Written down and officially certified to, the statement had been forwarded to the Executive, a prompt pardon was sent to await Manthorpe if arrested; he was free. His first step was to return to the parish in which he had been convicted, and visit the Circuit Judge then holding court. Three days after he went to the Court House, entered the prisoner's dock, and saw in front of him the same jury which had tried him, the Judge having summoned them at his request. To these the Judge presented the statement of Miss Rurick, and without retiring from their seats the jury rendered a

verdict, "Not Guilty." A week afterwards Manthorpe was back at his home in the Virginia mountains, where he made his appearance in the midst of his little family like one risen from the dead.

Since these events many years have passed. Charles and Annie are married, and the baby is a lovely little maiden with whom the son of my friend B is desperately in love. Manthorpe grows old tranquilly. His sunset is brighter than his noon, and he is happier, I think, because he was once so unhappy.

John Esten Cooke.

It is a black-robed figure that is gliding before us. A strap of leather girds his waist. A cowl, monk-like, covers his head. Now we see that sombre form in the pulpit, swaying the multitude with his strong, fervid words. Then we see him in an isolated, scantily furnished room, parchment near him, and absorbed in the thoughts stretching out before his imagination like great deeps. To-day, he is hurrying across the desert on some swift missionary journey. He is home to-morrow, setting apart in a solemn ritual the ministers of God. He stands out a stubborn front against wrong this moment, a bold, daring, resolute, victorious leader; but the next he is just a follower and a penitent one, living in lowly and lonely abasement at the feet of his God. This black-robed form busily gliding everywhere, is Saint Augustine of Hippo, famous bishop, famous thinker, famous fighter, famous servant and lover of his God; a man who made the world shake with the impulses of his genius.

He was born in the year 354, at Tagaste, Africa. His father gave him his own passionate nature and a bad example. His mother, the saintly Monica, to the gift of her generous impulses, added her prayers and her life.

He grew up through the schools to a good education and a position as rhetorician at twenty-five, his strong passions indulged all

the while, even to great excesses. Here it was he fell into Manichaeism. The sensitiveness of his nature to all material forms made the fall easy. Matter as an evil seemed to be a fact. Sin as its expression seemed a necessity, at least a thing easily excused, and he now plunged into greater excesses.

Finally, Augustine, finding Manichaeism unphilosophical and irreconcilable with science, was prepared to leave it. Platonism then attracted his attention and engaged his interest, and a desire was awakened to rise above the sensuality of his life. The body was too heavy for the wings that would have lifted it. Augustine was practically a Manichæan still.

At length, in the pursuit of his profession, he wandered to Milan, in Italy, where the famous Ambrose attracted him by his eloquence, and by his logic convinced him of his errors. A mother's prayers following him like the long suffering angels of God's mercy, began to prevail. Conversion to Christ was not, however, easy. It is an interesting story, how he was overwhelmed with billows of contrition, but could find no one to say, "Peace, be still." One day, in great distress, he went into a garden that he might be alone in meditation and prayer. Suddenly he heard a voice crying out, "Tolle, Lege!" "Take, Read!" But what should he read? He sought the counsel of

.... •

a friend. The Bible was brought. Augustine chanced to open it at the passage, "Let us walk honestly as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness. . But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." "Put ye on the Lord Jesus!" Augustine had reached the power that could still his soul into the peace of forgiveness. He was an illustration of his own beautiful aphorism, "Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee."

On Easter Sabbath, 387, he received baptism in Milan at the hands of Ambrose. He embraced Christianity as he embraced everything else that won his favor, with all the impetuosity of his nature. He parted with his property, and gave all to the poor.

For a while he hid himself in the retirement of study and literary pursuits, sending out book after book in the defense of Christian truth. In 391, he reluctantly accepted the duties of presbyter, and ultimately, at the age of 41, the bishopric of Hippo. The field of his usefulness now broadened on every side, and was only bounded by far-away horizon lines. He must have been a gifted man in the pulpit. The people clamored to hear God's word, as he went from place to place. "Pullulante a'que crescente Domini ecclesia," says Possidius, speaking of the result of his preaching: "the Church of the Lord springing up and growing."

Augustine found room in his large heart especially for the poor, melting on occasion the vessels of the Church into redemption money in behalf of needy prisoners. Every where in his diocese and beyond it, he made his fatherly care felt. It was as a thinker and writer, however, that he climbed up to his great eminence in the Church. Art is fond of portraying him as carrying a pen in his left hand, a heart on fire in the right, while he looks up with piercing gaze into the heavens. He must have been a man of intense will and intense industry, as well as bold, daring, profound thought. Possidius counts ten hundred and thirty writings. Some of these were heavy volumes, others simply sermons. Augustine himself, in his "Retractations," refers to ninety-three of his

works. He swept over an immense range of subjects. Psychology, rhetoric, arithmetic, dialectics, all sorts of questions in philosophy, grammar, morals, geometry, and all manner of subjects in theology received attention from his busy pen. To-day, it might be a most abstruse question about our spiritual being; to-morrow, would come up a most practical problem in mathematics. It might be the soul, or a part of speech to be taken in pieces; his pen was ready for either dissection. Augustine struck out in all directions. He wrote on the origin and nature of evil against the Manichaeans, on Church order against the Donatists, on the Trinity against the Arians, on human guilt and human will against Pelagius. His pen was a spear that he vigorously thrust wherever he thought wrong was sheltered and hidden.

Human experience shapes doctrinal thought. The man colors the theologian. It is easy to see how Augustine's experience influenced Augustine's thinking. He felt that he was bound helplessly under the power of sin till snatched away by the great overmastering grace of God.

When we reach his theology, we find that his experience has been shaping his thought.

The sovereignty of God is a great, overshadowing fact in his doctrinal statements. He strongly emphasizes it, and it is prominent enough to be a distinguishing feature of his system. People will differ in their opinion of Augustine, the theologian; Augustine, the man, must win every one's favor. His frankness and his candor interest us in those "Confessions" in which he tells the story of his early life, while their spirituality inflames us to an emulous devotion. Another work, his "Retractations," composed in late life, is a wonderful instance of humility and ingenuousness. He went over his works, mending the imperfect and casting out that which had been proved incorrect. He wrote this in 427, when seventy-three years old. Three-score and ten does not always like to acknowledge its fallacies! At any age for that matter, man is slow to confess an error. After a life of seventy-five years, over thirty of which he spent upon his passions, and the

remainder at and under the cross, he found his eternal rest. Fitting were the surroundings of his death, stormy like his nature and his early life. Indeed, his history as a whole, reads like a kind of battle, and in dying, there was the clash of arms about him. The Vandals had surrounded the city of Hippo, and were clamorous for its surrender. It was in the year 430. With the penitential psalms inscribed on the walls of his chamber for his constant refreshing, a help and a staff in the Dark Valley, with his soul addressing itself to God in long and absorbing prayer, he went

from prayer to praise, from the beleaguered city to that city of God eternal in the heavens. He was a moment in shadow, and the next in the beauty of that "bridal chamber " of the King, which, cried he, "I burn with longing to behold.”

Looking back through the shadows and the storms of the past, we think of Augustime as a light-house far off by the blue waters of the Mediterranean, its light steadfastly shining there. Across the world those rays have streamed, and Christians everywhere think gratefully of Augustine, bishop of Hippo. Edward A. Rand.

Mount Vernon School in Boston, who is still living. Jacob Abbott was really the originator of the publication and its leading spirit. A third brother, Rev. J. S. C. Abbott, lately deceased, was afterwards associated in the editorial management; as were likewise, at different times, Rev. Hubbard Winslow, Rev. Nehemiah Adams, and Prof. E. A. Andrews. So far as I can learn the magazine was started without any capital whatever, as a purely Christian enterprise. The editor's introduction to the first number might almost be adopted bodily by SUNDAY AFTERNOON:

"The design with which this magazine is established, is the promotion of practical piety, sober and intelligent, but at the same time ardent and active piety. It will endeavor to plead the cause of true religion, chiefly by exhibiting, explaining and illustrating its genuine and practical results.

"The truths which constitute the essence of Christianity have been very generally admitted by nominal Christians; at least the admission of them in theory among mankind has been very far in advance of the practice of the duties which arise from them. The great thing therefore to be done, in order to promote the cause of piety in the world, is not to convince men of religious truth, but to persuade them to the performance of religious duty; not to compel the intellect to admit the claims of Christianity, but to awaken the conscience, and to interest the heart in complying with them.

"The Church ought unquestionably to see that the great truths of Christianity are explained when misconceived, and defended when attacked. But it has other duties to discharge, toward the community of mind. around it, besides discussion and defence. It is to these other duties that our labors are to be devoted. The design of our work, therefore, is very different from that of existing pericdicals, engaged in controversies upon the essentials of Christianity with its enemies, or in warm discussions respecting religious forms, or the various aspects of religious truth, among its friends. We aim at the direct exertion of a moral and religious influence, by endeavoring to interest our readers in religious and intellectual cul

tivation, and in the duties of enlightened and warm-hearted piety, as they arise in the circumstances and relations of common life."

Ah, Messrs. Editor and Publisher of SUNDAY AFTERNOON, do we not all now know where you got your idea?

How does the first number of the Relig ious Magazine fulfill this its announced intent? There are fifty-two octavo pages of reading matter. Following the brief introduction above quoted came a review of Dr. Thomas Dick's work on the "Improvement of Society by the Diffusion of Knowledge;" a chapter of "First Religious Lessons," in story form, addressed to "young mothers; an extract of some length from a recent sermon by Dr. Chalmers on Insensibility to the Future;" a critical and descriptive paper on "Insanity, and the Insane Hospital at Worcester;" a practical religious article for "inquirers," entitled "How to Begin;" the first installment, under the head of "The Fireside," of a department of simply told tales for the younger readers; two pages of advice on The Way to Use a Religious Periodical;" and a concluding "Summary," which bears a close relation to the "Tables," "Cabinets," and similar pieces of modern magazine furniture. “We shall devote a few columns at the close of each number," say the Editors, "to such subjects as deserve a passing remark, whether they relate to the Magazine itself, or to the events of the day, or to those new works appearing from month to month, which are interesting to the religious world." None of the articles in this first number are signed. In fact nearly all were written by the Editors; and by one of them at that.

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The "Religious Magazine" did not however lack for contributors. Among those who came to write regularly for it, were Rev. T. H. Gallaudet, then Principal of the Deaf and Dumb Institute at Hartford; Rev. John A. Vaughn, an Episcopal clergyman of Lawrence and Salem, afterwards of Philadelphia; Miss Elizabeth Stuart, a daughter of Moses Stuart, who be came the wife of Prof. Austin Phelps, and the mother of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps; a Mr. Woodbridge, afterwards editor of "Annals of Education; " Dr. Jeffries; Samuel