of God, because she understood that I had broken off from my former connexions through his means; and she confidently expected me to pass from sickness to health though with a critical danger in the interval. Ambrose was charmed with the fervour of her piety and the amiableness of her good works; and often broke out in his preaching, when he saw me, congratulating me that I had such a mother: little knowing what sort of a son she had, who doubted of all these things, and even apprehended that the way of life could not be found.'

After describing long and severe mental struggles, Augustine thus proceeds: My meditations on thee, O Lord, were like the attempt of men desirous of awaking, but sinking again into sleep, I had not a heart to answer thee. "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." By and by,-shortly,-let me alone a little. These were the answers of my heart, But by and by, had no bounds-and let me alone a little, went to a great length.

'In vain was I delighted with thy law in the inner man, when another law in my members warred against the law of my mind. Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death, but thy grace, through Christ Jesus our Lord!

His difficulties and doubts for some time increased. He had attained the age of thirty

one, and the truth seemed further from him than ever; but at length, through part of the epistles of St. Paul, being applied by the Holy Spirit with power to his heart, he received the gospel with joy. 'Then' says he, I went to my mother, revealed to her what had passed; and she now triumphed in the abundant answers given to her petitions. Thou didst then turn her mourning into joy.'

Not very long after the conversion of Augustine he says, 'It was through thy secret appointment that my mother and I stood alone at a window, facing the east, in a house at the mouth of the Tiber, where we were preparing for our voyage. Our discourse was highly agreeable; and, forgetting the past, we endeavoured to conceive aright of the nature of the eternal life of the saints. It was evident to us, that no carnal delights deserved to be named on this subject; raising our spirits more ardently, we ascended above the noblest parts of the material world to the consideration of our own minds; and passing above them, we attempted to reach heaven itself, to come to thee, by whom all things were made. There our hearts were enamoured, and there we held fast the first fruits of the Spirit, and returned to the sound of our own voice, which gave us an emblem of the divine word.

'We said, if the flesh, the imagination, and every tongue should be silenced, for they proclaim

- We made not ourselves, but he who remaineth for ever;' If these things should now hold their peace, and God alone should speak, not by any emblems or created things, but by himself, so that we could hear his word, should this be continued and other visions withdrawn, and this alone seize and absorb the spectator for ever: is not this the meaning of "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord?"

'At this moment the world appeared to us of no value and she said, 'Son, I have now no delight in life: why am I here? What should I do here, I know not; the hope of this life being quite spent. One thing only, your conversion, was an object for which I wished to live. My God has given me this, in larger measure, what do I here?'

Scarcely five days after, she fell into a fever: a brother of mine, who was with us, lamented that she was likely to die in a foreign land; she looked at him with anxiety, to see him so grovelling in his conceptions, and looking at me, she said, 'Place this body any where, do not distress yourselves concerning it.' I could not but rejoice and give thanks that she was delivered from that anxiety, with which I knew she had always been agitated, in regard to a sepulchre, which she had provided for herself, and prepared near the body of her husband.

• I knew not the time when this void had been filled by the fulness of thy grace, but I rejoiced to

find this evidence of it. I heard afterwards, that while at Ostea, she had been discoursing with some friends in my absence, concerning the contempt of life, and they expressing their surprise that she did not fear to leave her body so far from her own country, Nothing,' said she, is far to God; and I do not fear that he should not know where to find me at the resurrection.'

6

'She departed this life on the ninth day of her illness, in the fifty-sixth year of her age and the thirty-third of mine.'

THE REV. RICHARD HOOKER.

THE REV. Richard Hooker, no less eminent as a scholar than a divine, was born in the year 1553, of humble but pious parents, who devoted themselves assiduously to the care of his education, determining to give to their son every advantage which by strict self-denial, they could obtain for him. They were early convinced that God had bestowed on him superior talents, and probably designed him for holding a higher station in society than that in which he was placed by his birth.

'It is observed,' says his biographer, (so far as inquiry is able to look back at this distance

of time,) that at his being a school-boy he was an early questionist, quietly inquisitive. Why this was, and that was not to be remembered? Why this was granted and that denied? This being mixed with a remarkable modesty, and a sweet serene quietness of nature; and with these a quick apprehension of many perplexed parts of learning, imposed then upon him as a scholar, made his master and others to believe him to have an inward blessed divine light, and therefore to consider him to be a little wonder. For in that, children were less pregnant, less confident, and more malleable, than in this wiser, but not better age.

This meekness and conjunction of knowledge being observed by his schoolmaster, caused him to persuade his parents to continue him at school, till he could find out some means to ease them of a part of their care and charge; assuring them, that their son was so enriched by the blessings of nature and grace, that God seemed to single him out as a special instrument of his glory.

This was not unwelcome news, and especially to his mother, to whom he was a dutiful and a dear child; and all parties were so pleased with this proposal, that it was resolved, so it should be. And in the mean time, his parents and master laid a foundation for his future happiness, by instilling into his soul the seeds of piety, those conscientious principles of loving and fearing God, of an