Chapter 6 No.6

The luminous judgment, the calm faith, and

the single-minded devotion which this letter

exhibits, were fully maintained in the conduct of

the far-famed writer, in the events which{15}

followed. It was written on the first entrance of

the Vandals into Africa, about two years before

they laid siege to Hippo; and during this

interval of dreadful suspense and excitement, as well

as of actual suffering, amid the desolation of the{20}

Church around him, with the prospect of his own

personal trials, we find this unwearied teacher

carrying on his works of love by pen, and word

of mouth,-eagerly, as knowing his time was

short, but tranquilly, as if it were a season of{25}

prosperity....

His life had been for many years one of great

anxiety and discomfort, the life of one dissatisfied

with himself, and despairing of finding the truth.

Men of ordinary minds are not so circumstanced{30}

as to feel the misery of irreligion. That misery

consists in the perverted and discordant action

of the various faculties and functions of the soul,

which have lost their legitimate governing power,

and are unable to regain it, except at the hands{5}

of their Maker. Now the run of irreligious men

do not suffer in any great degree from this

disorder, and are not miserable; they have neither

great talents nor strong passions; they have not

within them the materials of rebellion in such{10}

measure as to threaten their peace. They follow

their own wishes, they yield to the bent of the

moment, they act on inclination, not on principle,

but their motive powers are neither strong nor

various enough to be troublesome. Their minds{15}

are in no sense under rule; but anarchy is not in

their case a state of confusion, but of deadness;

not unlike the internal condition as it is reported

of eastern cities and provinces at present, in

which, though the government is weak or null,{20}

the body politic goes on without any great

embarrassment or collision of its members one with

another, by the force of inveterate habit. It is

very different when the moral and intellectual

principles are vigorous, active, and developed.{25}

Then, if the governing power be feeble, all the

subordinates are in the position of rebels in arms;

and what the state of a mind is under such

circumstances, the analogy of a civil community will

suggest to us. Then we have before us the{30}

melancholy spectacle of high aspirations without

an aim, a hunger of the soul unsatisfied, and a

never ending restlessness and inward warfare of

its various faculties. Gifted minds, if not

submitted to the rightful authority of religion,

become the most unhappy and the most mischievous.{5}

They need both an object to feed upon, and the

power of self-mastery; and the love of their

Maker, and nothing but it, supplies both the one

and the other. We have seen in our own day, in

the case of a popular poet, an impressive instance{10}

of a great genius throwing off the fear of God,

seeking for happiness in the creature, roaming

unsatisfied from one object to another, breaking

his soul upon itself, and bitterly confessing and

imparting his wretchedness to all around him.{15}

I have no wish at all to compare him to St.

Augustine; indeed, if we may say it without

presumption, the very different termination of their trial

seems to indicate some great difference in their

respective modes of encountering it. The one{20}

dies of premature decay, to all appearance, a

hardened infidel; and if he is still to have a name,

will live in the mouths of men by writings at once

blasphemous and immoral: the other is a Saint

and Doctor of the Church. Each makes{25}

confessions, the one to the saints, the other to the

powers of evil. And does not the difference of

the two discover itself in some measure, even to

our eyes, in the very history of their wanderings

and pinings? At least, there is no appearance in{30}

St. Augustine's case of that dreadful haughtiness,

sullenness, love of singularity, vanity, irritability,

and misanthropy, which were too certainly the

characteristics of our own countryman.

Augustine was, as his early history shows, a man of

affectionate and tender feelings, and open and{5}

amiable temper; and, above all, he sought for some

excellence external to his own mind, instead of

concentrating all his contemplations on himself.

But let us consider what his misery was; it

was that of a mind imprisoned, solitary, and wild{10}

with spiritual thirst; and forced to betake itself

to the strongest excitements, by way of relieving

itself of the rush and violence of feelings, of which

the knowledge of the Divine Perfections was the

true and sole sustenance. He ran into excess,{15}

not from love of it, but from this fierce fever of

mind. "I sought what I might love,"[28] he says

in his Confessions, "in love with loving, and safety

I hated, and a way without snares. For within

me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself,{20}

my God; yet throughout that famine I was not

hungered, but was without any longing for

incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith,

but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For

this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores; it{25}

miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped

by the touch of objects of sense."-iii. I.

[28] Most of these translations are from the Oxford edition of 1838.

"O foolish man that I then was," he says elsewhere,

"enduring impatiently the lot of man! So I fretted,

sighed, wept, was distracted; had neither rest nor

counsel. For I bore about a shattered and bleeding

soul, impatient of being borne by me, yet where to repose

it I found not; not in calm groves, nor in games and

music, nor in fragrant spots, nor in curious banquetings,{5}

nor in indulgence of the bed and the couch, nor, finally, in

books or poetry found it repose. All things looked ghastly,

yea, the very light. In groaning and tears alone found

I a little refreshment. But when my soul was withdrawn

from them, a huge load of misery weighed me down.{10}

To Thee, O Lord, it ought to have been raised, for Thee

to lighten; I knew it, but neither could, nor would;

the more, since when I thought of Thee, Thou wast not

to me any solid or substantial thing. For Thou wert not

Thyself, but a mere phantom, and my error was my God.{15}

If I offered to discharge my load thereon, that it might

rest, it glided through the void, and came rushing down

against me; and I had remained to myself a hapless

spot, where I could neither be, nor be from thence. For

whither should my heart flee from my heart? whither{20}

should I flee from myself? whither not follow myself?

And yet I fled out of my country; for so should mine

eyes look less for him, where they were not wont to see

him."-iv. 12.

He is speaking in this last sentence of a friend he{25}

had lost, whose death-bed was very remarkable,

and whose dear familiar name he apparently has

not courage to mention. "He had grown from a

child with me," he says, "and we had been both

schoolfellows and playfellows." Augustine had{30}

misled him into the heresy which he had adopted

himself, and when he grew to have more and more

sympathy in Augustine's pursuits, the latter united

himself to him in a closer intimacy. Scarcely had

he thus given him his heart, when God took him.{35}

"Thou tookest him," he says, "out of this life, when he

had scarce completed one whole year of my friendship,

sweet to me above all sweetness in that life of mine.

A long while, sore sick of a fever, he lay senseless in the

dews of death, and being given over, he was baptized{5}

unwitting; I, meanwhile little regarding, or presuming

that his soul would retain rather what it had received

of me than what was wrought on his unconscious body."

The Manichees, it should be observed, rejected

baptism. He proceeds:{10}

"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.