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contenting himself to laugh at them. When he was so far recovered as to speak, Augustine began to jest with him about the superstitious rite which had been perforined upon his body, and which he thought could scarcely have weakened the influence of instructions which his mind still held. Nor, perhaps, did it; but certain it is that the close neighbourhood of the other world had effectually dispelled all the illusions of his Manichæan frenzy. His friend shrunk from him as from an enemy, and adjured him never again to mention the subject as long as he lived. Augustine was amazed, and waited till health should free him from his prejudice; but he suddenly relapsed and died, trusting in the mercy of his Redeemer.

This event was the severest trial Augustine had ever known. It darkened his life for many months. He loathed every employment, longed to leave his native place, and but for the dread of the other world would have desired even to die. It was the first time he learned by experience the bitterness of losing an idol of the soul. His faith, or, rather, his religious system, could give him no consolation. It had failed his friend in death, it was failing himself in life; but he clung to it with tenacity. He shook off many of the minor vanities of his youthful days; steadfastly resisted the temptations which astrology, and the wizards who abounded in those parts, threw in his way; and thought himself rapidly advancing in philosophic self-control and piety. He returned to Carthage, and opened there a school of forensic eloquence. Ambitious projects diverted his thoughts from his grief: he began to turn his mind to philosophical composition. His first work was one entitled, De Pulchro et Apto, a treatise on Beauty in itself, and Beauty in relation, the Fair and the Fit. He dedicated this book, which seems to have been the result of much metaphysical meditation, to a Roman orator, of whose fame and golden sentences he had heard from others. Having passed out of his hands, it was never restored to him, and has not been transmitted to posterity: nothing not Christian was to survive.

During the latter part of this period of nine years, Augustine began to distrust his system of religious truth. While he was in Tagaste, weaving its elements by the skill of his own genius, it grew more and more beautiful in his eyes; but when he returned to Carthage, and resumed the position of a hearer and disciple, his acute intellect began to discern hideous flaws and utter inconsistencies. He soon became a very perverse and untractable questioner. The Manichæan party hailed the arrival of their most eloquent and renowned champion, Faustus, by whose oratory and subtilty they hoped to win Augustine and many others under his influence, and partially infected as he was. This "snare of the devil," as the Confessions call him, is introduced to us in the next book, and close after him the venerable instrument of Augustine's conversion, -Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.

THE DAWN OF THE FAITH.

I. THE CHARGE.

CHRISTIANITY has not always existed among men. In the mind of the Eternal it has ever had an ideal existence; but its era of development in the world is recent, -so recent as to come within the range of sterling and credible history. To go back to the beginning, -to watch the dawnings of the Faith, even if its influence were still of small extent, would be interesting: but when Christianity exercises so wide an authority among men, -when it is throned in the centres of civilization, and, above all, when it is a personal experience, such research becomes a duty, and a delight. The breath of morning is keener and more refreshing than that of the noonday; and many a reverent student of the dawning of the Faith meets with a quickening of heart, and reaps his reward, not only in the increase of his knowledge, but in the simplifying and reviving of his

inner life.

To date the dawn of Christianity from any isolated event in our Lord's life would be erroneous. Not the stable of Bethlehem-not the Mount of Transfiguration-not the garden of Gethsemane-not Calvary-not the tomb of the Arimathwan-not the mount of the ascension-but the lifemust be regarded as the true starting-point. A profoundly significant word in the preface to the Acts, ἤρξατο, feebly rendered "began," fixes the whole period of the Divine Incarnation as initiatory: and this, not as beginning a work to be carried on by the Apostles and Christian believers, (for they never were, and never can be, in any sense, co-ordinate labourers with Christ,) but as preparatory to that personal Mediatorship, and that invisible Headship of the church, for which He has passed into the heavens. Hence the book called the Acts of the Apostles (so called merely on the authority of the transcribers) is not to be regarded as a detail of apostolic labour, so much as a record of our Lord's continuation of the work initiated by His life, -of the development of a kingdom now set up and inaugurated. Calvary was the foundation-stone upon which the great Master-Builder proceeded to rear the fabric of Christianity.

The true starting-point for the study of the development of the Faith must be the transition from the initiatory work to that which was to be in future an invisible, though equally active, oversight. This transition was prefaced by a solemn and final charge, of which, in the combined narratives of the Evangelists, we have a fragmentary but emphatic record. There is a deep impressiveness in the farewell counsel of any holy man. How weighty the last words of a father, surrounded by his weeping children, of a pastor, dictating to his flock from a dying bed, of a patriarch, leaning upon his staff, -of the leader of Israel, uttering solemn prophecy under the shadow of his mysterious mountain-grave! But the final charge of the incarnate Son of God, dictating a mission to the world, and then ascending to His Father upon the clouds of heaven, is invested with matchless and eternal importance.

A succession of solemn events-from the agony in the garden to the repeated manifestations and predictions of the risen Saviour-had combined to throw around Him, in the eyes of the disciples, a more than supernatural interest. Although they had not freed themselves from the bondage of earthly anticipation, which still developed itself in such questions as, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" yet it is evident that they were growing up into a consciousness of the spirituality of the Messiah's mission, and of its relation to something final, and far more august than a temporal reign. In the narrative of Matthew, the Eleven are represented as gathering upon a mountain, which Jesus had appointed as a place of meeting. And, as the record of His charge follows immediately, it has been thought that this mountain is identical with that from which He ascended to heaven. But here there is a little difficulty: for, the historian tells us that, when they who were gathered together saw Him, "they worshipped Him; but some doubted." Who were the "some?" It is hardly probable that any of the Eleven could have doubted, after the palpable evidence they had received, and especially in the two appearances of Christ recorded in John xx. The difficulty is removed only by the very reasonable supposition, that there were more than the Eleven present on this final occasion. Some have argued that this was a grand convention of all the disciples of Jesus. The presence of more than the Eleven involves a fact of the utmost importance; namely, that our Lord's charge to preach the Gospel was not limited to the Apostles, but solemnly confided to all His disciples. And this fact is established by the subsequent narrative: for, in Acts viii. 1, we are told that, in consequence of the persecution at Jerusalem, "they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judæa and Samaria, except the Apostles;" and, in verse 4, that "they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word."

There is a seeming discrepancy in the narratives of St. Luke, as to the locality of the ascension. In the Gospel which bears his name we read, "He led them out as far as to Bethany;" whereas, in the Acts, the Mount of Olives is the scene of the great event. Bethany was fifteen stadia from Jerusalem; Olivet, but seven. But the district of Bethany commenced at the base of the Mount of Olives; and it was to the borders of the district of Bethany, and not to the town, that our Lord conducted His disciples.

In a history so deeply significant, we cannot pass lightly over the fact, that Christ's final appearance upon earth, and the platform from which He was lifted up to glory, was upon Olivet, the scene of His tears, and the place of His midnight prayers. Here had been His struggles; here was His triumph. The sphere of prayer was the theatre of power. The warrior prizes far more than the thundering acclamations of his countrymen, crowding to greet him on his return to his native land, the wreath with which his brow is garlanded upon the battle-field. The grand eleinent of the patriarch's hope was that his Redeemer should "stand in the latter day upon the earth," in the very world which had witnessed His humiliation and sorrow. And so may every faithful servant of God look for the appearance of his Redeemer, and the Lifter up of his head, in the sphere of his conflict and tears. On the earth, where we have toiled, and fought, and wept, our Redeemer shall stand in the latter day. Perhaps, too, there is meaning in the fact, that the commission to preach the Gospel was given on that mountain which had been consecrated by prayer. It was a proper centre from which to go forth to preach the Gospel. Any ministry which has not its rise in prayer-any commission which does not date from Olivet-will have a sorry issue !

To return to the narrative : -Grouped upon the mountain, in attitudes of wonder and devotion, are the Apostles and disciples of our Lord. In the midst stands the mysterious Personage whom, but a few days before, they had seen hanging in the agonies of death, and swathed in the bandages of the grave. He is about to endow them with a mission of unparalleled greatness. They are to proclaim liberty to captive humanity. They are to be, by Divine grace, the regenerators of society; to inaugurate a true civilization; to divert the currents of history; to shake the gates of hell. On that mountain is the power before which dynasties are to lick the dust, priesthoods to cower, Paganism to pale, shams to shrink. Never has such a charge been given. Yet, how homely, how simple, how unostentatious, how quiet the scene!-It was so on another occasion. On a still summer afternoon, a crowd of the peasantry of Judæa had gathered round the Preacher of Nazareth. The world was at rest. The Roman empire was at peace. Philosophers were quietly studying in their groves. Jews were busying themselves for the coming Passover. No comets blazed in the heavens; no famine, no pestilence desolated the earth. All was quiet. And yet that solemn moment was the crisis of history. The question of the world's throne was to be settled; and all heaven, and all hell, bent breathlessly over the Preacher as He most calmly announced the decision : "Now is the judgment (κρίσις) of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto ME."

There is something unutterably grand in the very silence of the great deeds of God. When discordant elements of the primæval chaos were shaped and harmonized, and, one after another, the giant features of creation appeared in bold and beautiful outline, it was not with thunderblasts of power, or dazzling pomp: "The Spirit of God brooded," dovelike, "on the face of the waters." The spring, renovator of the earth, is not ushered in with clarion-notes of angels. She advances silently over the mountains, and, glancing hither and thither, flushes the world with verdure and beauty. The most august of all processions-the grand march which comprehends and attracts all that passes-is with quiet footsteps :

"When clamorous crowds

Rush forth, or tedious wits 'waken the senate-house,
Or some fierce actor stamps upon the stage;
With what a gentle foot doth silent Time
Steal on his everlasting journey!"

Even the kingdom of God cometh without observation: He thrones Himself in the heart without pomp. The company of Olivet could afford to dispense with a grand ceremonial; for the Master was there.

The charge which our Lord gave to His disciples was grounded upon a magnificent assumption : "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." This could not refer to that power which had been His from the beginning, as the eternal Son of the Father, the Creator of the world; but to a power given, in virtue of the sacrificial work just consummated, the power of the Mediator, in the exercise of which He was to give eternal life to as many as the Father had given Him. Him, the God-Man, hath the Father highly exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour; and this princely office is to be exercised for the interests of His church. The whole world, then, is ruled in relation to the Cross. The Ministers of Christianity are the heralds of the world's King. What is called secular history ceases to be such: it is, in a higher view, church history, the record of the work of the Redeemer. Wars, famines, pestilences, commotions, revolutions, the spread of commerce, the march of invention, the progress of education,"all are but parts of one stupendous whole;" a grand machinery, the ultimate purpose of which is the bringing of all men unto Him. The apparatus of evangelism is infinite; for heaven and earth are under the control of the Redeemer. How this apparatus is brought into exercise, is matter of daily observation. We have seen in our own day how war has opened the two-leaved gates; how the Missionary has followed in the track of armies; how commerce has prepared the way for religion; how, on the tide of emigration, the bark of the church has floated to distant lands; how invention has facilitated Christian enterprise; how printing has been consecrated as one of the mightiest engines for the diffusion of truth; how discovery has aided the interpretation of Scripture, and strengthened its evidence,-dragging to light long-entombed witnesses, colossal and imperishable monuments of the credibility of the Bible; how geology has read the parallel of the Mosaic story graven upon the everlasting hills. And these are but the beginnings; inasmuch as all power is given unto our Redeemer. Upon this declaration is grounded His commission to His disciples in all ages; for, although the particle "therefore" (οὖν) be regarded as a gloss, (since it is rejected by Griesbach and Scholz, and does not appear in ten of the uncial mss., and in numerous cursive copies, of both families,) the sense requires that its equivalent should be understood.

The charge commences with an authoritative command to "go,"teaching the disciples that theirs was to be an active mission, not a quiet expectation. Judaism countenanced the latter: the true type of the pious

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