n common could there be between Augustine and his
congregation?

At last, after signing himself with the cross, he began. The subject was
one of the psalms which had just been read--a battle psalm, concerning
Moab and Amalek, and the old border wars of Palestine. What would he
make of that?

He seemed to start lamely enough, in spite of the exquisite grace of his
voice, and manner, and language, and the epigrammatic terseness of
every sentence. He spent some minutes over the inscription of the
psalm--allegorised it--made it mean something which it never did mean in
the writer's mind, and which it, as Raphael well knew, never could mean,
for his interpretation was founded on a sheer mis-translation. He punned
on the Latin version--derived the meaning of Hebrew words from Latin
etymologies.... And as he went on with the psalm itself, the common
sense of David seemed to evaporate in mysticism. The most fantastic and
far-fetched illustrations, drawn from the commonest objects, alternated
with mysterious theosophic dogma. Where was that learning for which he
was so famed? Where was that reverence for the old Hebrew Scriptures
which he professed? He was treating David as ill as Hypatia used to
treat Homer--worse even than old Philo did, when in the home life of
the old Patriarchs, and in the mighty acts of Moses and Joshua, he could
find nothing but spiritual allegories wherewith to pamper the private
experiences of the secluded theosophist. And Raphael felt very much
inclined to get up and go away, and still more inclined to say, with a
smile, in his haste, 'All men are liars.'....

And yet, what an illustration that last one was! No mere fancy, but a
real deep glance into the working of the material universe, as symbolic
of the spiritual and unseen one. And not drawn, as Hypatia's were,
exclusively from some sublime or portentous phenomenon, but from
some dog, or kettle, or fishwife, with a homely insight worthy of old
Socrates himself. How personal he was becoming, too!... No long bursts
of declamation, but dramatic dialogue and interrogation, by-hints,
and unexpected hits at one and the other most commonplace soldier's
failing.... And yet each pithy rebuke was put in a universal,
comprehensive form, which made Raphael himself wince--which might, he
thought, have made any man, or woman either, wince in like manner. Well,
whether or not Augustine knew truths for all men, he at least knew
sins for all men, and for himself