Augustine now set up as a teacher at Carthage, the chief city of Africa;
but among the students there he found a set of wild young men who called
themselves _Eversors_--a name which meant that they turned everything
topsy-turvy; and Augustine was so much troubled by the behaviour of
these unruly lads, that he resolved to leave Carthage and go to Rome.
Monica, as we may easily suppose, had been much distressed by his
wanderings, but she never ceased to pray that he might be brought round
again. One day she went to a learned bishop, who was much in the habit
of arguing with people who were in error, and begged that he would speak
to her son; but the good man understood Augustine's case, and saw that
to talk to him while he was in such a state of mind would only make him
more self-wise than he was already. "Let him alone awhile," he said:
"only pray God for him, and he will of himself find out by reading how
wrong the Manichaeans are, and how impious their doctrine is." And then
he told her that he had himself been brought up as a Manichaean, but that
his studies had shown him the error of the sect, and he had left it.
Monica was not satisfied with this, and went on begging, even with
tears, that the bishop would talk with her son. But he said to her, "Go
thy ways, and may God bless thee; for it is not possible that the child
of so many tears should perish." And Monica took his words as if they
had been a voice from Heaven, and cherished the hope which they held out
to her.
Monica was much against Augustine's plan of removing to Rome; but he
slipped away and went on shipboard while she was praying in a chapel by
the seaside, which was called after the name of St. Cyprian. Having got
to Rome, he opened a school there, as he had done at Carthage; but he
found that the Roman youth, although they were not so rough as those of
Carthage, had another very awkward habit--namely, that, after having
heard a number of his lectures, they disappeared without paying for
them. While he was in distress on this account, the office of a public
teacher at Milan was offered to him, and he was very glad to take it.
While at Rome, he had a bad illness; but he did not at that time wish or
ask for baptism as he had done when sick in his childhood.
The great St. Ambrose was then Bishop of Milan. Augustine had heard so
much of his fame, that he went often to hear him, out of curiosity to
know whether the bishop were really as fine a preacher as he was said to
be; but by degrees, as he listened, he felt a greater and greater
interest. He found, from what Ambrose said, that the objections by which
the Manichaeans had set him against the Gospel were all mistaken; and,
when Monica joined him, after he had been some time at Milan, she had
the delight of finding that he had given up the Manichaean sect, and was
once more a catechumen of the Church.
Augustine had still to fight his way through many difficulties. He had
learnt that the best and highest wisdom of the heathens could not
satisfy his mind and heart; and he now turned again to St. Paul's
epistles, and found that Scripture was something very different from
what he had supposed it to be in the pride of his youth. He was filled
with grief and shame on account of the vileness of his past life; and
these feelings were made still stronger by the accounts which a friend
gave him of the strict and self-denying ways of Antony and other monks.
One day, as he lay in the garden of his lodging, with his mind tossed to
and fro by anxious thoughts, so that he even wept in his distress, he
heard a voice, like that of a child, singing over and over "Take up and
read! take up and read!" At first he fancied that the voice came from
some child at play; but he could not think of any childish game in which
such words were used. And then he remembered how St. Antony had been
struck by the words of the Gospel which he heard in church;[31] and it
seemed to him that the voice, wherever it might come from, was a call of
the same kind to himself. So he eagerly seized the book of St. Paul's
Epistles, which was lying by him, and, as he opened it, the first words
on which his eyes fell were these,--"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" (_Rom._ xiii.
13, 14). And, as he read, the words all at once sank deeply into his
heart, and from that moment he felt himself another man. As soon as he
could do so without being particularly noticed, he gave up his office of
professor and went into the country, where he spent some months in the
company of his mother and other friends; and at the following Easter
(A.D. 387), he was baptized by St. Ambrose. The good Monica had now seen
the desire of her heart fulfilled; and she soon after died in peace, as
she was on her way back to Africa, in company with her son.
[31] Page 60.
Augustine, after her death, spent some time at Rome, where he wrote a
book against the Manichaeans, and then, returning to his native place
Thagaste, he gave himself up for three years to devotion and study. In
those days, it was not uncommon that persons who were thought likely to
be useful to the Church should be seized on and ordained, whether they
liked it or not; and if they were expected to make very strong
objections, their mouths were even stopped by force. Now Augustine's
fame grew so great, that he was afraid lest something of this kind
should be done to him; and he did not venture to let himself be seen in
any town where the bishopric was vacant, lest he should be obliged to
become bishop against his will. He thought, however, that he was safe in
accepting an invitation to Hippo, because it was provided with a bishop
named Valerius. But, as he was one day listening to the bishop's sermon,
Valerius began to say that his church was in want of another presbyter;
whereupon the people laid hold of Augustine, and presented him to the
bishop, who ordained him without heeding his objections (A.D. 391). And
four years later (A.D. 395), he was consecrated a bishop, to assist
Valerius, who died soon after.
Augustine was bishop of Hippo for five-and-thirty years, and, although
there were many other sees of greater importance in Africa, his uncommon
talents, and his high character, made him the foremost man of the
African church. He was a zealous and exemplary bishop, and he wrote a
great number of valuable books of many kinds. But the most interesting
of them all is one which may be read in English, and is of no great
length--namely, the "Confessions," in which he gives an account of the
wanderings through which he had been brought into the way of truth and
peace, and humbly gives thanks to God, whose gracious providence had
guarded and guided him.