[_He goes out._]




ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

(354-430)

BY SAMUEL HART


St. Augustine of Hippo (Aurelius Augustinus) was born at Tagaste in
Numidia, November 13th, 354. The story of his life has been told by
himself in that wonderful book addressed to God which he called the
'Confessions'. He gained but little from his father Patricius; he owed
almost everything to his loving and saintly mother Monica. Though she
was a Christian, she did not venture to bring her son to baptism; and he
went away from home with only the echo of the name of Jesus Christ in
his soul, as it had been spoken by his mother's lips. He fell deeply
into the sins of youth, but found no satisfaction in them, nor was he
satisfied by the studies of literature to which for a while he devoted
himself. The reading of Cicero's 'Hortensius' partly called him back to
himself; but before he was twenty years old he was carried away into
Manichæism, a strange system of belief which united traces of Christian
teaching with Persian doctrines of two antagonistic principles,
practically two gods, a good god of the spiritual world and an evil god
of the material world. From this he passed after a while into less gross
forms of philosophical speculation, and presently began to lecture on
rhetoric at Tagaste and at Carthage. When nearly thirty years of age he