Part 6

"But it proved far otherwise; for he was refreshed and restored. Forthwith, as soon as I could speak with him (and I could as soon as he was able, for I never left him, and we hung but too much upon each other), I essayed to jest with him, as though he would jest with 15 me at that baptism, which he had received, when utterly absent in mind and feeling, but had now understood that he had received. But he shrunk from me, as from an enemy; and with a wonderful and sudden freedom bade me, if I would continue his friend, forbear such 20 language to him. I, all astonished and amazed, suppressed all my emotions till he should grow well, and his health were strong enough for me to deal with him as I would. But he was taken away from my madness, that with Thee he might be preserved for my comfort: a few 25 days after, in my absence, he was attacked again by fever, and so departed."--iv. 8.

V

From distress of mind Augustine left his native place, Thagaste, and came to Carthage, where he became a teacher in rhetoric. Here he fell in 30 with Faustus, an eminent Manichean bishop and disputant, in whom, however, he was disappointed; and the disappointment abated his attachment to his sect, and disposed him to look for truth elsewhere. Disgusted with the license which prevailed among the students at Carthage, 5 he determined to proceed to Rome, and disregarding and eluding the entreaties of his mother, Monica, who dreaded his removal from his own country, he went thither. At Rome he resumed his professions; but inconveniences as great, 10 though of another kind, encountered him in that city; and upon the people of Milan sending for a rhetoric reader, he made application for the appointment, and obtained it. To Milan then he came, the city of St. Ambrose, in the year of our 15 Lord 385.

Ambrose, though weak in voice, had the reputation of eloquence; and Augustine, who seems to have gone with introductions to him, and was won by his kindness of manner, attended his 20 sermons with curiosity and interest. "I listened," he says, "not in the frame of mind which became me, but in order to see whether his eloquence answered what was reported of it: I hung on his words attentively, but of the matter I was but an 25 unconcerned and contemptuous hearer."--v. 23. His impression of his style of preaching is worth noticing: "I was delighted with the sweetness of his discourse, more full of knowledge, yet in manner less pleasurable and soothing, than that 30 of Faustus." Augustine was insensibly moved: he determined on leaving the Manichees, and returning to the state of a catechumen in the Catholic Church, into which he had been admitted by his parents. He began to eye and muse upon the great bishop of Milan more and more, and tried 5 in vain to penetrate his secret heart, and to ascertain the thoughts and feelings which swayed him. He felt he did not understand him. If the respect and intimacy of the great could make a man happy, these advantages he perceived 10 Ambrose to possess; yet he was not satisfied that he was a happy man. His celibacy seemed a drawback: what constituted his hidden life? or was he cold at heart? or was he of a famished and restless spirit? He felt his own malady, and 15 longed to ask him some questions about it. But Ambrose could not easily be spoken with. Though accessible to all, yet that very circumstance made it difficult for an individual, especially one who was not of his flock, to get a private 20 interview with him. When he was not taken up with the Christian people who surrounded him, he was either at his meals or engaged in private reading. Augustine used to enter, as all persons might, without being announced; but after 25 staying awhile, afraid of interrupting him, he departed again. However, he heard his expositions of Scripture every Sunday, and gradually made progress.

He was now in his thirtieth year, and since he 30 was a youth of eighteen had been searching after truth; yet he was still "in the same mire, greedy of things present," but finding nothing stable.

"To-morrow," he said to himself, "I shall find it; it will appear manifestly, and I shall grasp it: lo, Faustus the Manichee will come and clear everything! O you 5 great men, ye academics, is it true, then, that no certainty can be attained for the ordering of life? Nay, let us search diligently, and despair not. Lo, things in the ecclesiastical books are not absurd to us now, which sometimes seemed absurd, and may be otherwise taken 10 and in a good sense. I will take my stand where, as a child, my parents placed me, until the clear truth be found out. But where shall it be sought, or when? Ambrose has no leisure; we have no leisure to read; where shall we find even the books? where, or when, 15 procure them? Let set times be appointed, and certain hours be ordered for the health of our soul. Great hope has dawned; the Catholic faith teaches not what we thought; and do we doubt to knock, that the rest may be opened? The forenoons, indeed, our scholars 20 take up; what do we during the rest of our time? why not this? But if so, when pay we court to our great friend, whose favors we need? when compose what we may sell to scholars? when refresh ourselves, unbending our minds from this intenseness of care? 25

"Perish everything: dismiss we these empty vanities; and betake ourselves to the one search for truth! Life is a poor thing, death is uncertain; if it surprises us, in what state shall we depart hence? and when shall we learn what here we have neglected? and shall we not 30 rather suffer the punishment of this negligence? What if death itself cut off and end all care and feeling? Then must this be ascertained. But God forbid this! It is no vain and empty thing, that the excellent dignity of the Christian faith has overspread the whole world. 35 Never would such and so great things be wrought for us by God, if with the body the soul also came to an end. Wherefore delay then to abandon worldly hopes, and give ourselves wholly to seek after God and the blessed life?..."

Finding Ambrose, though kind and accessible, 5 yet reserved, he went to an aged man named Simplician, who, as some say, baptized St. Ambrose, and eventually succeeded him in his see. He opened his mind to him, and happening in the course of his communications to 10 mention Victorinus's translation of some Platonic works, Simplician asked him if he knew that person's history. It seems he was a professor of rhetoric at Rome, was well versed in literature and philosophy, had been tutor to many of the 15 senators, and had received the high honor of a statue in the Forum. Up to his old age he had professed, and defended with his eloquence, the old pagan worship. He was led to read the Holy Scriptures, and was brought, in consequence, to 20 a belief in their divinity. For a while he did not feel the necessity of changing his profession; he looked upon Christianity as a philosophy, he embraced it as such, but did not propose to join what he considered the Christian sect, or, as 25 Christians would call it, the Catholic Church. He let Simplician into his secret; but whenever the latter pressed him to take the step, he was accustomed to ask, "whether walls made a Christian." However, such a state could not 30 continue with a man of earnest mind: the leaven worked; at length he unexpectedly called upon Simplician to lead him to church. He was admitted a catechumen, and in due time baptized, "Rome wondering, the Church rejoicing." It was customary at Rome for the candidates for 5 baptism to profess their faith from a raised place in the church, in a set form of words. An offer was made to Victorinus, which was not unusual in the case of bashful and timid persons, to make his profession in private. But he preferred to 10 make it in the ordinary way. "I was public enough," he made answer, "in my profession of rhetoric, and ought not to be frightened when professing salvation." He continued the school which he had before he became a Christian, till 15 the edict of Julian forced him to close it. This story went to Augustine's heart, but it did not melt it. There was still the struggle of two wills, the high aspiration and the habitual inertness. His conversion took place in the summer of 386. 20

* * * * *

He gives an account of the termination of the conflict he underwent:

"At length burst forth a mighty storm, bringing a mighty flood of tears; and to indulge it to the full even unto cries, in solitude, I rose up from Alypius, ... 25 who perceived from my choked voice how it was with me. He remained where we had been sitting, in deep astonishment. I threw myself down under a fig tree, I know not how, and allowing my tears full vent, offered up to Thee the acceptable sacrifice of my streaming eyes. 30

"And I cried out to this effect: 'And Thou, O Lord, how long, how long, Lord, wilt Thou be angry? Forever? Remember not our old sins!' for I felt that they were my tyrants. I cried out, piteously, 'How long? how long? to-morrow and to-morrow? why not _now_? 5 why not in this very hour put an end to this my vileness?' While I thus spoke, with tears, in the bitter contrition of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice, as if from a house near me, of a boy or girl chanting forth again and again, 'TAKE UP AND READ, TAKE UP AND READ!' Changing 10 countenance at these words, I began intently to think whether boys used them in any game, but could not recollect that I had ever heard them. I left weeping and rose up, considering it a divine intimation to open the Scriptures and read what first presented itself. I had 15 heard that Antony had come in during the reading of the Gospel, and had taken to himself the admonition, 'Go, sell all that thou hast,' etc., and had turned to Thee at once, in consequence of that oracle. I had left St. Paul's volume where Alypius was sitting, when I rose 20 thence. I returned thither, seized it, opened, and read in silence the following passage, which first met my eyes, '_Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in 25 its concupiscences_.' I had neither desire nor need to read farther. As I finished the sentence, as though the light of peace had been poured into my heart, all the shadows of doubt dispersed. Thus hast Thou converted me to Thee, so as no longer to seek either for wife or 30 other hope of this world, standing fast in that rule of faith in which Thou so many years before hadst revealed me to my mother."--viii. 26-30.

The last words of this extract relate to a dream which his mother had had some years before, 35 concerning his conversion. On his first turning Manichee, abhorring his opinions, she would not for a while even eat with him, when she had this dream, in which she had an intimation that where she stood, there Augustine should one day be with her. At another time she derived great 5 comfort from the casual words of a bishop, who, when importuned by her to converse with her son, said at length with some impatience, "Go thy ways, and God bless thee, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish!" 10 would be out of place, and is perhaps unnecessary, to enter here into the affecting and well-known history of her tender anxieties and persevering prayers for Augustine. Suffice it to say, she saw the accomplishment of them; she lived till 15 Augustine became a Catholic; and she died on her way back to Africa with him. Her last words were, "Lay this body anywhere; let not the care of it in any way distress you; this only I ask, that wherever you be, you remember me at the Altar 20 of the Lord."

"May she," says her son, in dutiful remembrance of her words, "rest in peace with her husband, before and after whom she never had any; whom she obeyed, with patience bringing forth fruit unto Thee, that she might 25 win him also unto Thee. And inspire, O Lord my God, inspire Thy servants, my brethren,--Thy sons, my masters,--whom, in heart, voice, and writing I serve, that so many as read these confessions, may at Thy altar remember Monica, Thy handmaid, with Patricius, her 30 sometime husband, from whom Thou broughtest me into this life; how, I know not. May they with pious affection remember those who were my parents in this transitory light,--my brethren under Thee, our Father, in our Catholic Mother,--my fellow-citizens in the eternal Jerusalem, after which Thy pilgrim people sigh from their going forth unto their return: that so, her 5 last request of me may in the prayers of many receive a fulfillment, through my confessions, more abundant than through my prayers."--ix. 37.

* * * * *

CHRYSOSTOM

INTRODUCTORY

I confess to a delight in reading the lives, and dwelling on the characters and actions, of the Saints of the first ages, such as I receive from none besides them; and for this reason, because we know so much more about them than about most 5 of the Saints who come after them. People are variously constituted; what influences one does not influence another. There are persons of warm imaginations, who can easily picture to themselves what they never saw. They can at 10 will see Angels and Saints hovering over them when they are in church; they see their lineaments, their features, their motions, their gestures, their smile or their grief. They can go home and draw what they have seen, from the 15 vivid memory of what, while it lasted, was so transporting. I am not one of such; I am touched by my five senses, by what my eyes behold and my ears hear. I am touched by what I read about, not by what I myself create. As faith 20 need not lead to practice, so in me mere imagination does not lead to devotion. I gain more from the life of our Lord in the Gospels than from a treatise _de Deo_. I gain more from three verses of St. John than from the three points of a meditation. I like a Spanish crucifix of painted wood more than one from Italy, which is made of gold. I am more touched by the Seven Dolors than by the Immaculate Conception; I am more devout 5 to St. Gabriel than to one of Isaiah's seraphim. I love St. Paul more than one of those first Carmelites, his contemporaries, whose names and acts no one ever heard of; I feel affectionately towards the Alexandrian Dionysius, I do homage to St. 10 George. I do not say that my way is better than another's; but it is my way, and an allowable way. And it is the reason why I am so specially attached to the Saints of the third and fourth century, because we know so much about them. 15 This is why I feel a devout affection for St. Chrysostom. He and the rest of them have written autobiography on a large scale; they have given us their own histories, their thoughts, words, and actions, in a number of goodly folios, 20 productions which are in themselves some of their meritorious works....

The Ancient Saints have left behind them just that kind of literature which more than any other represents the abundance of the heart, which 25 more than any other approaches to conversation; I mean correspondence. Why is it that we feel an interest in Cicero which we cannot feel in Demosthenes or Plato? Plato is the very type of soaring philosophy, and Demosthenes of 30 forcible eloquence; Cicero is something more than an orator and a sage; he is not a mere ideality, he is a man and a brother; he is one of ourselves. We do not merely believe it, or infer it, but we have the enduring and living evidence of it--how? In his letters. He can be studied, 5 criticised if you will; but still dwelt upon and sympathized with also. Now the case of the Ancient Saints is parallel to that of Cicero. We have their letters in a marvelous profusion. We have above 400 letters of St. Basil's; above 200 of 10 St. Augustine's. St. Chrysostom has left us about 240; St. Gregory Nazianzen the same number; Pope St. Gregory as many as 840....

A Saint's writings are to me his real "Life;" and what _is called_ his "Life" is not the outline 15 of an individual, but either of the _auto-saint_ or of a myth. Perhaps I shall be asked what I mean by "Life." I mean a narrative which impresses the reader with the idea of moral unity, identity, growth, continuity, personality. When 20 a Saint converses with me, I am conscious of the presence of one active principle of thought, one individual character, flowing on and into the various matters which he discusses, and the different transactions in which he mixes. It is 25 what no memorials can reach, however skillfully elaborated, however free from effort or study, however conscientiously faithful, however guaranteed by the veracity of the writers. Why cannot art rival the lily or the rose? Because the 30 colors of the flower are developed and blended by the force of an inward life; while on the other hand, the lights and shades of the painter are diligently laid on from without. A magnifying glass will show the difference. Nor will it improve matters, though not one only, but a dozen 5 good artists successively take part in the picture; even if the outline is unbroken, the coloring is muddy. Commonly, what is called "the Life," is little more than a collection of anecdotes brought together from a number of independent quarters; 10 anecdotes striking, indeed, and edifying, but valuable in themselves rather than valuable as parts of a biography; valuable whoever was the subject of them, not valuable as illustrating a particular Saint. It would be difficult to mistake 15 for each other a paragraph of St. Ambrose, or of St. Jerome, or of St. Augustine; it would be very easy to mistake a chapter in the life of one holy missionary or nun for a chapter in the life of another. 20

An almsgiving here, an instance of meekness there, a severity of penance, a round of religious duties,--all these things humble me, instruct me, improve me; I cannot desire anything better of their kind; but they do not necessarily 25 coalesce into the image of a person. From such works I do but learn to pay devotion to an abstract and typical perfection under a certain particular name; I do not know more of the real Saint who bore it than before. Saints, as other 30 men, differ from each other in this, that the multitude of qualities which they have in common are differently combined in each of them. This forms one great part of their personality. One Saint is remarkable for fortitude; not that he has not other heroic virtues by _concomitance_, 5 as it may be called, but by virtue of that one gift in particular he has won his crown. Another is remarkable for patient hope, another for renunciation of the world. Such a particular virtue may be said to give form to all the rest which are 10 grouped round it, and are molded and modified by means of it. Thus it is that often what is right in one would be wrong in another; and, in fact, the very same action is allowed or chosen by one, and shunned by another, as being 15 consistent or inconsistent with their respective characters,--pretty much as in the combination of colors, each separate tint takes a shade from the rest, and is good or bad from its company. The whole gives a meaning to the parts; but it 20 is difficult to rise from the parts to the whole. When I read St. Augustine or St. Basil, I hold converse with a beautiful grace-illumined soul, looking out into this world of sense, and leavening it with itself; when I read a professed life of him, 25 I am wandering in a labyrinth of which I cannot find the center and heart, and am but conducted out of doors again when I do my best to penetrate within.

This seems to me, to tell the truth, a sort of 30 pantheistic treatment of the Saints. I ask something more than to stumble upon the _disjecta membra_ of what ought to be a living whole. I take but a secondary interest in books which chop up a Saint into chapters of faith, hope, charity, and the cardinal virtues. They are too 5 scientific to be devotional. They have their great utility, but it is not the utility which they profess. They do not manifest a Saint, they mince him into spiritual lessons. They are rightly called spiritual reading, that is just what 10 they are, and they cannot possibly be anything better; but they are not anything else. They contain a series of points of meditation on particular virtues, made easier because those points are put under the patronage and the invocation 15 of a Saint. With a view to learning real devotion to him, I prefer (speaking for myself) to have any one action or event of his life drawn out minutely, with his own comments upon it, than a score of virtues, or of acts of one virtue, strung 20 together in as many sentences. Now, in the ancient writings I have spoken of, certain transactions are thoroughly worked out. We know all that happened to a Saint on such or such an occasion, all that was done by him. We have a view 25 of his character, his tastes, his natural infirmities, his struggles and victories over them, which in no other way can be attained. And therefore it is that, without quarreling with the devotion of others, I give the preference to my own. 30