cing, and will
not conjecture, the course of his own thoughts, until the tenor of all
his life was changed at his baptism. The candour which lies at the
basis of his character has given us one sentence of his own,
respecting that change, which is worth some volumes of ordinary
confessions. "I left, not only parents and kindred, but _the
accustomed luxuries of delicate life_." The words throw full light on
what, to our less courageous temper, seems the exaggerated reading by
the early converts of Christ's words to them--"He that loveth father
or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." We are content to leave,
for much lower interests, either father or mother, and do not see the
necessity of any farther sacrifice: we should know more of ourselves
and of Christianity if we oftener sustained what St. Jerome found the
more searching trial. I find scattered indications of contempt among
his biographers, because he could not resign one indulgence--that of
scholarship; and the usual sneers at monkish ignorance and indolence
are in his case transferred to the weakness of a pilgrim who carried
his library in his wallet. It is a singular question (putting, as it
is the modern fashion to do, the idea of Providence wholly aside),
whether, but for the literary enthusiasm, which was partly a weakness,
of this old man's character, the Bible would ever have become the
library of Europe.

37. For that, observe, is the real meaning, in its first power, of the
word _Bible_. Not book, merely; but 'Bibliotheca,' Treasury of Books:
and it is, I repeat, a singular question, how far, if Jerome, at the
very moment when Rome, his tutress, ceased from her material power,
had not made her language the oracle of Hebrew prophecy, a literature
of their own, and a religion unshadowed by the terrors of the Mosaic
law, might have developed itself in the hearts of the Goth, the Frank,
and the Saxon, under Theodoric, Clovis, and Alfred.

38. Fate had otherwise determined, and Jerome was so passive an
instrument in her hands that he began the study of Hebrew as a
discipline only, and without any conception of the task he was to
fulfil, still less of the scope of its fulfilment. I could joyfully
believe that the words of Christ, "If they hear not Moses and the
Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the
dead," had haunted the spirit of the recluse, until he resolved that
the voices of immortal appeal should be made audible to the C