If you wish to know what personal faith in God means and what it can accomplish in this world of devotion to mammon, read Stanley's _Autobiography_, edited by his wife, that Dorothy Tennant who is one of the most brilliant of living English women. It is one of the most stimulating books in the world, and no young man can read it without having his ambition powerfully excited and his better nature stirred by the spectacle of the rise of this poor abused boy slave in a Welsh foundlings' home to a place of high honor and great usefulness--a seat beside kings, and a name that will live forever as the greatest of African explorers. It is this marvelous faith in God, which is as real as the breath in his nostrils, that makes St. Augustine's _Confessions_ a vital and enduring book. It is this faith that charges it with the potency of living words, although the man who wrote this book has been dead over fifteen hundred years. Augustine was born in Numidia and brought up amid pagan surroundings, although his mother, Monica, was an ardent Christian and prayed that he might become a convert to her faith. He was trained as a rhetorician and spent some time at Carthage. When his thoughts were directed to religion the main impediment in the way of his acceptance of Christianity was the fact that he lived with a concubine and had had a child by her. Finally came the death of his bosom friend, which called out one of the great laments of all time, and then his gradual conversion to the Christian church, largely due to careful study of St. Paul. Following hard upon his conversion came the death of his mother, who had been his constant companion for many years. Rarely eloquent is his tribute to this unselfish mother, whose virtues were those of the good women of all ages and whose love for her son was the flower of her life. In all literature there is nothing finer than the old churchman's tender memorial to his dear mother and his pathetic record of the heavy grief, that finally was eased by a flood of tears. Here are some of the simple words of this lament over the dead: [Illustration: A PAGE FROM ST. AUGUSTINE'S "LA CITE DE DIEU" WHICH WAS PRINTED IN ABBEVILLE FRANCE, IN 1486]