations, than we possess of any other great man's from St. Paul to Luther.

The "Confessions" are, mainly, the autobiography of his first thirtythree years. They consist of thirteen books, the last three of which are a disquisition on part of Genesis, and have no relation to his life. Omitting them, therefore, we have ten books, from which to extract and epitomize the history of his early career, as he afterward deliberately recalled it to his memory before God. But we are met at the outset by a deficiency which must be supplied; for Augustine altogether omits reference to his parentage and family. His father was Patricius, a member of the little Senate or Curiales of Tagaste, an inland town of the Roman province of Numidia, not far from Hippo, and equally distant from Carthage and Utica,—a town, however, which has no representative in the map of modern Algeria, unless the little village of Tajell may claim that honour. Patricius was a Heathen during his son's youth, a man of furious temperament, the only redeeming feature of whose character was found in his self-denying efforts to secure for his son a liberal education. He was the unworthy husband of one of the best women that ever lived,-Monica,* the type and pattern of Christian mothers. She had been early in life converted to Christianity by the instrumentality of a good old servant. Like Nonna, the mother of Gregory Nazianzen, Emmelia, the grandmother of Basil, Anthusa, the mother of Chrysostom, the mother of Theodoret, and many other holy women of ancient and modern times, she dedicated her son to God at his birth, with a deep presentiment of his future eminence. Having given him natural life, she travailed in birth for his soul with long and vehement anguish,"counting herself only half his mother until his soul was born again to God." During her children's infancy and youth, she was the only Christian in her household; tried by a perverse and petulant husband, and sorely troubled by Augustine's precocity in vice, and apparent insensibility to her care for his religious interests. But her faith, patience, and prayer never remitted: she waited and laboured for many long weary years, till at length all her desires were granted. Her husband died a Christian; her children were all converted; and, having seen Augustine set out in his high career, she died in peace, with no desire out of heaven ungratified; leaving a name which is invested with the glory of every active and passive grace that belongs to woman.

* Though a plea of superior accuracy may be made for the spelling Monnica, the usual mode is adopted in this paper.

The "Confessions" were not written in the first fervour of Augustine's regenerate life, but when some ten or fifteen years had matured his selfknowledge, without deadening the warmth of his devotion. They breathe the highest ardour of which the human soul is capable, but chastened by a spirit of profound humility and self-distrust. His first object in writing them was to glorify the mercy of God in his salvation. This is the keynote struck in the opening sentences: "Thou dost quicken our souls to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our hearts can find no rest until they rest in Thee." And the strain pervades the whole book, with the inexhaustible variations of gratitude inspiring sanctified genius. It is the worthy prelude of the confessions of eternity.-Another object which he had in view, in thus laying bare his soul to posterity, was his own personal humiliation. He was not satisfied with the secret remembrance of his sins before God, but called the world to witness the revelation. There is no voluntary humility in the record. It was written and sent abroad when he was at the height of his fame, the brightest light in the Christian world, that all men might know him as he was. "See what I am from this book; believe me, who bear testimony of myself, and regard not what others say of me," he writes to a friend, sending him the Confessions. His first care on his conversion was to watch against that pride and vain-glory which, he says, "there is danger of man's seeking in the very contempt of vain-glory." And no one can mark the stern and rigorous portraiture of his sin and degradation, without feeling that self must have been as nearly as possible extinguished in the man who could thus expose the darkest secrets of his life. But we learn, from some few hints, that he designed this book to be useful to the world when he was gone:-"I speak to Thy compassion, and not to scornful man. But to whom tell I all this? Not to Thee alone, O my God; but, in Thy presence, to my own kind, to that small portion of my race which may light upon these writings. And to what end? That all who read may learn from what depths man may cry unto Thee." The book for many centuries stood alone in its kind, exciting many to gratitude, pleading with many wanderers from God, and encouraging the beginnings of penitence in many hearts. It still stands almost alone, distinguished by its severe simplicity amid multitudes of autobiographies,-a model of self-investigation, and a history of the return of a soul to God which will never lose its interest while the world lasts.

The first Book is occupied with reflections upon his infancy, childhood, and boyhood, reaching to his fifteenth year. We might expect from such a genius as his that the mystery of birth into time would fascinate his spirit. Accordingly, we find him hovering about the dread question of his origin, but again and again laying restraint upon the spirit of speculation. "I know not, O Lord my God, whence I came into this dying life (shall I call it ?) or living death. My infancy died, but I live. In Thee are fixed for ever the first principles of all things which come and go, and are not. Thy being is one 'to-day,' and all our years flow through Thy abiding

now. But say, O Lord, to me Thy suppliant, Did my infancy succeed another age that died before it? Ere that unremembered time, was I anything, anywhere? Dost Thou mock me, and bid me praise Thee for what I do know?" He represses the inquiry, and turns to the goodness of God in giving him, through others, the exact supply of all the desires which He had implanted. But the great theologian of original sin cannot let his forgotten infancy pass without calling it to account for its sinfulness. "If I was conceived in sin, where, O my Lord, or when, was I Thy servant ever without guilt?" He reads, in the countenances of other angry and wilful infants, what his own infancy must have been; he deals earnestly with the folly of regarding that age as the age of innocence. But, when we might anticipate such a disquisition as at another time he would have delighted in, he shows the earnestness of his purpose by turning away : "That period I pass by, it is no part of my life: what have I now to do with that of which I can recall no vestige?" His infancy had not been baptized, and was to him a part of his life which he disowned.

He then comes to his boyhood, "into which I entered," he says, "or which came to me, displacing my infancy." He dwells upon the mystery of his first consciousness, and the faculty of speech which launched him on the tempestuous fellowship of human life; and, also, upon his first feeling of dependence upon the will of others. The remembrance of his early discipline of letters was by no means pleasant; and he here confesses, with much genuine emotion, the conduct of his teachers in making the way of learning hard. "No one doeth well what he doeth unwillingly ". —a maxiin which, with its illustrations in this book, might be profitably studied by all preceptors of youth. He mourns-with an eye, doubtless, to all who might light on his book-that the ambition of excellency was the only motive to which appeal was made in his education, and that his tutors set him a bad example by the unrestrained indulgence of their angry passions. But he also confesses his own errors, and is almost too severe upon his early propensity to play, vain sights, and the beginnings of dissipation. He recalls his early love of Latin, which his nurses had made familiar to him; and confesses his unreasonable hatred of Greek, and failure to master its difficulties,—a deficiency which was never thoroughly repaired. But his just abhorrence is enkindled by the remembrance of the deadly influence of an unrestrained familiarity with the licentious pages of Terence and others. It is with more than a sentimental grief that he remembers his following the wanderings of Æneas while forgetful of his own, and weeping for dead Dido while his own soul's death affected himn not. He reckoned the early stimulant given to his warm African genius by the Latin poets a poor compensation for their poisoning the springs of his youth.

Thus musing over his departed boyhood, he warms into lively gratitude for those good gifts of God with which, notwithstanding all his selfdepreciation, he acknowledges himself to have been endowed. Everything was good but his sin. One thing he recalls with deep distress and wonder:

He reminds his God that, while a boy, he was not without thought of that eternal life which was the great light of Christianity in the midst of Heathen error; that, when he was once accounted to be near death, he himself desired Christian baptism-having been only placed among the catechumens at birth by the sign of the Cross and the mystic salt; and that his mother, anxious at first to yield to his wishes, deferred it on his recovery, lest he should sin away its grace and dishonour its obligations. "Was it for my good, O Lord, that the reins were left loose upon me to sin? Do they not say, on all sides, 'Let him alone, let him do as he will, for he is not yet baptized?"" Profound respect for his mother seems to restrain him here: but we see, in the remainder of his appeal, that he regarded the omission as a great error; that it left his youth without a most effectual restraint. It is obvious, also, that he had no sympathy with the notion, then becoming prevalent, that the lost baptismal blessing was irrecoverable. He deeply laments that his youth was surrendered, like unfashioned wax, to the fearful influences of the corrupt world around, without the solemn restraint which an early admission into the church of Christ, and dedication to God in baptism, might have imposed upon him. His confidence was well-grounded; and his mother's faith, in this at least, was weak.

The second Book is a lamentation-it is little else-over one critical year misspent, the sixteenth of his life. He summons himself, as if reluctantly, to the task of reviving the memory of a first voluntary surrender of his soul to the mysteries of darkness. "Thou knowest that out of no pleasure in the remembrance of my dark delights I call them to mind, but to endear Thy love to me, and give it its revenge. Then did I entirely turn from Thee, the One Good; I lost myself in miserable variety. The clanking of the chain of my mortality began to deafen me to Thy voice. I wasted myself in endless impure delights; wandered further and further from Thee, with a proud abasement and a restless weariness. And Thou keptest silence, O my late-found Joy!" Such is the spirit, if not the exact language, of these dreary confessions. That year was burnt into his memory: it was a turning-point in his life, ending fifteen years of resistance to the early influences of the Spirit by still more confirmed resistance, and beginning other fifteen years of weary and wretched wandering from God.-He had returned from Madaura, whither his anxious father had sent him for education; and, while the means were being prepared for his journey to Carthage, he was kept at home in idleness. Bad company, unemployed time, theatrical amusements, and various dissipation, wrought their natural result. He abounded in all flagitiousness, impatient of being outstripped by any in vice, "ashamed only of not being shameless." His father, recently a catechumen, and with scarcely a year more of life, gloried in his son's precocity both of genius and passion; but his mother mourned over him, and counselled him with deep anxiety. "Her words were Thine, which Thou didst by her but I blushed to obey her womanish advices.

sing into my ears;

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