Marriages, as well as birthday feasts, supplied the orator with vivid allegories. Thus he says that when a marriage feast is made in a house, organs play upon the threshold, and musicians and dancers begin to sing and to act their songs. And yet how poor are these earthly enjoyments which pass away so soon!… "In the House of God, the feast has no end."
Continually, through the commentaries on the Psalms, like comparisons rise to the surface—parables suited to stir the imagination of Africans. A thousand details borrowed from local habits and daily life enliven the exegesis of the Bishop of Hippo. The mules and horses that buck when one is trying to cure them, are his symbol for the recalcitrant Donatists. The little donkeys, obstinate and cunning, that trot in the narrow lanes of Algerian casbahs, appear here and there in his sermons. The gnats bite in them. The unendurable flies plaster themselves in buzzing patches on the tables and walls. Then there are the illnesses and drugs of that country: the ophthalmias and collyrium. What else? The tarentulas that run along the beams on the ceiling; the hares that scurry without warning between the horses' feet on the great Numidian plains. Elsewhere, he reminds his audience of those men who wear an earring as a talisman; of the dealings between traders and sailors—a comparison which would go home to this seafaring people.
The events of the time, the little happenings of the moment, glide into his sermons. At the same time as the service in church to-day, there is going to be horse-racing at the circus, and fights of wild beasts or gladiators at the arena. In consequence, there will not be many people in the Basilica. "So much the better," says Augustin. "My lungs will get some rest." Another time, it is advertised through the town that most sensational attractions will be offered at the theatre—there will be a scene representing the open sea. The preacher laughs at those who have deserted the church to go and see this illusion: "They will have," says he, "the sea on the stage; but we, brothers—ah, we shall have our port in Jesus Christ." This Saturday, while he is preaching, some Jewish women set themselves to dance and sing on the terraces of the near houses, by way of celebrating the Sabbath. In the basilica, the bashing of the crotolos can be heard, and the thuds of the tambourines. "They would do better," says Augustin, "to work and spin their wool."
He dwells upon the catastrophes which were then convulsing the Roman world. The news of them spread with wonderful rapidity. Alaric's Barbarians have taken Rome and put it to fire and sword. At Jerusalem has been an earthquake, and the bishop John organizes a subscription for the sufferers throughout Christendom. At Constantinople, globes of fire have been seen in the sky. The Serapeum of Alexandria has just been destroyed in a riot….
All these things follow each other in lively pictures, without any apparent order, throughout Augustin's sermons. It is not he who divides his discourse into three parts, and refrains from passing to the second till he has learnedly expounded the first. Whether he comments upon the Psalms or the Gospels, his sermons are no more than explanations of the Scriptures which he interprets, sometimes in a literal sense, and sometimes in an allegoric. Let us acknowledge it—his allegoric discourses repel us by their extreme subtilty, sometimes by their bad taste; and when he confines himself to the letter of the text, he stumbles among small points of grammar which weary the attention. We follow him no longer. We think his audience was very obliging to listen so long—and on their feet—to these endless dissertations…. And then, suddenly, a great lyrical and oratorical outburst which carries us away—a wind which blows from the high mountains, and in the wink of an eye sweeps away like dust all those fine-spun reasonings.
He is fond of certain commonplaces, and also of certain books of the Bible—for instance, The Song of Songs and the Gospel of St. John, the one satisfying in him the intellectual, and the other the mystic of love. He confronts the verse of the Psalm: "Before the morning star have I begotten thee," with the sublime opening of the Fourth Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word." He lingers upon the beauty of Christ: Speciosus forma præ filiis hominum, "Thou art fairer than the children of men." This is why he is always repeating with the Psalmist: "Thy face, Lord, have I sought"—Quæsivi vultum tuum, Domine. And the orator, carried away by enthusiasm, adds: "Magnificent saying! Nothing more divine could be said. Those feel it who truly love." Another of his favourite subjects is the kindness of God: Videte et gustate quam mitis sit Dominus—"O taste and see that the Lord is good." Naught can equal the pleasure of this contemplation, of this life in God. Augustin conceives it as a musician who has fathomed the secret of numbers. "Let your life," he said, "be one prolonged song…. We do not sing only with the voice and lips when we intone a canticle, but in us is an inward singing, because there is also in us Some One who listens…."
To live this rhythmic and divine life we must get free of ourselves, give ourselves up utterly in a great outburst of charity.
"Why," he cries—"Oh, why do you hesitate to give yourselves lest you should lose yourselves? It is rather by not giving yourselves that you lose yourselves. Charity herself speaks to you by the mouth of Wisdom and upholds you against the terror which fills you at the sound of those words: 'Give yourself.' If some one wanted to sell you a piece of land, he would say to you: 'Give me your gold.' And for something else, he would say: 'Give me your silver, give me your money.' Listen to what Charity says to you by the mouth of Wisdom: 'My son, give me thy heart.' 'Give me,' quoth she. Give what? 'My son, give me thy heart.'… Thy heart was not happy when it was governed by thee, and was thine, for it turned this way and that way after gawds, after impure and dangerous loves. 'Tis from there thy heart must be drawn. Whither lift it up? Where to place it? 'Give me thy heart,' says Wisdom, 'let it be mine, and it will belong to thee for always.'"
After the chant of love, the chant of the Resurrection. Cantate mihi canticum novum—"Sing to me a new song!" Augustin repeats these words over and over again. "We wish to rise from the dead," cry souls craving for eternity. And the Church answers: "Verily, I say unto you, that you shall rise from the dead. Resurrection of bodies, resurrection of souls, ye shall be altogether reborn." Augustin has explained no dogma more passionately. None was more pleasing to the faithful of those times. Ceaselessly they begged to be strengthened in the conviction of immortality and of meeting again brotherlike in God.
With what intrepid delight it rose—this song of the Resurrection in those clear African basilicas swimming in light, with all their brilliant ornamentation of mosaics and marbles of a thousand colours! And what artless and confident language those symbolic figures spoke which peopled their walls—the lambs browsing among clusters of asphodels, the doves, the green trees of Paradise. As in the Gospel parables, the birds of the field and farmyard, the fruits of the earth, figured the Christian truths and virtues. Their purified forms accompanied man in his ascension towards God. Around the mystic chrisms, circled garlands of oranges and pears and pomegranates. Cocks, ducks, partridges, flamingoes, sought their pasture in the Paradisal fields painted upon the walls of churches and cemeteries.