Augustin is thus in perpetual communication with his audience. Nobody has done less soaring than he. He keeps his eye on the facial expressions and the attitudes of his public. He talks to them familiarly. When his sermon is a little lengthy, he wants to know if his listeners are getting tired—he has kept them standing so long! The time of the morning meal draws near. Bellies are fasting, stomachs wax impatient. Then says he to them with loving good-fellowship:
"Go, my very dear brothers and sisters, go and restore your strength—I do not mean that of your minds, for I see well that they are tireless, but the strength of your bodies which are the servants of your souls. Go then and restore your bodies so that they may do their work well, and when they are restored, come back here and take your spiritual food."
Upon certain days, a blast of the sirocco has passed over the town. The faithful, crowded in the aisles, are stifling, covered with sweat. The preacher himself, who is very much worked up, has his face dripping, and his clothes are all wet. By this he perceives that once more he has been extremely long. He excuses himself modestly. Or again, he jokes like a rough apostle who is not repelled by the odour of a lot of human-kind gathered together.
"Oh, what a smell!" says he. "I must have been speaking a long while to-day."
These good-natured ways won the hearts of the simple folk who listened to him. He is aware of the charm he exerts on them, and of the sympathy they give him back in gratitude for his charity.
"You have loved to come and hear me, my brothers," he said to them. "But whom have you loved? If it is me—ah, even that is good, my brothers, for I want to be loved by you, if I do not want to be loved for myself. As for me, I love you in Christ. And you too, do you love me in Him. Let our love for one another moan together up to God—and that is the moaning of the Dove spoken of in the Scripture…."
Although he preaches from the height of his episcopal throne, he is anxious that his hearers should regard him, Christianly, as their equal. So he seems as little of the bishop as possible.
"All Christians are servants of the same master…. I have been in the place where you are—you, my brothers, who listen to me. And now, if I give the spiritual bread from the height of this chair to the servants of the Master of us all—well, it is but a few years since I received this spiritual food with them in a lower place. A bishop, I speak to laymen, but I know to how many future bishops I speak…."
So he puts himself on an equal footing with his audience by the brotherly accent in his words. It is not Christendom, the Universal Church, or I know not what abstract listener he addresses, but the Africans, the people of Hippo, the parishioners of the Basilica of Peace. He knows the allusions, the comparisons drawn from local customs, which are likely to impress their minds. The day of the festival of St. Crispina, a martyr of those parts, after he had developed his subject at very great length, he asked pardon in these terms:
"Let us think, brothers, that I have invited you to celebrate the birthday of the blessed Crispina, and that I have kept up the feast a little too long. Well, might not the same thing happen if some soldier were to ask you to dinner and obliged you to drink more than is wise? Let me do as much for the Word of God, with which you should be drunk and surfeited."