Saint Augustin | Page 2

hearsay. By this neglect,
is he atoning for the renewal of glory in which he shone during the
seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy,
identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sour
austerity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches to
the remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal--has that
affected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in the

ranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, if there have ever been any
beings who do not resemble Augustin, and whom probably he would
have attacked with all his eloquence and all the force of his dialectic,
they are the Jansenists. Doubtless he would have said with contempt:
"The party of Jansen," even as in his own day, with his devotion to
Catholic unity, he said: "The party of Donatus."
It must be acknowledged also that the very sight of his works is
terrifying, whether we take the enormous folios in two columns of the
Benedictine edition, or the volumes, almost as compact, and much
more numerous, of recent editions. Behind such a rampart of printed
matter he is well defended against profane curiosity. It needs courage
and perseverance to penetrate into this labyrinth of text, all bristling
with theology and exegesis and metaphysics. But only cross the
threshold of the repellent enclosure, grow used to the order and shape
of the building, and it will not be long ere you are overcome by a warm
sympathy, and then by a steadily increasing admiration for the host
who dwells there. The hieratic face of the old bishop lights up, becomes
strangely living, almost modern, in expression. You discover under the
text one of the most passionate lives, most busy and richest in
instruction, that history has to shew. What it teaches is applicable to
ourselves, answers to our interests of yesterday and to-day. This
existence, and the century in which it was passed, recall our own
century and ourselves. The return of similar circumstances has brought
similar situations and characters; it is almost our portrait. And we feel
half ready to conclude that at the present moment there is no subject
more actual than St. Augustin.
At least he is one of the most interesting. What, indeed, is more
romantic than this wandering life of rhetorician and student that the
youthful Augustin led, from Thagaste to Carthage, from Carthage to
Milan and to Rome--begun in the pleasures and tumult of great cities,
and ending in the penitence, the silence, and recollection of a
monastery? And again, what drama is more full of colour and more
profitable to consider than that last agony of the Empire, of which
Augustin was a spectator, and, with all his heart faithful to Rome,
would have prevented if he could? And then, what tragedy more

stirring and painful than the crisis of soul and conscience which tore his
life? Well may it be said that, regarded as a whole, the life of Augustin
was but a continual spiritual struggle, a battle of the soul. It is the battle
of every moment, the never-ceasing combat of body and spirit, which
the poets of that time dramatized, and which is the history of the
Christian of all times. The stake of the battle is a soul. The upshot is the
final triumph, the redemption of a soul.
What makes the life of Augustin so complete and so truly typical is that
he fought the good fight, not only against himself, but against all the
enemies of the Church and the Empire. If he was a doctor and a saint,
so was he too the type of the man of action in one of the most
disheartened periods. That he triumphed over his passions--this, in truth,
concerns only God and himself. That he preached, wrote, shook crowds,
disturbed minds, may seem without importance to those who reject his
doctrine. But that across the centuries his soul, afire with charity,
continues to warm our own; that without our knowledge he still shapes
us; and that, in a way more or less remote, he is still the master of our
hearts, and, in certain aspects, of our minds--there is what touches each
and all of us, without distinction. Not only has Augustin always his
great place in the living communion of all christened people, but the
Western soul is marked with the stamp of his soul.
First of all, his fate is confused with that of the dying Empire. He
witnessed, if not the utter disappearance, at least the gradual swooning
away of that admirable thing called the Roman Empire, image of
Catholic unity. Well, we are the wreckage of the Empire. Usually, we
turn away with contempt from those wretched centuries which
underwent the descents of the Barbarians.