To the last-named country the Church is indebted for three, at least, of its greater lights, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine. The first distinguished by his moral purism; the second by his stout defence of Episcopal authority; the third by his theology and his great example.

Saint Augustine, whose life and character I now propose to discuss, has become identified with an influence far exceeding that of his compatriots, and coextensive with the Christian Church. The morals of Christendom refused to adopt the stern requirements of the eloquent Montanist; its ecclesiastical polity soon transcended the views of the fervid Carthaginian. But the doctrine of the Bishop of Hippo has survived the decline of the Papacy; has reproduced itself in the formularies of Protestantism; has been transplanted from the Old World to the New by the fostering care of the Puritans, and constitutes to this day the staple of American theology. Since the days of the Apostles no Christian ecclesiastic has exerted such sway or obtained such following.

Externally, the life of Saint Augustine was less eventful than those of most men of note in his time, that maelstrom of history, which tossed individuals and nations like foam-flakes in its boiling eddies. The deep interior being of the man was very imperfectly expressed in his fortunes,

and had no correspondent developments in his external history. He was one of those whose life is a continual drawing from the circumference to the centre.

Tagaste, an obscure corner in the north of Africa, not far from the site of old Carthage, is illustrated by the birth of the greatest of the Fathers. Its historic insignificance, although mentioned by Pliny, excludes it from the ancient maps. Cellarius, the most faithful of geographers, ignores it; French soldiers under General Randon, in 1844,1 for the first time, perhaps, since the Vandals, uncover its site; and Spruner, the latest authority, has noted its locality in that part of what is now Algeria, where Algiers and Tunis join. The 13th November, 354, is the date of his birth. Cast amid humble conditions, the greatest of earthly blessings was vouchsafed to his childhood, a pious mother, whose dearest wish was to see the son of her affections safely folded in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Her life was breathed in prayers for this end; and the strongest human influence which Augustine experienced was the prayers of Monica. Gratefully conscious of her agency in securing so able a defender of the faith, the Church has raised to "sainted seats" the "Elect Lady," whom filial

1 Poujoulat: Histoire de Saint Augustin.

gratitude had already canonized. Few worthies in the Christian calendar have earned more dearly their title to be there. The name of Monica suggests the impersonation of all feminine and Christian graces. We figure to ourselves a form and face such as the Pre-Raphaelites would have loved to paint, with as much of spirit as flesh and blood can take up, and as little of flesh and blood as an earth-inhabiting spirit can make itself visible by. With a brute of a husband, passionate at home and unfaithful abroad, and three children, of whom at least one gifted but turbulent boy was a source of ceaseless anxiety; with a feeble body and a sensitive spirit; with small means and large requirements; with little wit, great cares, and, as her conscientious nature conceived them, awful responsibilities, - the burdened soul had fainted within her unless she had "believed to see the goodness of the Lord." But she believed, and did not faint. She administered with untiring diligence her arduous economy, and tended her little flock, and still clung to the horns of the altar. She encountered her stormy husband with gentleness for wrath, and soft persuasion for ingratitude and sin. She waited and wept, and hoped and suffered, and still hoped. The substance of her life was sorrow, and the form of it was prayer; the spirit of it love, and the strength of it patience,

.and the grace of it meekness. Hers was the pure soul which an elder poet compares to a "drop of Orient dew," which, lighting on a flower,

"Scarce touching where it lies,

But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light

Till the warm sun pities its pain,

And to the skies exhales it back again."

Her pious wishes, long deferred, were fulfilled at last. Her husband, who had lived in profession, as in character, a Pagan, solicited and received before his death the regenerating water of Christian baptism. And at last, after thirty long years of watching and weeping, her favorite, Aurelius, with whose second birth, as he tells us, she had travailed more sorely than with his first, was likewise united to Christ through the baptism of the Catholic Church. Her mission was accomplished when this son of her tears, disengaged from the enemy's tares, and bound in a fair church-sheaf, was now at length fit for the garden of the Lord, - a consummation to which (unconsciously to herself and to him) she had contributed more than all the persuasions of Ambrose, and all the refinements of his own dialectic mind.

O woman, great is thy faith! O loving, sad, and patient Monica; long suffering, late rewarded!

Who more entitled than thou to sit in sainted seats? Who more than thou ever strove and prayed? Who has so nobly illustrated the mediatorial office of woman, showing how, as it is written,

"The ever womanly
Draweth us on?"

Young Augustine mixed at school and at play with the boys of Tagaste; and, if eminent at all among his companions, was not distinguished by any saintly tendencies. The saint in him was latent, dormant; the boy was patent, and wide awake.

The boy loved play, and found study a weariness of the flesh. Greek was his aversion; the circus and the theatre his delight. A sportive boyhood might not portend any lack of manly virtue. Of graver import are the fibbing and thieving which those "Confessions" of his reveal. All this he repents in after years with a penitence almost morbid, and scarcely consistent with the Augustinian theory of human nature, which, by denying to man, unrenewed by superadded and exotic grace, not only goodness, but the faculty of goodness, might seem to preclude all occasion of remorse. With especial compunction he recalls the robbery of a pear-tree, committed in a spirit of juvenile frolic, with some of his associates. In