Saint Ambrose, one of the fathers of the Latin church, born at Treves, in Gaul, in 340, died at Milan in 397. His father was the Roman governor of Gaul, but his mother was a Christian. He was trained to the law, and intrusted at an early age with the government of a province. His probity and wisdom in this public administration seemed to justify his removal to the place of bishop, although at the time of his election he had not even been baptized. The various objections and stratagems by which he tried to escape the honor thus pressed upon him were all disregarded; and at the age of 34 he was consecrated bishop of Milan, and continued to hold this office until his death, a period of more than 22 years. His predecessor, Auxentius, was an Arian. The sympathies of Ambrose, however, were with the supporters of the Nicene creed. He would not tolerate the Arian worship, and though he protected an Arian priest from the violence of the mob, he resisted the dictation of the empress Justina, who wished that an Arian bishop should be appointed for the city. He rebuked Valentinian, defied Maxi-mus, and compelled Theodosius to a humiliating penance and submission.

When all the officers of the court were silent upon the mas- sacre which in a lit of anger Theodosius had ordered at Thessalonica, Ambrose declared to the emperor that his crime was beyond abso- lution without a special act of penance, and that the mass could not fitly be celebrated in such a presence. His boldness prevailed, and the emperor humbly obeyed his orders, and continued ever after to be his firmest friend. His contest with Symmachus is scarcely less remarkable. At the instigation of this learned man, then prefect of Rome, the senate took the occasion of a famine in 383 to ask that the pagan worship might be revived. Ambrose was prompt to throw against the scheme all the force of his authority and eloquence, He was by no means the equal of his adversary in graces of rhetoric and fulness of scholarship, [ but his earnestness, and perhaps in some degree his threatenings, won the cause. - The writings of Ambrose fill two folio volumes in the editions of Erasmus (Basel, 1527) and the Benedictines (Paris, 1686-'90). His moral teaching has throughout an ascetic tone, though; less austere than that of the Greek fathers, He was hostile to all amusements and all pleasures of sense, and commended the monastic , life as the truest way of Christian obedience and spiritual growth.

He wrote treatises on | " Widows," on "Virginity;" on " Penance," and on the "Duties of Ministers," which satisfied the severe taste of Jerome much better than his seven books on " Faith and the Holy Spirit," which that harsh critic pronounced to be at once weak, fantastic, and stolen from the I Greeks. His panegyrics, as we read them now, hardly justify his reputation for a won- derful oratory. Of his letters only a part have come down to us. They show very faithfully the character of the man, his moderation, courage, fidelity, practical wisdom, and unaffected piety. There was a dignity in his manner and bearing; which made him appear at once like a ruler and a saint. Arbogastes, a Roman general, making war upon the Franks of the Rhineland, was asked by one of their chiefs whom he had conquered if he was a friend of Ambrose. From motives of policy he gave an affirmative an- swer. "No wonder that you have beaten us," was the reply, "since you have the favor of a man whom the sun itself would obey if he should command it to stand still." The most valuable legacies of Ambrose to the church were the hymns which he wrote and the improvements which he made in the method of chanting the sacred offices.

The most famous of these are the morning song, Aeterne rerum Conditor; the evening song, Deus Creator omnium; the Christmas chant, Veni, Redemptor gentium; and the short hymn to the Trinity, which Luther translated and adopted. These hymns of Ambrose are not to be praised for the beauty of their diction or for any artistic merit. They are rude, loose, and as for from the musical flow of later Christian rhyming as from the ancient finish of classic Latin verse. But their vigor, their fervor, their striking imagery, not less than their association with the revered name of their author, give them a place in the veneration of the faithful. The body of Ambrose is kept in the ancient basilica of Milan which bears his name, and his toast day is observed by the Latin church on the 7th of December, the day of his ordination as bishop. He has also the honor of a place among the saints of the eastern church, and his name is classed on their registers with the names of Basil, Athanasius, and the two Gregories.