The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗
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“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 I had an opportunity of conversing with him, I attempted to turn into ridicule his late baptism, in which I expected his concurrence. But he dreaded me as an enemy, and with wonderful freedom admonished me, that, if I would be his friend, I should drop the subject. Confounded at this unexpected behavior, I deferred 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 I preserved from the dangers of the sea, foul as I was in the mire of sin. But the time was coming when thou, O God! 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 I continued 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 I conceived an affection for him, not as a teacher of truth, which I had no idea of discovering in the Church, but as a man kind to me. I studiously attended his preaching, only with a curious desire of discovering whether fame had done justice to his eloquence or not. Gradually I was brought to attend to the doctrine of the bishop. I found reason to rebuke myself for the hasty conclusions I had 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, “I believe in Christ, that, before I leave this world, I shall 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 I had 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, I was the more anxious to be guided right for the time to come. I was completely convinced of the falsehood of the many things I had 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 I have 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 I not 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 I live, 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. “I had,” he writes, “deferred from day to day devoting myself to God, under the pretence that I was 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, while I, 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 I rebuked 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 I say 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 I bowed 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?—
“Why was I made to hear Thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”
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, O my 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, I have now no clinging to life. It was your conversion alone for which I wished 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
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