all the
resources of his mind and heart. He combated heresies and reclaimed
heretics. His correspondence embraced a multitude of subjects and was
carried on with various parts of the Church. His zeal in preaching never
knew rest, and his efforts in instructing the ignorant were ceaseless.
He established centres of religious life for men and women, and composed
for them a rule of life and spirit and principles that have not yet
died. He was alive to the necessity of a zealous and energetic clergy
whom he wished trained in the spirit and teachings of the Gospel maxims
and counsels, and therefore formed the nucleus of a monastic clergy. He
had begun the realization of this idea in the community which he
established at Hippo just after his ordination as priest, and he
perfected it when he was made bishop. Ten of those whom he trained in
this his first monastery, became bishops of the various sees of Africa,
including Alypius, who was sent to Tagasta, Possidius, his first
biographer, and Fortunatus, who was his successor in the See of Hippo.
During all this time he continued to wear the long black robe and hood
and leathern girdle peculiar to the cenobites of the East, which he had
donned at Milan shortly after his baptism when he laid aside the dress
of his native Africa. Not only his vesture but also his daily life and
practices were the same as those which are the privilege and glory of
monks, nuns, and hermits. None surpassed him in austerities and
self-denial, as none had surpassed him in philosophic lore at Carthage,
and at Milan and Rome.

The magnificent effects of his extraordinary gifts, fertile ingenuity,
and deep learning and broad mind; the influence of his genius on the
thoughts and ideas of his own and succeeding ages, may be best gleaned
from a brief survey of his writings. Augustine's early aim was to seek
truth. He was perplexed with many doubts; he could not conceive the
existence of anything real outside of physical bodies; and nothing
around him completely and satisfactorily gave him answer. The
Manicheans, who had occupied themselves with questions on the nature of
God, the creation of the world, and the origin of evil, seemed to have
attained on these points some tangible conclusions. For want of better
Augustine defended their doctrines without participating in the excesses
which distinguished those sectaries. But he felt himself alienated from
them, partly because of the lack of the prestige of grea