III. "How soft and peaceful were my slumbers then, With which I then adorn'd my infant brow! No coronet would be so highly prized, Or give the wearer half such pleasure now." "MAN," it has been said, "Doeth one thing at once, nor can he think two thoughts together; But God compasseth all things." The same year which gave birth to the infant Corsican who was one day to scourge Europe saw in another far-distant island of the sea the earliest smile of him who was to chain the Gallic eagle to the solitary rock of St. Helena. In like manner, just as the babe of Thegaste appeared, a mother in a lonely cottage in Brit ain was already nurturing a spirit which one. day was to scourge the Church with one of its deadliest heresies. By and by, we shall meet Pelagius on the scene of conflict. Meanwhile, we turn aside to the nursling-champion whom God was rearing to smite him down. In his own quaint way, Augustine thus describes his first experience in this vale of tears: "I here received (as I heard, for I remember it not) the comforts of woman's milk. For neither my mother nor my nurses stored their own breasts for me, but Thou didst bestow the food of my infancy through them, according to Thine ordinance, whereby Thou distributest Thy riches through the hidden springs of all things. Thou also gavest me to desire no more than Thou gavest, and to my nurses willingly to give me what Thou gavest them; for they, with a heaven-taught affection, willingly gave me what they abounded with from Thee. And this, my good from them, was good for them: nor, indeed, from them was it, but through them; for from Thee, O God, are all good things, and from my God is all my health. This I have since learned,-Thou, through these Thy gifts, within me and without, proclaiming Thyself unto me; for then I knew but to suck-to repose in what pleased, and to cry at what offended my flesh,-nothing more." A babe, it has been said, is "A resting place for innocence on earth." Alas, for the poetic fancy! "I began," says Augustine, narrating the stern reality, "to smile-first in sleep, then waking; for so it was told me, of myself. And, little by little, I became conscious where I was, and began to have a wish to express my wishes to those who could content them. And I could not, for the wishes were within me, and they without; nor could they, by any sense of theirs, enter within my spirit. So I flung about at random limbs and voice, making the few signs I could and such as I could--like (though in truth very little like) what I wished. And when I was not presently obeyed, I was indignant at my elders for not submitting to me; and I avenged myself on them by tears." And he adds:-"Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy! The weakness of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence. Myself have seen and known even a baby envious; it could not speak, yet it turned pale and looked bitterly on its foster-brother. Is that innocence, when the fountain of milk is flowing in rich abundance, not to endure one to share it though in extremest need and whose very life depends thereon? We bear gently with all this; and yet, though tolerated now, the very same tempers are utterly intolerable, when found in riper years. Alas! for my sin for Thou madest me, but sin in me Thou madest not. What is it to me, though any comprehend not this?" By and by, the "speechless infant" rose into the "speaking boy." "This I remember,” says he, "and have since observed, how I learned to speak. It was not that my elders taught me words in any set method; but I, longing by cries and broken accents and by various motions of my limbs to express my thoughts that so I might have my will, and yet unable to express all I willed or to whom I willed, did myself, by the understanding which Thou, my God, gavest me, practise the sounds in my memory. When they named anything and, as they spoke, turned towards it, I saw and remembered that they called what they would point out by the name they uttered. And, that they meant this thing and no other, was plain from the motion of their body—the natural language, as it were, of all nations, expressed by the countenance, by glances of the eye, by gestures of the limbs, and by tones of the voice, indicating the affections of the mind as it pursues, possesses, rejects or shuns. And thus, by constantly hearing words as they occurred in various sentences, I collected gradually for what they stood; and, having broken in my mouth to these signs, I thereby gave utterance to my will. Thus I exchanged with those about me those current signs of our wills, and so launched deeper into the stormy intercourse of human life, yet depending on parental authority and on the beck of elders." "The joys of parents," says Bacon, “are secret; and so are their griefs and fears they cannot utter the one; and they will not utter the other." As Monica gazed upon her boy, |