EXAMPLES OF LIFE AND DEATH.

330

1

MONICA.

MONICA, a native of Tagaste, in Numidia, was born about the year 330. She early

manifested ardent affections and an amiable

disposition. She had also strong religious tendencies, which were cherished more by the instructions of a pious and infirm domestic in her father's family, than by the influence or example of her parents. She married a man by the name of Patricius, from an obscure station in society, a pagan, of an ambitious, impetuous temper, but warm-hearted and full of generosity.

Their only child, Augustine, who was born November 13th, 354, they regarded with the fondest parental affection. In infancy, he displayed strong sensibilities, and a brilliant

intellect.

The mother endeavored to instil into his unfolding mind, the elements of Christianity, and during a severe illness in childhood, he expressed deep convictions of sin, and desires of pardon through a Redeemer. But after his recovery, these impressions vanished, and were soon entirely effaced through association with frivolous and evil companions, in a large public school where he was placed, at Madaura, a town of considerable note in the neighborhood of Tagaste. Here the teachers, being heathens, did not seek to govern him by the fear of God, or the dictates of conscience. Sometimes appealing to a false sense of honor, and then embittering his spirit with taunts and reproaches, they subjected him to the demoralizing influences of pagan literature, and saw him without compunction, plunging into excesses, and forging the chains of sinful habit. The vigilant eye of his mother was not near, to watch over him, and with the recklessness of a wayward youth, he cast away the remembrance of her precepts.

At the age of sixteen he came to pass a year at home, in recess from study. She was not

slow to perceive, amid his intellectual attainments, the moral ruin that had ensued. He had made great proficiency in the Latin classics, and in rhetoric, and the pride of the father exulting in the genius of his son, often induced him to smile at his unbridled passions and excesses, as the natural gaiety of youth, or of dawning and daring manhood. But the pious mother remonstrated and wept, and poured out her sorrows to Him who heareth prayer.

Filial affection once so vivid in the bosom of Augustine, had now become dimmed and perverted by indulgence in sin. With that contempt of female sway which often springs up in the mistaken, and ill-disciplined youth, he even gloried in disobeying her precepts. He boasted of his liberty, while he was the slave of wickedness, and daily bearing its scourge. Long afterwards, he confesses with compunction: "The voice of my mother, or rather the voice of God in her, I despised, thinking it to be only the voice of a woman."

Patricius, anxious that the talents of his son should enjoy every advantage of cultivation,