Christianity the only Possible Religion.—?Adventures of Placidia.—?Her Marriage with Adolphus the Goth.—?Scenes of Violence and Crime.—?Attila the Hun.—?Nuptials of Idaho.—?Eudoxia and her Fate.—?Triumph of Odoacer the Goth.—?Character of the Roman Nobles.—?Conquests of Theodoric.—?John Chrysostom.—?The Origin of Monasticism.—?Augustine.—?His Dissipation, Conversion, and Christian Career.—?His “Confessions.”

HE fifth century dawned luridly upon our sad world. There was no stable government anywhere. The Roman empire, which, oppressive as it had often been, was far better than anarchy, had now become but a crumbling ruin, which no human energy or skill could rebuild. The attempt by Julian the Apostate to reinstate paganism had proved so utter and humiliating a failure, that there was no possibility of the undertaking being ever again repeated.

There can be but one religion which an enlightened world will accept; and that is Christianity. If Christianity is renounced, the world will never adopt any substitute which has yet been proposed. The superstitions of barbarians are all too senseless to be thought of for a moment. Though there was a political party in the Roman empire who rallied around Julian, even many of his partisans regarded his efforts to reinstate paganism with ridicule and contempt. The wits of the day lampooned him mercilessly.

Honorius, Emperor of the West, after a disastrous reign of twenty-eight years, died in the year 423. Weary scenes of anarchy and bloodshed ensued, which we have no space to describe. Placidia, a Christian princess, daughter of the great Theodosius, had been carried away captive by the Goths. The splendor of her birth, her marvellous personal beauty, and the elegance of her manners, won universal admiration. The young Gothic king Adolphus, who was a man of unusual grace both of person and mind, won the hand and heart of his captive. The nuptials were attended with great splendor at Narbonne, as we have mentioned in the previous chapter.

“The bride,” writes Gibbon, “attired and adorned like a Roman empress, was placed on a throne of state; and the king of the Goths, who assumed on this occasion the Roman habit, contented himself with a less honorable seat by her side. The nuptial gift, which, according to the custom of his nation, was offered to Placidia, consisted of the rare and magnificent spoils of her country. The barbarians enjoyed the insolence of their triumph; and the provincials rejoiced in this alliance, which tempered by the mild influence of love and reason the fierce spirit of their Gothic lord.”194

The love of Adolphus for his beautiful bride was not abated by time or possession. Ayear passed, when they rejoiced in the birth of a son, whom they named Theodosius, after his illustrious grandfather. The death of this child in his infancy caused great grief to his parents. He was buried in a silver coffin in one of the churches near Barcelona. Soon after this, Adolphus was assassinated in his palace, at Barcelona, by one of his followers,—Sarus. Singeric, the brother of Sarus, seized the Gothic throne. He immediately murdered the six children of Adolphus, the issue of a former marriage. Placidia was treated with the most cruel and wanton insult. The daughter of the renowned Emperor Theodosius was driven on foot, amidst a crowd of vulgar captives, twelve miles, before the horse of a barbarian who had murdered her husband.

Singeric enjoyed his elevation but seven days, when assassination terminated his earthly being. Wallia, who by the suffrages of the Goths succeeded to the throne, restored Placidia to her brother Honorius. The reign of the barbarians in Gaul, with their wars and their plunderings, caused for a time the ruin of those once opulent provinces.

Attila the Hun, to whom we have alluded, with an innumerable horde of the ferocious warriors, invaded Italy, everywhere perpetrating atrocious acts of cruelty. The barbarians massacred their prisoners, inflicting upon them inhuman tortures, apparently from the mere love of cruelty. Two hundred beautiful young maidens were exposed to every cruelty which savage ingenuity could devise. Their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses, and their mutilated limbs left unburied. Attila overran the rich plains of Lombardy, and established himself in the palace of Milan. The senate of Rome, terror-stricken, sent an embassage to implore peace of the barbarian. Attila demanded the Princess Honoria, daughter of the Emperor Valentinian, for his bride, and one-half of the kingdom of Italy as her dowry. While negotiations were pending, and Honoria was trembling in anticipation of her dreadful doom, the fierce Hun ravaged large portions of Gaul and Italy at the head of half a million of warriors as fierce and merciless as wolves.

The victorious Hun retired to the wilds of the North to replenish his diminished hordes, threatening to return and inflict still more signal vengeance, unless the bride he demanded, and the dowry claimed with her, were immediately granted him. In the mean time, he added to his harem of innumerable wives a beautiful maiden named Idaho.

“Their marriage,” writes Gibbon, “was celebrated with barbarian pomp and festivity at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch, oppressed with wine and sleep, retired at a late hour from the banquet to the nuptial-couch. His attendants continued to respect his pleasures or his repose the greater part of the ensuing day, till the unusual silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside, hiding her face with her veil, and lamenting her own danger, as well as the death of the king, who had expired during the night. An artery had suddenly burst; and, as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated by a torrent of blood, which, instead of finding a passage through the nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. His body was solemnly exposed in the midst of the plain under a silken pavilion; and the chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling around in measured evolutions, chanted a funeral-song in memory of a hero glorious in his life, invincible in his death, the father of his people, and the terror of the world.

“According to their national custom, the barbarians cut off a part of their hair, gashed their faces with unseemly wounds, and bewailed their valiant leader as he deserved, not with the tears of women, but with the blood of warriors. The remains of Attila were enclosed within three coffins,—of gold, of silver, and of iron,—and were privately buried in the night. The spoils of nations were thrown into his grave. The captives who had opened the ground were inhumanly massacred; and the same Huns who had indulged such excessive grief, feasted, with dissolute and intemperate mirth, about the recent sepulchre of their king.”

Valentinian inveigled a noble lady, alike illustrious for beauty and piety, to his palace, where he treated her with such indignities as to rouse to the highest pitch the wrath of her husband and friends. Aconspiracy was formed by her husband Maximus, a Roman senator; and Valentinian died beneath the daggers which his crimes had unsheathed. The solders placed the diadem upon the brow of Maximus. His wife soon after died; and he endeavored to compel Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, to become his spouse. She recoiled from throwing herself into the arms of the murderer of her husband, and appealed for aid to Genseric, one of those powerful Vandal kings who had wrested Africa from the Roman empire.

Genseric joyfully espoused her cause. With a large fleet he entered the Tiber, advanced to Rome, and captured the city. In the struggle, Maximus was slain, and unhappy Rome was surrendered to the Moors and the Vandals to be pillaged for fourteen days. The barbarian Genseric carried back into the wilds of Africa, as slaves, Eudoxia, the widowed Empress of Rome, and her two daughters. Many other Roman matrons and maidens swelled the long train of captives who were dragged into life-long bondage.

“Eudoxia,” writes Gibbon, “was rudely stripped of her jewels; and the unfortunate empress, with her two daughters, the only surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was compelled as a captive to follow the haughty Vandal, who immediately hoisted sail, and returned, with a prosperous navigation, to the port of Carthage. Many thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarians, who, in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands, and the children from their parents.”

The whole world seemed to be now essentially in the condition of a city surrendered to the mob. There was no stable government anywhere. There was nowhere peace or prosperity or joy. Man’s corruption had filled the earth with misery. Still there were thousands of individual Christians, in obscurity and through much tribulation, struggling nobly to their throne and their crown in heaven.

It is difficult to conceive of a more melancholy spectacle than Italy presented. The barbarians were masters of the whole Peninsula. Odoacer, a stern Gothic warrior, after several years of the wildest anarchy, with wars and assassinations too numerous to mention, in the year 476 compelled the Roman senate by a formal decree to abolish the imperial succession, and to recognize him as the military chieftain of Italy. Thus, after the decay of ages, the Roman empire fell, to rise no more.

Sagaciously this ferocious barbarian respected time-honored institutions. He conferred upon his captains titles of dukes and counts, thus perpetuating and extending the feudal system. The Roman nobles, surrendering themselves to all sensual indulgence, had sunk into the lowest debasement. Acontemporary historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, gives the following graphic account of the aristocracy of Rome at that time:—

“The ostentation of presenting the rent-roll of their estates provokes the resentment of every man who remembers that their poor ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers. The modern nobles measure their rank by the splendor of their carriages and the magnificence of their dress. Followed by a train of fifty slaves, they sweep the streets with impetuous speed. When they condescend to visit the public baths, they assume a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate to themselves conveniences designed for the Roman people. Sometimes they visit their plantations in the country, and, by the toil of servile hands, engage in the amusements of the chase. When they travel, they are followed by a multitude of cooks and inferior servants, accompanied by a promiscuous crowd of slaves and dependent plebeians. They express exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and contemptuous indifference for all the rest of the human species. Should they call for some water, and a slave be tardy in bringing it, the slave would be punished with three hundred lashes.

“A sure method of introduction to the society of the great is skill in gambling. The confederates are united by an indissoluble bond of friendship, or rather of conspiracy. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages their attention who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study. The distress which chastises extravagant luxury often reduces them to the most humiliating expedients. When they wish to borrow, they are as suppliant as a slave. When called upon to pay, they assume airs of indolence, as if they were the grandsons of Hercules.”

Italy had indeed fallen: the barbaric leader of a semi-civilized band was her enthroned monarch. During a reign of fourteen years, vast crowds of emigrants from the bleak realms north of the Rhine and the Danube flocked into sunny Italy.

They received a cordial welcome from Odoacer, and rapidly blended with the people among whom they took up their residence. But fertile and beautiful Italy was too rich a prize in the eyes of the powerful Northern nations to be long left in the undisputed possession of Odoacer.

Upon the northern banks of the Euxine Sea there was a populous nation called the Ostrogoths. Their king, Theodoric, had been educated at Constantinople, and was a civilized man, reigning over a comparatively barbaric people. He commenced his march upon Italy, accompanied by the whole nation.

“The march of Theodoric,” says Gibbon, “must be considered as the emigration of an entire people. Each bold barbarian who had heard of the wealth and beauty of Italy was impatient to seek, through the most perilous adventures, the possession of such enchanting objects. The wives and children of the Goths, their aged parents and most precious effects, were carefully transported; and some idea may be formed of the heavy baggage that followed the camp, by the loss of two thousand wagons, which had been sustained in a single action in the war of Epirus. For their subsistence the Goths depended on the magazines of corn, which was ground in portable mills by the hands of their women; on the milk and flesh of their flocks and herds; on the casual produce of the chase; and upon the contributions which they might impose on all who should presume to dispute their passage or to refuse their friendly assistance. Notwithstanding these precautions, they were exposed to the danger and almost to the distress of famine in a march of seven hundred miles, which had been undertaken in the depth of a rigorous winter.”195

Their march was through provinces devastated by war and famine. Still Theodoric had many fierce battles to wage ere he descended the southern declivities of the Julian Alps, and displayed his banners on the confines of Italy. Odoacer met him on the eastern frontiers of Venetia. Conquered in a bloody battle, he retreated to the walls of Verona; and all Venetia fell into the hands of the Ostrogoths. Odoacer made another stand upon the banks of the Adige: a still more sanguinary battle was fought, and the broken bands of Odoacer fled to Ravenna, on the Adriatic. Theodoric marched triumphantly to Milan, where the ever-fickle multitude received the conqueror with every demonstration of joy. Still, for three years, wretched Italy was desolated by war: misery reigned from the Alps to the extremity of the Peninsula, as man’s inhumanity to man caused countless millions to mourn.

At length, Theodoric was victorious: having annihilated the armies of the Goths, and plunged his sword into the bosom of Odoacer, he entered upon the undisputed sovereignty of the whole of Italy. Theodoric governed this most beautiful of realms with energy, wisdom, and humanity. Athird of the lands of Italy were divided among his own people. For thirty-three years he reigned with sagacity, which has given him the designation of “the Great.” He was nominally a Christian, as were very many of his followers. The days of paganism had passed, never to return. Christianity had in a remarkable degree pervaded the barbaric nations outside the limits of the Roman empire.

Christianity, which had gained such signal victories over the learned and luxurious Romans, was equally triumphant over the warlike barbarians of Scythia and Germany. These fierce hordes, in their military incursions, carried back into their savage wilds thousands of captives. Many of these were Christians, and some were clergymen. They were dispersed as slaves throughout the wide realms of their conquerors. They, like the early disciples who were scattered from Jerusalem, proclaimed, in the huts of their barbaric masters, the gospel of Jesus, and won many triumphs to the cross of Christ.

John Chrysostom, whom we have mentioned as one of the most illustrious men of these days, upon becoming a Christian when but little over twenty years of age, abandoned all the ambition of life, and retired to the cells of the anchorites who were dwelling on the mountains in the vicinity of Antioch. Chrysostom gives us the following account of the mode of life then adopted by the anchorites:—

“They rise with the first crowing of the cock, or at midnight. After having read psalms and hymns in common, each, in his separate cell, is occupied in reading the Holy Scriptures, or in copying books. Then they proceed to church, and, after mass, return quietly to their habitations. They never speak to each other. Their nourishment is bread and salt: some add oil to it, and the invalids vegetables. After meals they rest a few moments, and then return to their usual occupations. They till the ground, fell wood, make baskets and clothes, and wash the feet of travellers. Their bed is a mat spread upon the ground; their dress consists of skins or cloths made of the hair of goats or camels. They go barefooted, have no property, and never pronounce the words mine and thine. Undisturbed peace dwells in their habitations, and a cheerfulness scarcely known in the world.”

There can be no question as to the sincerity of these cloistered monks, misguided as they were. Chrysostom dwelt in a cavern for two years, without lying down. His penance was so severe, that he was thrown into a fit of sickness, which compelled his return to Antioch. After a life of tireless activity, many persecutions, and efficient devotion to the interests of the Church, he died, as we have mentioned, in exile, in the sixty-third year of his age.

“The name of Chrysostom, ‘Golden-mouthed,’ was assigned to him after his death to express the eloquence which he possessed in so much greater a degree than the other fathers of the Church. He never repeats himself, and is always original. The vivacity and power of his imagination, the force of his logic, his power of arousing the passions, the beauty and accuracy of his comparisons, the neatness and purity of his style, his clearness and sublimity, place him on a level with the most celebrated Greek authors. The Greek Church has not a more accomplished orator.”196

The inclination for monastic seclusion very rapidly increased. Some sought the silence of the desert because they felt unable to resist the temptations of busy life; some, to escape from persecution; some, as a refuge from remorse; some, from the conviction that sin might be atoned for by self-inflicted suffering; some, from disgust at life, or a natural fondness for solitude and contemplation. In the middle of the fourth century, there was a colony of these anchorets upon the Island of Tabenna, in the Nile, numbering fifty thousand persons. They lived in the extreme of abstinence, occupying cheerless cells in very humble huts.

Men only at first entered upon this hermit life. About the middle of the fourth century, female monasteries, or convents of nuns, were instituted.

This retirement from the world to the cloister in those troublous times proved by no means an unmixed evil. Gradually very solemn monastic vows and extremely rigid rules of discipline were introduced.

“These houses now became the dwellings of piety, industry, and temperance, and the refuge of learning driven to them for shelter from the troubles of the times. Missionaries were sent out from them: deserts and solitudes were made habitable by industrious monks. And in promoting the progress of agriculture, and civilizing the German and Sclavonian nations, they certainly rendered great services to the world from the sixth century to the ninth. But it must be admitted that these institutions, so useful in the dark ages of barbarism, changed their character to a great degree as their wealth and influence increased. Idleness and luxury crept within their walls, together with all the vices of the world; and their decay became inevitable.”197

In the early part of this century Augustine died, a man whose renown has been fresh in the Church for fourteen hundred years. He was born in Tagasta, a small city in Africa, on the 13th of November, 354. His father was a pagan, though he became a disciple of Jesus just before his death. His mother was an earnest Christian, by whose pious teachings Augustine in his early childhood was deeply impressed. While a mere boy, upon a sudden attack of dangerous sickness, he entreated that he might be baptized, and received into the fold of Christ. The sudden disappearance of alarming symptoms led his mother to hesitate, fearing that he might again fall into sin, and that then his baptism would only add to his condemnation. Augustine afterwards expressed the opinion that this was a great mistake. He thought, that, had he then made a profession of his faith in Christ, it would have operated as an incentive to a holy life, and would have saved him from much subsequent sin and suffering.

With returning health, temptation came, and the boy of ardent passions was swept away by the flood. “My weak age,” he writes, “was hurried along through the whirlpool of flagitiousness. The displeasure of God was all the time imbittering my soul. Where wasI, in that sixteenth year of my age, when the madness of lust seized me altogether? My God, thou spakest to me by my mother, and through her warned me strongly against the ways of vice. But my mother’s voice Idespised, and thought it to be only the voice of a woman. So blinded wasI, that Iwas ashamed to be thought less guilty than my companions. Ieven invented false stories of my sinful exploits, that Imight win their commendation.

“I committed theft from the wantonness of iniquity: it was not the effect of the theft, but the sin itself, which Iwished to enjoy. There was a pear-tree in the neighborhood loaded with fruit. At dead of night, in company with some profligate youths, Iplundered the tree. The spoil was thrown away; for Ihad abundance of better fruit at home. What did Imean that Ishould be gratuitously wicked?”

The father of Augustine, though not wealthy, had sufficient means and the disposition to afford his son all existing facilities for the acquisition of a thorough education. The young man devoted himself sedulously to the cultivation of eloquence. In the pursuit of his studies, he repaired to Carthage, then the abode of intellect, wealth, and splendor. Here he plunged quite recklessly into fashionable dissipation. When seventeen years of age, his father died; but his fond mother maintained him at Carthage. It is manifest that he was still the subject of deep religious impressions. Upon reading the “Hortensius” of Cicero, he was charmed with its philosophy; but he writes,—

“The only thing which damped my zeal was, that the name of Christ was not there,—that precious name, which from my mother’s milk Ihad learned to reverence; and whatever was without this name, however just and learned and polite, could not wholly carry away my heart.”

He commenced studying the Scriptures, but with that proud, self-sufficient spirit which debarred him from all spiritual enlightenment. His haughty frame, he afterwards confessed, “justly exposed him to believe in the most ridiculous absurdities.”

“For nine years,” he writes, “while Iwas rolling in the slime of sin, often attempting to rise, and still sinking deeper, did my mother in vigorous hope persist in incessant prayer for me. She entreated a certain bishop to reason me out of my errors. He replied, ‘Your son is too much elated at present with the pleasing novelty of his error to regard any arguments, as appears by the pleasure he takes in puzzling many ignorant persons with his captious questions. Let him alone: only continue to pray to the Lord for him. It is not possible that a child of such tears should perish.’”

“My mother,” writes Augustine, “has often told me since, that this answer impressed her mind like a voice from heaven.”

For nine years, from the nineteenth to the twenty-eighth of his age, this very brilliant young man lived in the indulgence of practices which he knew to be sinful. His pride of character and his high intellectual attainments precluded his entrance upon scenes of low and vulgar vice. He was genteelly and fashionably wicked. He had attained distinction as a teacher of rhetoric, and supported himself in that way. There was a young man in Carthage who had been a nominal Christian, the child of Christian parents, and a companion and friend of Augustine from childhood. Avery strong friendship sprang up between them; and Augustine succeeded in drawing this young man away from the Christian faith, and in luring him into his own paths of error and of sin.

This young man was taken dangerously sick. When unconscious, and apparently near his end, he was, by the wish of his parents, baptized. Contrary to all expectation, he recovered. Augustine writes,—

“I regarded his baptism when in a state of unconsciousness with great indifference, not doubting that he would adhere to my instructions. As soon as Ihad an opportunity of conversing with him, Iattempted to turn into ridicule his late baptism, in which Iexpected his concurrence. But he dreaded me as an enemy, and with wonderful freedom admonished me, that, if Iwould be his friend, Ishould drop the subject. Confounded at this unexpected behavior, Ideferred the conversation till he should be thoroughly recovered.”

There was a relapse, and the young man died. Augustine was overwhelmed with anguish: remorse was manifestly in some degree commingled with his grief. Time gradually lessened his sorrow; and in his restlessness he resolved to go to Rome, there to seek new excitements and a larger field of ambition. Knowing that his widowed mother’s heart would be broken by his abandonment of her, he deceived her, and, upon pretence of taking a sail with a friend, left his home to seek his fortune in the renowned metropolis of the world.

“Thus,” he writes, “did I deceive my mother; and such a mother! Yet was Ipreserved from the dangers of the sea, foul as Iwas in the mire of sin. But the time was coming when thou, OGod! wouldst wipe away my mother’s tears; and even this base undutifulness thou hast forgiven me. The wind favored us, and carried us out of sight of shore. In the morning, my mother was distracted with grief: she wept and wailed, and was inconsolable in her violent agonies. In her, affection was very strong. But, wearied of grief, she returned to her former employment of praying for me, and went home; while Icontinued my journey to Rome.”

Soon after his arrival in the city, he was taken dangerously sick, and his life was despaired of. In the lethargy of his sickness, he thought but little of his sins and his danger. His mother, though uninformed of his sickness, repaired to the church every morning and evening, there to pray for the conversion of her son. Gradually Augustine regained his health, and was invited to give some lectures upon rhetoric in Milan. Bishop Ambrose was pastor of the church there,—a man of superior intellectual powers, and who had acquired renown both as a logician and an orator. Young Augustine called upon the bishop.

“The man of God,” he writes, “received me as a father; and Iconceived an affection for him, not as a teacher of truth, which Ihad no idea of discovering in the Church, but as a man kind to me. Istudiously attended his preaching, only with a curious desire of discovering whether fame had done justice to his eloquence or not. Gradually Iwas brought to attend to the doctrine of the bishop. Ifound reason to rebuke myself for the hasty conclusions Ihad formed of the indefensible nature of the law and the prophets. The possibility of finding truth in the Church of Christ appeared.”

His mother, drawn by love and anxiety, now left Carthage, and, crossing the Mediterranean, went to Milan, where she became united to her wayward and wandering son. Augustine informed his mother of the partial change which had taken place in his views, and that he was in the habit of attending the preaching of Bishop Ambrose. She replied, “Ibelieve in Christ, that, before Ileave this world, Ishall see you a sound believer.” She made the acquaintance of the bishop, interested him still more deeply in her son, and, with renewed fervor, pleaded with God for his conversion.

“Ambrose,” Augustine writes, “was charmed with the fervor of my mother’s piety, her amiableness, and her good works. He often congratulated me that Ihad such a mother, little knowing what sort of a son she had. The state of my mind was now somewhat altered. Ashamed of past delusions, Iwas the more anxious to be guided right for the time to come. Iwas completely convinced of the falsehood of the many things Ihad once uttered with so much confidence.”

A season of great anxiety and sadness now ensued. He was firmly convinced of the divine authority of that Bible, which, in his infidelity, he had rejected. Still he had not as yet surrendered his heart to the Saviour, and had found no peace in believing. In comparison with eternal things, all the pursuits of this world seemed trivial. His heart was like the troubled sea: his conscience reproached him for neglecting the salvation of his soul. The following extract from his “Confessions” gives a vivid idea of the struggles in which his spirit was then engaged:—

“Your mornings,” I said to myself, “are for your pupils: why, then, do you not attend to religious duties in the afternoon? But, then, what time should Ihave to attend to the levees of the great? What, then, if death should suddenly seize you, and judgment overtake you unprepared? But what if death be the end of our being? Yet far from my soul be such a thought! God would never have given such proof of the truth of Christianity if the soul died with the body. Why, then, do Inot give myself wholly to God? But do not be in a hurry. You have influential friends, and may yet attain wealth and honor in the world. In such an agitation of mind,” continues Augustine, “did Ilive, seeking happiness, yet flying from it.”

Twelve years had now passed away, during which Augustine had been professedly seeking the truth, and yet had found no peace. “Ihad,” he writes, “deferred from day to day devoting myself to God, under the pretence that Iwas uncertain where the truth lay.”

And then the question occurred to him, “How is it that so many humble persons find peace so speedily in religion, whileI, with all my philosophy and anxious reasonings, remain year after year in darkness and doubt?” Conscious that the difficulty was to be found in his own stubborn will, he retired in great agitation to a secluded spot in the garden, and, as he writes, “with vehement indignation Irebuked my sinful spirit because it would not give itself up to God.” His anguish was great, and he wept bitterly. Falling upon his knees beneath a fig-tree, with tears and trembling utterance he exclaimed,—

“O Lord! how long shall Isay to-morrow? Why should not this hour put an end to my slavery?”

Just then, he fancied that he heard a voice saying to him, “Take up, and read.” He had with him Paul’s epistles. Opening the book, the first passage which met his eye was this, found in the thirteenth chapter of Romans, thirteenth and fourteenth verses:—

“Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.”

The besetting sin of Augustine, and the great and crying shame of the times, was sensuality. The passage came to his mind as a direct message from Heaven. It said to him, “Abandon every sin, renounce your pursuits of earthly ambition, and commence a new life of faith in Jesus Christ.” He at once was enabled to make the surrender: all his doubts vanished; and that “hope, which we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast,” dawned upon his mind.

He immediately hastened to his mother to inform her of the joyful event; and she rejoiced with him with heartfelt sympathy such as none but a Christian mother can understand. In commenting upon this change, Augustine writes, “The whole of my difficulty lay in a will stubbornly set in opposition to God. But from what deep secret was my free will called out in a moment, by which Ibowed my shoulders to thy light burden, Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer?” Where is the thoughtful Christian who has not often asked this question?—

The reply which our Saviour makes to this inquiry is not an explanation: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

Augustine relinquished his profession of a teacher of rhetoric, and, guided by Bishop Ambrose, entered upon the study of theology. He was baptized in the church of Milan with his son Adeodatus, whom he acknowledged as his child. Augustine decided to return to Carthage with his mother; but, just as they were about to embark at the mouth of the Tiber, she was taken sick, and died. The afflicted son pays a very beautiful tribute to her memory, as one of the most noble of Christian women. In this eulogy he makes the following statements illustrative of her character and of the times:—

“My mother, when young, had learned by degrees to drink wine, having been sent to draw it for the use of the family. How was she delivered from this snare? God provided for her a malignant reproach from a maid in the house, who in a passion called her a drunkard. Thus was she cured of her evil practice.

“After her marriage with my father, Patricius, she endeavored to win him to Christianity by her amiable manners; and patiently she bore his unfaithfulness. His temper was hasty, but his spirit kind. She knew how to bear with him when angry by a perfect silence and composure; and, when she saw him cool, would meekly expostulate with him. Many matrons would complain of the blows and harsh treatment they received from their husbands, whom she would exhort to govern their tongues. When they expressed astonishment that it was never heard that Patricius had beaten his wife, or that they ever were at variance a single day, she informed them of her plan. Those who followed it thanked her for its good success: those who did not experienced vexation.

“It was a great gift which, Omy God! thou gavest her, that she never repeated the unkind things which she had heard from persons who were at variance with one another; and she was conscientiously exact in saying nothing but what might tend to heal and to reconcile. At length, in the extremity of life, she gained her husband to thee, and he died in the faith of Christ.

“My mother and I stood alone at a window facing the east, near the mouth of the Tiber, where we were preparing for our voyage. Our discourse ascended above the noblest parts of the material creation to the consideration of our own minds; and, passing above them, we attempted to reach heaven itself,—to come to thee, by whom all things were made. At that moment the world appeared to us of no value. She said, ‘Son, Ihave now no clinging to life. It was your conversion alone for which Iwished to live. God has given me this. What more is there for me to do here?’ Scarcely five days after, she fell into a fever. She departed this life on the ninth day of her illness, in the fifty-sixth year of her age, and the thirty-third of mine.”

Augustine returned to Africa, where, after three years of retirement and study, he was ordained a preacher of the gospel. The fame of his eloquence rapidly spread throughout the Western world, drawing crowds of the pagans, as well as of the Christians, to his church; and ere long he was elected Bishop of Hippo. After a life of unwearied devotion to the interests of Christianity, preaching the gospel of Christ with simplicity, purity, and fervor rarely equalled, and with his pen defending the doctrines of grace with logical acumen and philosophic breadth of view perhaps never surpassed, this illustrious man died in the year 430, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and the fortieth of his ministry.