In the spring of the year 372, Augustine, one of the most pious of the early Christian fathers, then in the thirty-first year of his age, entered into his garden, near Milan, Italy, in evident distress of mind. The sins of his youth--a youth spent in sensuality and impiety--weighed heavily upon his soul. Lying under a fig-tree, moaning and pouring out abundant tears, he heard, from a neighboring house, a young voice saying, and repeating in rapid succession, "Tolle, lege, tolle, lege!" ("Take and read, take and read"). Receiving this as a divine admonition, he returned to the place where he had left his friend Alypius, to procure the roll of Paul's epistles, which he had a short time before left with him. "I seized the roll," says he, in describing this scene, "I opened it, and read in silence the chapter on which my eyes first alighted." It was the thirteenth of Romans. "Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof" [Romans 13:13, 14]. All was decided by a word. "I did not want to read any more," said he; "nor was there any need; [87] every doubt was banished." The morning star had arisen in his heart. " Jesus had conquered." He died in the eighty-sixth year of his age, after having written various important works on the Christian religion. His early years were devoted to poetical fables and theatrical plays; but after his conversion he devoted his energies to the service of God.

[THW 87-88]