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| Sorely Distressed by Weeping at the Death of His Friend, He Provides Consolation for Himself.
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Chapter IV.—Sorely Distressed by
Weeping at the Death of His Friend, He Provides Consolation for
Himself.
7. In those years, when I first began to teach
rhetoric in my native town, I had acquired a very dear friend, from
association in our studies, of mine own age, and, like myself, just
rising up into the flower of youth. He had grown up with me from
childhood, and we had been both school-fellows and play-fellows.
But he was not then my friend, nor, indeed, afterwards, as true
friendship is; for true it is not but in such as Thou bindest
together, cleaving unto Thee by that love which is shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.284
But yet it
was too sweet, being ripened by the fervour of similar studies.
For, from the true faith (which he, as a youth, had not soundly and
thoroughly become master of), I had turned him aside towards those
superstitious and pernicious fables which my mother mourned in me.
With me this man’s mind now erred, nor could my soul exist
without him. But behold, Thou wert close behind Thy fugitives—at
once God of vengeance285
and Fountain of mercies, who
turnest us to Thyself by wondrous means. Thou removedst that man
from this life when he had scarce completed one whole year of my
friendship, sweet to me above all the sweetness of that my
life.
8. “Who can show forth all Thy praise”286
which he
hath experienced in himself alone? What was it that Thou didst
then, O my God, and how unsearchable are the depths of Thy
judgments!287
For when,
sore sick of a fever, he long lay unconscious in a death-sweat, and
all despaired of his recovery, he was baptized without his
knowledge;288
| 288 See i. sec. 17, note 3, above. | myself
meanwhile little caring, presuming that his soul would retain
rather what it had imbibed from me, than what was done to his
unconscious body. Far different, however, was it, for he was
revived and restored. Straightway, as soon as I could talk to him
(which I could as soon as he was able, for I never left him, and we
hung too much upon each other), I attempted to jest with him, as if
he also would jest with me at that baptism which he had received
when mind and senses were in abeyance, but had now learnt that he
had received. But he shuddered at me, as if I were his enemy; and,
with a remarkable and unexpected freedom, admonished me, if I
desired to continue his friend, to desist from speaking to him in
such a way. I, confounded and confused, concealed all my emotions,
till he should get well, and his health be strong enough to allow
me to deal with him as I wished. But he was withdrawn from my
frenzy, that with Thee he might be preserved for my comfort. A few
days after, during my absence, he had a return of the fever, and
died.
9. At this sorrow my heart was utterly darkened, and
whatever I looked upon was death. My native country was a torture
to me, and my father’s house a wondrous unhappiness; and
whatsoever I had participated in with him, wanting him, turned into
a frightful torture. Mine eyes sought him everywhere, but he was
not granted them; and I hated all places because he was not in
them; nor could they now say to me, “Behold; he is coming,” as
they did when he was alive and absent. I became a great puzzle to myself, and asked
my soul why she was so sad, and why she so exceedingly disquieted
me;289
but she knew
not what to answer me. And if I said, “Hope thou in God,”290
she very
properly obeyed me not; because that most dear friend whom she had
lost was, being man, both truer and better than that phantasm291
| 291 The mind may rest in theories and abstractions, but
the heart craves a being that it can love; and Archbishop Whately
has shown in one of his essays that the idol worship of every age
had doubtless its origin in the craving of mind and heart for an
embodiment of the object of worship. “Show us the Father, and it
sufficeth us,” says Philip (John xiv. 8), and he expresses the longing
of the soul; and when the Lord replies, “He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father,” He reveals to us God’s satisfaction of
human wants in the incarnation of His Son. Augustin’s heart was
now thrown in upon itself, and his view of God gave him no
consolation. It satisfied his mind, perhaps, in a measure, to think
of God as a “corporeal brightness” (see iii. 12; iv. 3, 12, 31;
v. 19, etc.) when free from trouble, but it could not satisfy him
now. He had yet to learn of Him who is the very image of God—who
by His divine power raised the dead to life again, while, with
perfect human sympathy, He could “weep with those that
wept,”—the “Son of Man” (not of a man, He being
miraculously born, but of the race of men [ἀνθρῶπου]), i.e. the Son of Mankind.
See also viii. sec. 27, note, below. | she was bid
to hope in. Naught but tears were sweet to me, and they succeeded
my friend in the dearest of my affections.
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