“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 ownminds; 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 died in the year 430, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and the fortieth of his ministry.
CHAPTER XX.
CENTURIES OF WAR AND WOE.
Convulsions of the Sixth Century.—Corruption of the Church.—The Rise of Monasteries.—Rivalry between Rome and Constantinople.—Mohammed and his Career.—His Personal Appearance.—His System of Religion.—His Death.—Military Expeditions of the Moslems.—The Threatened Conquest of Europe.—Capture of Alexandria.—Burning of the Library.—Rise of the Feudal System.—Charlemagne.—Barbarian Antagonism to Christianity.
HE sixth century of the Christian era passed away like a hideous dream of the night. Wave after wave of barbaric invasion swept over Europe and Asia. Rome was sacked five times, in the endurance of violence and woes which no pen can describe. Paganism was overthrown; but gradually Christianity became paganized. Still, corrupt as Christianity became, it was an immense improvement over the ancient systems of idolatry. The past narrative has given the reader some faint idea of what morals were under the old Roman emperors. The depravity of man, vanquished in its endeavor to uphold idolatry, with all its polluting rites, endeavored to degrade Christianity into a mere system of dead doctrines and pompous ceremonies. In this it partially succeeded; but it was utterly impossible to sink Christianity to a level with paganism.
The disordered state of the times had swept the rural population from the fields, and they were huddled together for protection in the villages and walled cities. Immense tracts of land all over Europe were left waste. Herds of cattle grazed overthese desolate expanses, guarded by armed serfs, who watched them by day, and slept in the fields by their side at night. Slavery was universally practised, the conqueror almost invariably enslaving the conquered. Hence labor became degrading: none but slaves would work. It was gentlemanly, it was chivalric, to obtain wealth by pillage: it was vulgar, boorish, entirely derogatory to all dignity, to move a finger in honest industry. The highest offices of the Church were often assigned by unprincipled kings and princes to their worthless favorites. Marauding bands, not unfrequently led by these false bishops, often fell upon the flocks grazing in the fields, slaughtered the herdsmen, and drove off the herd.
A very zealous and enlightened Christian, by the name of Benedict, endeavored to counteract this ruinous spirit of the times: he formed a society quite similar in its organization to our temperance associations. This body of reformers soon assumed the name of Monks of St. Benedict. For protection against the marauding bands which were ever abroad upon expeditions of plunder, they built a massive, strongly-fortified castle, which they called a monastery, to which the industrious community could retreat when assailed.