Confessions, Books 4,5,7

Book 4 of the Confessions drips with the blood of Ecclesiastes. In the book of Ecclesiastes, it is said "better is a house of mourning than a house of prayer". The preacher calls out that "All is vanity"! Nearly the entire book is a call to see that every man's end is death, and everything in between birth and death is worthless eternally. It has been said by many a Christian that the point of Ecclesiastes is that death looks down upon us all, and we can do nothing but cry out to God.

It seems that Augustine himself begins to feel the same sentiment in the face of death. Augustine says:

With this grief my heart 'was steeped in shadow.' Look where I would, I saw only death...The soul had nothing to answer.  And if I urged it to 'have hope in the Lord,' it remained inert-- rightly, since the man it had lost was more real and cherished than that wraith it was asked to rely on.

We can see that upon his death,  Augustine felt pushed away from the Lord.  It is interesting to note that he, for some reason, urged his soul to 'have hope in the Lord' and yet was unable. The sight of death seemed to have told him that his only hope was the Lord. He saw that to trust in the Lord may could save him from his sorrow, even his own death.  Yet he was unable, deeming the man who had just passed more real that God ever was to him.

Augustine goes on to say this:

My weariness with life was weighty, but so was my fear of death. The more I loved my friend, the more I hated and feared as the most obscene enemy of all the death that had taken him from me-- it seemed about to gulp down all of humanity, as it had him.

We see Augustine in this deep pit of despair wherein he feels as if all of humanity itself is but nothing. Death swallows up all, consuming everything in it's path.  Perhaps this is hyperbole but it seems to be the route Augustine is on in feeling.  As one who has lost, I can personally testify to the destructive feeling of death. Death, says the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, is all of our end. "Remember your creator in the days of your youth!" cries the Preacher.  Augustine is an good example of this.  Though he would in his sin push away God, seeing death made it to where he could not forget him, even calling out to him to give him hope.  This experience certainly had to have played a major role in his conversion.  AFter all, in Christianity, to see death is to begin to see sin or at least it's affect.  I think it no coincidence the next part of the book is about Materialism..