ber and succour us in our rough storm of troubles and temptations!"

Many weeks had not passed, when his burning zeal for souls and his valiant defense of the truth drew towards him all eyes and all hearts.

Hippo, in those days, had for its bishop a godly minister, who, having shared in the late awakening, had begun painfully to feel the need of some firmer hand and more watchful eye than his to tend Christ's flock and to stem the rising tide of heresy and of corruption. One morning, in the pulpit, the venerable man, with great simplicity and affection, laid the matter before the people, telling them that they needed another pastor, and that he had been praying to the Master to send them one. With one consent, the congregation named the stranger who had lately come among them. Valerius gave thanks that the Lord had heard his prayers. And Augustine, who was present, was summoned to feed the flock.

Overwhelmed with a sense of the greatness of the work and of his own unfitness for such

a charge, he gave vent to a flood of tears.* "Ah! Lord God!" was his secret thought; "behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child. But, as he pondered, in his closet, that night, on the Divine leadings by which he had been conducted through so many successive mazes to that spot, and as he felt rising within him a fresh yearning over souls, it seemed as if a voice from heaven were whispering to him— Say not, I am a child; for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and, whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak." A few more months were given, in his old retreat, to special study and to prayer; and, returning to Hippo, he was ordained a presbyter, to the great joy of all.*

* Possidius writes:- Valerius, episcopus Hipponensis, quum flagitante ecclesiasticâ necessitate de providendo et ordinando presbytero civitati plebem Dei alloqueretur et exhortaretur; jam scientes catholici sancti Augustini propositum et doctrinam, manu injectâ (quoniam et idem in populo securus, et ignarus quid futurum esset, adstabat) eum ergo tenuerunt, et ut in talibus consuetum est, episcopo ordinandum intulerunt, omnibus id uno consensu et desiderio fieri perficique petentibus, magnoque studio et clamore flagitantibus, ubertim eo flente."

* Possidius writes again: -"Sanctus vero Valerius, ordi

It was in the spring of 392, and in his thirtyninth year.

nator ejus, ut erat vir pius, et Deum timens, exultabat, et Deo gratias agebat suas exauditas a Domino fuisse preces, quas se frequentissimè fudisse narrabat, ut sibi divinitus homo concederetur talis, qui posset verbo Dei et doctrinâ salubri ecclesiam Domini ædificare."

XXIV.

"Grace makes the slave a freeman."

"Behold, what fire is in his eye, what fervour on his cheek!

HERBERT has described the pulpit as the minister's "joy and throne;" and the characteristic of his "sermon," he says, is "holiness". "he is not witty, or learned, or eloquent, but HOLY."

If ever pastor "approved himself" thus "unto God," it was Augustine during these years. The good bishop, greatly his inferior in talent, was not ashamed to give to his new associate the commanding place for which both nature and grace had so evidently fitted him. Occupying the pulpit very often in Valerius' presence" a thing previously unknown in Africa"-he would plead with souls after a

fashion not a little starting in that Laodicean age.*

"Oh, unspeakable love!" he would say, in some of his fervent appeals; "oh, sweetness of mercy inconceivable! Oh, most amazing condescension that God, for the sake of man, should be made man-that God for man should die in the flesh-that He should submit to be 'tempted in all things like as we are, only without sin!' See at how inestimable a price, see with what difficulty, man was redeemed, who had forfeited and enslaved himself to the devil, and, had he not been ransomed at so vast an expense, must unavoidably have suffered eternal damnation, with that tyrannical master of his own choosing! These things will shew thee, O man, how much thou art bound to love God, and, if He calls thee to it, how patiently, how willingly, nay, with how cheerful and eager a zeal, thou oughtest to endure hardships, and pain, and tortures, for Him who hath en

"Et eidem Presbytero," says Possidius, "potestatem dedit coram se in ecclesia Evangelium prædicandi ac frequentissimè tractandi. Unde, accensa et ardens, elevata super candelabrum, lucerna, omnibus qui in domo erant, lucebat."