# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S373
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library. 373

was fulfilled only later, but gloriously. God often favored her with such visions, and by an inexpressible feeling she was able to distinguish them from her ordinary dreams. (Third book.)“

„At eighteen years of age the sensual youth had entered a union which shows us how he still stood nearer to heathenism than to Christianity. His seeking after truth led him to the deceptions of the astrologers. In sensuality and vain curiosity his inner self remained closed and hidden from him. But the educating hand admonished him, and tore his heart with the anguish of grief over the early death of the friend of his youth. (Fourth book.)“

„To forget his mourning he betook himself back to Carthage and there became a teacher of forensic eloquence. The Manichaean fanaticisms no longer satisfied him once the first curiosity was past. He had long been put off with the promise of a famous Elect of this sect named Faustus; but he found in him only a superficial man, and through the unsatisfying character of his company he was alienated still more decisively from the old errors. He compared them with philosophical writings, and found here indeed only an insufficient reason, but by it he came to know the Manichaean doctrines as sheer unreason. The wild life of the students at last drove him, in his thirtieth year, out of Carthage. He wished to set up his chair in Rome. His mother resisted; he lied to her and left her secretly. Soon after his arrival in Rome God punished him with a deadly illness, in which his soul was destitute of all hope. His recovery he ascribed to the intercessions of his distant mother, who would not have been able to bear his eternal death. Outwardly he still held to the Manichaeans, until a brighter truth came to him, of finding which he had already almost despaired. Then God sent him to the place which became the goal of his wanderings. He received the post of a teacher of eloquence in Milan, the then residence of the West Roman emperor Valentinian the Second, who reigned there under the guardianship of his mother Justina, while Theodosius ruled in the East, until after Valentinian's early death he obtained the whole Roman Empire in his power. There Augustine held again to the church as a catechumen, still uncertain whether he could ever become a believing Christian and receive baptism. And so he was not much better than a heathen who, being addressed by Christianity, would like to become better acquainted with it as a mere hearer, without bringing along the resolve to live after Christ's example and to become His. (Fifth book.)“

„His faithful friends Alypius and Nebridius accompanied him as sharers in his errors. The former had withdrawn from sensual excesses earlier than his friend, but had sunk into a passionate inclination for the spectacles of his time, which were rightly abhorred by the church. How could a blind fate, wild sensual love, and the comfortless perishing of man please her — and yet