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Lorsqua la documant ast trop grand pour Atra raproduit an un saul clichA, il ast filmi A partir da I'angla supAriaur gaucha. da gaucha A droita. at da haut an bas. an pranant la nombra d'imagas nAcassaira. Las diagrammas suivsnts illustrant la mAthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 I.I y£ I |^|2.8 150 tSi 2.5 2.2 Kim 136 lAo 12.0 li& MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL 1010a (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) /ESUIT BIBLMAL MARIAE CORONA f MARIAE CORONA CHAPTERS ON THE MOTHER OF GOD AND HER SAINTS BY TriB REV. P. A. SHEEHAN, D.D. AUTHOR OF "my NgW CURATB," " tUKB OELMBOt." TH« " TRIUMPH OF FAILURi,' AND OTHRR WORKS JESUIT BBLMAl SEMINART SECOND EDITION D. & J. SADLIER & CO. NO. in NOTRE DAME ST. WEST, MONTREAL. Canada. O O 'J MaTTIAICI RD6SBLL, S.J., Ctnior DipHt, ittintnitnt: ■fl GULULMOt, ilwAi*/. Dublin., Hibtmicu Prim. PREFACE Yielding to 'he request of the Committee of the Cathoii:: Truti Society of Ireland, the Author has decided to givs a permanent form to the following pages, roost of which he has kept in manuscript for a considerable time. He feels that the only valid reason for publishing them is the hope entertained by the Committee that they will help to promote a tenderer love of the Queen of Saints, and a better appreciation * ' lives which were in a large measure devoted to her service. MARIAE CORONA CHAP. I. — Mary, the Morning Star II. — The Greatest Doctor of the Chcrch III.— Mary, the Tower of Ivory IV. — Mary, the Glory of Israel V. — Devotion to the Spouse of Mary VI.— The Holy Apostles, Peter and Paul VII— The Apostle of Ireland VIII. — Mary, the Mother of God IX.— The Founder of the Preaching Friars X.— Te resa of Jescs and of C*rmel XI. — An Aged and a Youthful Confessor - XII.— Mary, the Queen of Saints PAGE t 25 49 59 73 82 90 97 121 »36 M9 177 marp, tfte rnornlnfl star. " Our tainted nature's solitary boast."- Word.^ Worth. I. THERE is aJvva)s a difficulty about our treatment of the supernaiural. However we may have tried to bring it home to our understandings, and to maater it in all its details, there is always a consciousness that we have failed. Even when we call to our assist- ance the Word of God, and the Fathers of the Church, to enable us by study to comprehend our subject fully, yet there remains an uneasy feeling that we have mastered not our subject, but our idea of it— that our words have merely gone to express our own ideas, but have been utterly inade- quate to describe that supernatural truth to the minds of others. In a certain sense, this is more true of the mystery of the Immaculate Mother of God than of any other mystery of Christian Revelation. Because in approaching all other mysteries we acknowledge them to be mysteries, and confess our own inability to comprehend them; but in speaking of God's Mother, we grow through f-,iniliarity, perhaps, into the mistake of believing that we are speaking of a subject that B * MARY, THE MORNING STAR. comes within the range of human knowledge. And it is only when we have recognised the truth that if the Incarnate God be the greatest of all mysteries, the Mother of the Incarnate God must participate in that mystery, that we shelter ourselves under our humility, leaving to God the knowledge of His mysteries, and retaining only our wonder and admiratiou for Him and them. This mystic character has been given to the Mother of God by her close relations with her Divine Son. The Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ conferred upon His Mother a dignity proportioned to His humiliation. He humbled Himself, and sht was exalted in the humiliation. He became Man, and she became the Mother of God. The deeper He descended, the higher she ascended. He emptied Himself of His glory, and clothed her with it. He concealed all His supernatural pr-v.ers and qualities, and descended upon earth to mingle amongst men, and behold ! He raised His Mother at the same time from her plar; amongst men, and endowed her with supernatural powers and supernatural graces. He robbed earth of a great deal that He might make a larger compensa- tion to earth — taking from earth a Mother, and giving it a Son ; taking from earth its purest and holiest daughter, from men their best-loved sister, and giving Himself in return; infinitely purer, infinitely holier than she, and yearning to be better beloved through her and for her sake. And thus Jesus met His Mother half-way betwixt heaven and earth; she, raised to meet Him, and He, descending to meet her; there Mother and Child were united, and there united and insepar- able they live for ever in the thought of Christians. The mystery of the Mother and Child therefore, remains the great mysterj- of Christian Revelation. It is the one great central myster}' upon which the others converge. And they who try to separate the Mother from the Child are consciously I "I MARY, THE MORNING STAR 8 or I .iconsciously undermining the truth of His Incarnation. They are counteracting the designs of God's Providence, and undoing the very work upon which God has been labouring from eternity. Among those who are capable of comprehending this sub- ject, there is nowadays but a very narrow field for discussion on the privileges of the great Mother of God. It would be difficult in our days to find anyone who would have the hardi- hood of asserting that the Angel Gabriel might have been sent to any other Hebrew woman as to Mary; or that the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin was a mere instrumentality which con- ferred no privileges upon her, needed not the special prepara- tion of the Spirit, and left no dignity or unsurpassed holiness. There are few who do not recognise that there is a close con- nection between the functions assigned to her and the grace conferred upon her; and though not often spoken of in Scrip- ture, they who understand its spirit, and that the =s a mean- ing in its silence, as well as in its utterances, ackr c^ge, that the Word of God assigns to her the very place which is given to her in the Litanies of the Church : Queen of Patriarchs, of Trophets, of Apostles, of Ail Saints, surpassed in hoiineii only by the Author of all sanctity Himself. This gives us large ideas of the dignity of the Mother of God ; but they fall far short of the reality. Because here we are tracing her dignity only to the moment of Incarnation, whereas Mary filled the mind of God years before creation, and entered largely into the designs of God in fashioning His Universe and perfecting it. The greatest privilege of Mary, next after her Divine Maternity, is that of her Immaculate Conception. And to us it has a special significance, inasmuch as it pro^res that our Venerable Church, as it grows year after year, and century after century, under the protection and patronage of Heav(;a i MARY, THE MORNING STAK. increases at the same time in its love and veneration for Christ its Spouse, and Mary its Mother. And whilst the world out- side the Church is yearly growing more and more estranged from God, and is therefore engaged in paring down the privi- leges of Mary, and the attributes of Jesus, the Church is gaining a clearer insight into the workings of the Spirit of God in the past, and a clearer knowledge of the effects of His omnipotent grace in these souls, which He designed for Himself. The world, having lost the love of God, has lost the knowledge of Hii power and of His mercy ; the Church, growing in the love of God, is gradually gaimng a fuller insight into the secrets of His wisdom and His power. And thus, while men are losing all belief in the supernatural, and measuring God by their own thoughts, the vision of the Church into eternity grows brighter and clearer, and therefore is her faith more fervent and pro- found. Now, let us see how this is exemphfied in the prepara- tion of Mary as Mother of God. The Almighty God has said : " My thoughts are not ai your thoughts, nor My ways as your ways, but as far as the heavens are removed from the earth, so far are My thoughts above your thoughts, and My ways above your ways." The Almighty Creator reaches from end to end ; His knowledge is from eternity unto eternity, and all things are clear and mani- fest to His eyes. In His eternal Word He ordains all things and decrees all creations. And at the same time He looks onward far before Him, and, contemplating the end of His works, He contemplates means unto the end, and subordina.tefl the intermediate means to the final end. And if this be true of the most ordinary acts, how much more true is it of that great act which is the embodiment of all God's dealings with the world, I mean the Incarnation of His Adorable Son. First of all in the designs of God, then, is the Incarnation of MARY, THE MORNING STAR. His Divine Son. It was decreed and determined from eternity that the Second Person of the ever-adorable x rinity should become Man in time. And how? How was this mystery of Divine Love to be effected ? How was that body to be fitted for Jesus in which He should die, and by that death redeem the world? The Almighty Creator could have easily raised for Him a body out of the slime of the earth, as He had done for Adam ; or He could have gifted Him with a purely celestial, spiritual body, as s jme heretics supposed. But, not At the 8.1 me time that it was decreed that Jesus should be bom it was also decreed that He should be conceived and bom of a woman. That woman was Mary, and therefore we find that the idea of Mary co-existed in the Dis-ine mind with the idea of the Man-God, that she existe-, the second Eve, was superior to the first, and that there- fore, she could not be subject to the misery of sin which Eve inflicted upon the world. As time went on, whenever the reign of cxil seemed speci- ally to predominate in the world, men looked forward to the fulfilment of that first great promise. They looked for the Messias that was to come and save His people; and they knew that He was to be recognised by a sign, and that sign was Mary, His Mother. " A Virgin," said Isaias, " shall conceive and bear a Son, whose name shall be called Emmanuel." " A woman," said Jeremias, " shall encircle man." Now in all th^'se MAKY, THE MORNING STAR. 7 previiiont of the Prophets, one thing wai hoped for, one thing expected, and that was the salvation of the people of God, liie Redemption of the world from the tyranny of sin. And as it had never entered the minds of these Holy Prophets that the Redeemer Himself could be the slave of the enemy He had come to conquer, neither could it have been believed by them, that she who was so closely associated with Him, through whom His Divinity and great mission were in a measure to he proved, could ever be the slave of sin. For, if God could ay to Jeremias the Prophet : " Before I formed thee in the womb of thy mother, I knew thee ; and before thou earnest forth I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nation," how much more truly might He have said of the Mother of His Son : " Before I created thee I knew thee, and gave thee as a Mother unto my Son." The Almighty said : " My thoughts are not your thoughts," and how clearly this is evidenced in the Immaculate Concep- tion of Mary ! My thoughts are not your thoughts ; nor My ways your ways. If they had been, alas ! how different would not Mary have been — Marj' who is now to the Church, " the glory of Israel — the honour of her people." " A Virgin shall conceive," said Isaias. A Virgin did conceive, says the Church, and that Virgin is Mary. And if it be true, that to give greater honour to her Divine Son, or for some other design beyond our ken and known only to Almighty God Himself, the Sacred Scriptures do not give ultermce to any elaborate paneg}'rics on her virtues or her dignity, we have supplied the place, and we have scrutinised the designs of God, and tried to under- stand Mary as she appeared from the beginning to the Most Holy Trinity, and to the angels at the moment of her Immacu- late Conception. And we have taken one or two expression.'!, so remarkable, so wonderful, that they can only have been spoken of a Being very dear to Almighty God, and from tliem 8 MARY, THE MORrn.NG STAR. we have built up in our minds an idea of what Mary is. and of th^ (distinguished place she occupies among the children of Gml. II. In the schools of Theology there has always been Uught « very sublime doctrine concerning the Incarnation; and although itis not a defmed dogma of faith, it has always found many advocates, both because it affords a simple a^iswer to the sophisms f science, and because u gives us a better know- ledge of tne benev olence of God. It is this, that the fall of man is not entirely the cause of the Incarnation, that our Divme Lord would have become Man even though man had never fallen. The fall of man imparted to the Incarnation its expiatory chara,:tcr. but God would have become Man if there had been no .sin to be expiated, and He would have become Man not for the Redemption of one race of men, living on i single planet, but for the exaltation of the entire universe. According to this opinion, then, the Incarnation entered into the original design.s of God about His creation. The Incama- t=on was not an afterthought suggested by the sin of Adam. It was not a penalty demanded by the justice of God for original sin. And it was not at all the primary design of God that His Son should come upon earth as a Victim. These accidents were added to the Incarnation by the sin of Adam. But it was the design of Gcxi from eternity that His Son should assume a created form and live as a creature, not primarily to redeem the race of men upon earth, but to bind the universe more closely to its Creator. The Incarnation, therefore, formed part of the original designs of God in framing His universe, and without the Incarnation, Creation would be incom- plete. It would be finite, and at a distance from its Maker; MARY, THE Mi'RNlNC STAR. Hi* blind instrument fulfilling His will, not voluntarily, but through the compulsion of His omnipotence — a gorgeous temple worthy of the majesty of God, and admirably fitted to sound His praises— but without a priest and without a wor- shipper. But how was Gofl to unice Himself to creation? By assuming the nature of Man. For creation is two-fold, spiritual and material. If God assumed the nature of an ajigel the material part of His creation would still be separated from Him. By assuming the nature of Man He linked Himself » Creation's spiritual and material elements. For the body of man is the highest type of material nature, and the soul of man is the lowest in the scale of spiritual nature*. And, there fore, God assumed the Body and the Soul of Man, for in Man's nature the twu creations met — the spiritual nature in its descending, and the material creation in its ascent. Thus, in the Incarnation creation would find a king to rule it in equity, a priest to direct its worship, and to offer its adorations. This wa.s the enigma of Heaven ; this was the test of the angel's faith — the humiliation of God, whom they had never seen but in the splendour of His Majesty, to a hypostatic union with the humble human, material creation. " The Word made Flesh," as St. John says, " was the test of the spirits." Those who turned aside, and refused their supreme worship to their God in that lowly form, perished. Those who received the Revela- tion, received at the same time the reward of their obedience, confirmation in glory, and indefectibility in grace. And thus we enumerate the three mighty effects : the Incarnation — ».o fallen man it restored his birthright ; to the angels in Heaven it gave eternal security in grace ; and to the material creation it has given a relation to God unseen by us, until the material part of us shall be spiritualized in the resurrection of the dead. And thus it follows that we have three great truths. That the union of the Creator with His creation by mean-t of 10 MARY, Tilt MORNING iTAR. the incarnation li the iiltimite end and perfection of creation, tnd, therefore, the prinoary idea in the mind of God. The fall of man determined that Incarnation should be completed by Redemption, and, therefore, is our Divine Lord called the " Lamb slain from the beginning of the world." The second truth is that the universe has been created for our Divine Lord — it is His temple, His tabernacle. All things lead up to Him and are perfected in Him. He is the completion of that wh'xh without Him were for ever incomplete. He is the keystone of the arch of the universe, and He is its Pontiff and its King. And, thirdly, the Son, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, was cho.sen to unite creation to its Maker, because He is the First-bom of every creature ; He is the uncreated image of God, as the souls of men are the created images. God's eternal idea of Himself, His living uncreated likeness, not a creature, but the type in origin of all creatures, was chosen by Infinite Wisdoni to unite with Himself His tincreateiJ brethren upon earth. Tliis made St. John declare that " all things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that w.is made." And again in the Canon of the Mass the Church de- clares that " by Him and with Him, and in Him, is to thee God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory." Now, from all this it is evident, that the Incarna- tion of His Divine Son filled the mind of God from eternity-. But it is also clear that this stupendous miracle could not have been conceived by God independently of the mode In which it was to be performed, and that mode was the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin. Simultaneously, therefore, that is from eternity, these two ideas existed in the mind of the Eternal Father — the Incarnation of His Son, and the Mat«Hiity of the Mother — in ether words, Jesus and Mary. It is i-^^ jssible that they could have been separated — the one idea could not be present without the other. For if the Redeemer was first in I MARV, THE MORNING STAR. 11 the Divine intention, as One through whom all thing's ihould be made, His Mother was conceive the minds of Micheas and Isaias when the prophecy was made, " that a virgin should conceive and bring forth a Son, and His name should be called Em- manuel," we can only conclude that from eternity she existed in the mind of God, from whom those prophets received an in- sight into the future, but to whom there was no future, no time, but a vast unmeasured present, ; .ence does the Church apply to the Mother of God these words spoken of Uncreate*! Wisdom : " I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the first-bom before all creatures. From the beginning and before the world w^'.'' I created. The Lord possessed me in the begin- ning of Hi« ways, before He made anything, from the begin- ning. I was set up from eternity and of old before the world was made. The depths were not as yet and I was already con- ceived." If we master this one idea, we shall find it the key of many mysteries. It aflo. is us at once a powerful confirmation, it there were need of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. For, according to this doctrine, the second Eve was prior to the first, not in order of time, but in the eternal plan of God. She was not only highest in dignity, but she was the first in the Divine intention, the first in God's design of the work of creatioa And thus existing before Eve, she could not be subject to the penalty of the sin of Evej or rather, this prior existence before the mind of God, gave her a kind of right that she should be exempted from the penalty which every child of Adam contracts. Of course, the principal cause cf her exemption was the merits of her Divine Son, who redeemed her by anticipation. But she had a right to those merits founded upon the fact that she had existed in the mind of God from 13 MARY, THE MORNING STAR. eternity, and the accidental circumstance of her creation in time could not violate that right of immunity from Original Sin. Again, according to this theory, Mary is the link between heaven and earth ; for through the Incarnation the union of God with His creation was effected, and Mary was the instru- ment of the Incarnation. Now what does this expression mean, and what are the necessary consequences? If the Incarnation be the union of God and His universe, i.e., the infinite with the finite, the Creator with His creatures, it is dear that the Creator would choose for that union the highest of His creatures — the one who remaining a creature yet approached nearest to His own infinite perfections. It involved infinite humiliation on the part of God to become Man at all; but having issued His eternal decree to that effect, and that de- cree being thus irrevocable, it was due to the majesty of the Son that His communication with creatures should be effected in a way befitting His dignity. If it had pleased the Eternal Father, this could have been done in many ways.* But He had determined that as the Son was bom of the Father from eternity, He should be born of a Mother in time. It only remained for His infinite wisdom to devise, and His omnipotence to create, a Mother befitting the Eternal Word. And such a Mother is Mary. One thing, therefore, and one thing alone bounds and limits her dignity and excellence. She Is a creature and finite. Refuse to her those excellences that belong exclusively to God ; but she pos.sesses every excellence that can consist with the character of a creature. It was decreed by God at the fall of our first parents that, as their posterity would have inherited a right to eternal happi- • Thenlogians discuss the different ways in which the hcdv of Christ could have been formed, as immediately from the slime of the earth, or by means of a celestial and visionary body, which seme heretics maintained was actually th$ cast. MARY, THE MORNING STAR. 13 ness if God's command had not been disobeyed, so, too, they should inherit the taint of sin with which their parents had de- filed themselves at the suggestion of the tempter. Therefora, every child is born into thi.s world with the stain of sin upon its soul — an enemy to its Creator — a slave to the powers of dark- ness — with no right to heaven that was shut against it by sin. The law is universal; the greatest saints have not been privi- leged with exemption ; God's justice will not remit the siern punishment until every soul shall have paid the penalty attached to that one original transgression. Once and once only did He create a soul that was never even for an in.stant Jellied with the slightest sin — once and once only did He create a soul that was as pure at the instant of conception a» it is now in Heaven— once and once only did He relax the stern judgment on our race and clothe a soul with original jiistice and sanctity, and innocence, and grace superabounding, with attributes of ineffable grandeur — a soul on which the least shadow of sin never for an instant rested — a soul on which the Almighty could ever turn to gaze upon with pleasure when weary of the deformity which sin had stamped upon mankind. It was the time when the fulness of years having come that the Son was to leave His Father's bosom and take flesh amongst men to redeem them, the Most Holy Trinity had to design and create and send into the world the soul of her who was destined to be Mother of the Incarnate Son. For cen- turies God hid not created a soul in grace ; he fasluoned and foniied them, and sent them into the world, but with the seal of sin and eternal death upon them — in the power of His enemy before they had left His omnipotent hands. But now the old time was for an instant to come back again, when the Almighty could look upon His work and say that it was good, and that it did not repent Him that He made it. Nay, more, the angels were very beautiful, but they fell. Adam was holy 14 MART, THE MORNING STAR. and iP.nocent, but he fell ; hut now was to be created a womar brighter than the brightest angel, and vith holiness and innocence which Adam could not hope to attain, and she was to be confirmed in grace from the \ery first moment of her con- ception. Again, Adam, however great, had no higher destiny than we ; the angels, however fair, had to worship God afar off; but she that was now to be created was destined to be in closest union with her Creator for all eternity, to be the Mother of Him before Whom the anpels are not found pure. Whose tabernacle is the sun, and Who bows the heavens be- neath His feet; she was to possess the glorious privilege of Divine Maternity, while her pure virginity remained intact ; eIic wa« to be the sanctuary in which the Most High should ever dwell; she was to have for her Son the Creator and Father <>f alJ things, and she was to co-operate with the Almighty in the great work of human redemption by gi\ing birth to the long- expected Messias. And the Father putting forth His omnipo- tent power, and the Son exhausting the treasures of Hi* Icve, and the Holy Ghost breathing on their counsels His ineffable wisdom, the soul of Mary sprang into existence from the hands of the Holy Trinity, " Coming forth as the morning, rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, shining in the temple of God as the morning star in the midst of a cloud " (Cant. iv.). Thus, was the holy Mary conceived, the fairest soul that ever came from the hands of God, endowed by the Holy Spirit with His choicest gifts, most prudent, most chaste, undefiled, inviolate. And God wondered at His own handiwork --id the angels adored their Queen in speechless awe at her surpassing beauty, and hell trembled at the conception erf a woman that was destined to destroy the power of its prince. Conceived Immaculate — fulfilling the promise of the Psalmist : " The Mo«t High hath sanctified His Tabernacle." " Fear not, thou ihalt not die, not for thee but for these has the law been ni.id? " WARY. THS IfOKNING STAR. 16 I " The hand of the Lord itrengthened thee, therefor* wilt thou be blessed for ever." Well might Mary exclaim : " Come ye and hear what great things the Lord has done for my touL" " The Lord possessed me in the beginning of my ways, before lie had made anything from the beginning ; I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made; the depths were not as yet and I was alrady conceived." Conceived Imma- culate — fairer than the unfallen Eve, our second Mother, who retrieved through her Son the fall of the first, and freed us in her own person from thr taint upon our race, that man was necessarily the slave of sin ?Ti-^ the enemy of his Maker. Con- ceived Immaculate — to be the source of joy to millions of unborn Catholics that were to be proud to acknowledge the iiigh privileges of their Queen. Conceived Immaculate — and not priding herself on her purity to dv.3pise us as impure, but constituting herself by reason of her verj' sinlessness our advo- cate with God — the defence of our virtue and the apologist for our crimes— our shield on the one hand from the fiery darts of the evil one, and on the other from the anger of the Living God. I III. The assistance which God renders His immortal Church illuminating the minds of her teachers with His wisdom, and inspiring the faithful with a spirit of docile piety and implicit belief, is in nothing more evident than in the progress and de- velopment of devotion to the Blessed Mother of God. The vision of the woman clothed with the sun, with the .'tars around her head, and the moon beneatl. her feet, is to us Catholics, thank God, nothing mysterious or apocalyptic. Wo see in it but Mary, the Mother of God, and our Mother — the solitary boast and only perfection of our fallen nature. Woman, yet mure than angel ; human, yet raised to a perfection it is 16 MARY, THE MORNING STAR. not given to any other creature to attain ; created and finite, but in the world of grace omnipotent — such is Mary, and as such do we reverence her, mingling our revt.:< nee with ten- derest affection and unfailing confidence. And the Church of God, enlightened by His Holy Spirit, has at all times recog- nised in this Virgin attributes more than human, more than angelic — perfections nearer to God's infinite perfection than the united perfections of all the saints and angels that ever have been, or ever shall be created. Weenjoy the privilege of belonging to the generation of the children of Goer tilings like fire, and like a flame points steadily upward ; and here behold again the white vestal lamp of purity, lighted and k pt alive by the same Divine breath. In one saint the moral and spiri- tual elements are so e.xpanded and developed that the operation of the intellect appears to be suspended ; and in another you 36 THE GREATEST DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. pause in unconscious suspense to decide whether the moral ond spiritual beauty or the intellectual grandeur reflects more glorj- on the Giver of both. To this latter class most certainly belongs the great Doctor whose name is so familiar to us, Augustine, the son of St. Monica. A saint whose love for God lifted him almost to the level of that beloved disciple who saw the city of God in the heavens, as Augustine saw the city of God upon earth ; a saint who to-day — after fourteen centuries wliich have blotted out the names of all his contemporaries except those who have shared his immortality through his writings — is teacher, prophet, and intellectual guide to leaders of thought throughout the universities of the world ; aye, even to framers of la^vs and sovereigns of men, whose word makes or mars the happiness of nations. And here at least no com- plaint can be made of that which the world calls monotonous and sluggish tameness, which we call the calm, unbroken peace, which is the reward of high sanctity. For the life of St. Augustine is marked by such striking events, and his great soul passed through such extremes of passion and doubt, that the pious soul can draw inspiration from his holiness, the philosopher or divine fresh wisdom from his learning, and the student of humanity will feel a new interest in the struggling of a soul to disenthral itself from the fierce promptings of passion and the seductions of intellectual pride. For Augustine was a convert — from a siimer he became a saint, from a doubter and denier he became a believer and a teacher ; and it is to com- memorate this marvellous and touching change, wrought in such strange and simple ways by the omnipotence of grace, that this paper is written. And first, we must distinctly understand that his conversion was two-fold, yet simultaneous — a moral conversion and an W^M^/ THE GREATEST DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. 27 intellectual enlightenment — perhaps the only example of it that you will find in the history of the Church. For be it known that the striking conversion of great intellects, such as those of which we are witnesses in a neighbouring country, is gener- ally interpreted as a recognition by the Holy Spirit of the pure lives and the noble striving after light which have marked the Careers of these converts. They were then simply lifted from the twilight of the valley to the full splendour that shines on the holy mountain, and the natural virtues which they practised were elevated to the rank of supernatural excellences by the Divine power of faith. But with Augustine there was not only intellectual blindness to be relieved, but moral depravity to be corrected ; and his conversion is all the more glorious, inas- much as the scales fell from his eyes, and the shackles of fleshly love from his limbs at the same moment, and his noble nature was lifted into the serene regions of faith and purity by one and the same operation. It is not at all difficult to understand how this young rheto- rician, African by birth, Roman by education, drifted into those criminal excesses, which he afterwards so bitterly deplored. A hot ardent nature into which the tropical bun had stricken his fires, lay absolutely at the mercy of those fierce passions, which please and pain, but whose tortures far more than tran.scend the transient delights which they bring. Reli- gion, with its sweet, soothing influences was unknown to him. Those radiant visions that afterwards haunted him, with their pure ethereal splendours, until they lifted him from the slough of sin, were yet far off. At home the example of a Christian mother was more than over-shadowed by the example of a Pagan father, who almost revelled in the iniquities of his child, and whose passions, blunted by age, seemed to be newly whetted in the contemplation of similar passions that daily e\nnced themselves in his boy. Then, too, sacramental grace 28 THE GREATEST DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. was absent from his soul, for by a series of accidents the Sacrament of Baptism, which he was about to receive in a dangerous illness, was deferred, and he grew to manhood with the great original stain infecting his whole character, and changing even his good impulses into criminal issues and re- sults. With such sad equipments he was thrown into a world that just then was reaching its perfection of iniquity, for the hosts of darkness were marshalling their forces for the last conflict with victorious Christianity. Young, ardent, impetuous, Augustine was thrown into the midst of the dissipation and vice of that city, which, while Rome was beinj, gradually changed into a city of sanctity, borrowed its worst vices and made itself the home of its lasci- vious worships, and flung open its temples to the deities whose names were pollution, and set itself in angry antagonism to that religion of sacrifice and purity that already had lifted its con- quering standard on the seven hills of its ancient rival, Rome. It is rather difficult for us to understa-^d the excesses to which men yielded themselves freely in these Pagan cities. They were demoniac rather than human. A Christian preacher dare not speak of them in detail, nor can the imagination dwell on them without sin. We have some pictures left us of the licentiousness and sensuality, the festivals of blood and the orgies of unutter- able lust, that characterised ancient Rome. Yet Carthage was another and a more wicked Rome. The civilization of the latter had penetrated to the conquered province, and under a warmer sun, had given birth to vice, which even to accom- plished Rome was unknown. A Carnival of vice in the streets — vice deified in the temples — ^vice incarnated on the stage — ■ poets consecrating their divine talent, and orators devoting their sacred gifts to the embellishment of vice — such was the normal condition of a city which in the just judgments of th« Eternal is to-day but a name, whilst its great rival assumes THE GREATEST DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. 29 with justice the proud title of Eternal. Into Carthage, thus seething in sin, young Augustine was plunged ; and in a short time, as he himself pathetically tells us, he was ashamed when he heard his companions boasting of flagitious actions, that he was less guilty than they. And so, at the early age of nineteen, a victim of two deadly vices, ambition and sensuality, his father dead, his mother weeping and praying, young Augustine com- menced to tread the w-ine-press of the sorrow that is begotten of sin, not knowing that he had any higher destiny than to become famous in the schools or law courts — not knowing that there were Ingher and loftier delights than are to be found in the pursuit of sin. And so he wasted the most blessed gifts of God — the years of youth and the strength of budding man- hood—in a little study and much pleasure ; dreams of fame and desires that raged and could not be quenched ; a folding of the hands to rest in a carnal and sensual paradise ; and not a thought of the immortal soul, nor of the God in whom yet he believed, nor of the eternity in which he was laying up for him- self treasures of wrath against the day that was to come. It was just at this time, too, that he embraced the Mani- chean heresy — one of the most singular inventions of human folly that ever claimed the credence of men. Its founder, Manes, an Eastern mystic, a slave by chance, a painter by trade, a prophet by profession, claimed, like Mahomet in later times, that he was specially deputed by Heaven to bring a new revelation to men. And as the latter showed his disciples a certain book, which he declared was written in Heaven, so the credentials of Manes were certain pictures which he pretended were painted in the skies. He perished in a fearful death ; but his disciples, with all the energy and enthusiasm of false- hood, filled every chair of rhetoric in Carthage, and claimed as converts some of the most distinguished men of that city. They spoke of the Father and the Son and the Paraclete, but 30 THE GREATEST DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. with some meaning in these words whirh no Christian could accept; declared the marriage tie to be immoral, and wine the incarnation of evil ; they invented some theories of nature whose absurdities alone made them cre