'made himself all things to all men.' None such had occurred before, and none such occurred again till the time of Augustine, perhaps not till the time of Francis Xavier." 66 Among the traits which may be specially selected, as bringing this part of his character before us, and also as being too much overlooked in the popular notions of him, the first is the remarkable quickness and humour of his address." "It has been often said, that a man who can provoke or enjoy a laugh is sure to succeed with his fellow-creatures. We cannot doubt that such was Athanasius. Not less efficacious is the power of making use of a laugh or a jest, instead of serious argument. The grave Epiphanius ventured one day to ask Athanasius what he thought of the opinions of his dangerous supporter, the heretic Marcellus. Athanasius returned no answer; but a significant smile broke out over his whole countenance. Epiphanius had sufficient humour to perceive that this meant, Marcellus has had a narrow escape.'"+ "Another trait made itself felt in the wide-spread belief entertained, that he was the great magician of his age. It was founded, no doubt, on his rapid, mysterious movements, his presence of mind, his prophetic anticipations; to which must be added, a humorous pleasure in playing with the fears and superstitions which these qualities engendered. The Emperor Constantine was entering Constantinople in state. A small figure darts across his path in the middle of the square, and stops his horse. The emperor, thunderstruck, tries to pass on; he cannot guess who the petitioner can be. It is Athanasius, who comes to insist on justice, when thought to be leagues away before the Council of Tyre."§ Gibbon, whose cold sarcastic mind was awed into respect by the great qualities of Athanasius, has observed of this last incident, that it would form a fine subject for an altar-piece in a church dedicated to Athanasius. With all the vehemence and imperiousness of his nature, there was an element of generous tenderness in Athanasius which is never wanting in a noble soul. When he heard of the sudden death of Arius, he repressed every feeling of exultation at the removal of a hated rival, and simply remarked, in a tone of solemn pathos, that it was the end which awaited us all. Style is no bad indication of mind and character. That of Athanasius is clear, simple, and decisive, free from the vicious inflation of his age, having some affinity in Greek to the marvellous Latinity of Calvin. In the distinguishing doctrine with which his name is associated, he secured the germ, with intuitive sagacity, of a grand and fertile truth, "that only through the image of perfect humanity can perfect divinity be made known to us." Origen and Jerome were more learned; Augustine more subtle and profound; Ambrose was as imperious, though not so genial; but in those kingly attributes of soul which carry with them the deference and submission of contem Eastern Church, p. 284. § Ibid. p. 287. Ibid. p. 286. † Ibid. p. 285. poraries, and impress their own character on future generations, Athanasius was the greatest of the Fathers. Dr. Stanley has noticed, that his doctrines found the most welcome reception in the West. Monachism and the Homoüsian theory were alike diffused by his great personal influence in Italy and Gaul. Though of the East, he was one of the most powerful fashioners of the Western mind. His system, blended with that of Augustine, contributed to form the complex and elaborate orthodoxy which still subsists; and it is a curious fact, that the most strongly marked theological beliefs of Europe and her widespread colonies, should be derived from two Africans, who were among the last to wield with facility and force, for the utterance of high thought, the noble languages of Greece and Rome. After quoting Basil's expressive comparison of Athanasius, gested probably by the Pharos of his own city of Alexandria,to an observer on a lofty watch-tower of speculation, noting with his ubiquitous glance what is passing throughout the stormy world below, Dr. Stanley adds these eloquent words: sug "With this image, too, let me conclude. Our view over the sea of ecclesiastical history, past and present and future, is as it was then. The tempest still rages; the ships which went out of the harbour have never returned. They are still tossing to and fro, and tossing against one another in the waves of controversy. It may have been an advantage to have gazed for a moment over this scene through the eyes and with the experiences of Athanasius the Great."* This is a remarkable concession from a churchman who approves of the decisions of the Nicæan council, and argues that Christendom should still adhere to its old creeds. His language asserts, as distinctly as language can, the utter inadequacy even of the one among them which has its centre, as he believes, in the only essential point of Christian belief,-to harmonise conflicting dogmas and insure religious peace. If the experiences of history are of any value, they should have taught us this great lesson before now. Councils and creeds may have been— we think they were-a political necessity of the times which produced them, a form of utterance which the struggling elements of public opinion inevitably took under the actual conditions of society. We may allow all this, and even concede that in ages past their collateral uses neutralised, if they did not counterbalance, their direct evils, without drawing from it any reason for their authoritative perpetuation into a period of which the social conditions have undergone an entire change. Dr. Stanley appears to us to put far too favourable a construction. on the spirit which animated the first council. Our readers will be somewhat astonished to hear that "the eager discussions of • Eastern Church, p. 302. Nicæa present the first grand precedent for the duty of private judgment, and the free, unrestrained exercise of biblical and historical criticism."* We, on the other hand, have no doubt that Hosius, Athanasius, and Alexander had determined beforehand what the issue should be, and had brought over the emperor to their view; so that, if there was free talk on all sides, it very much resembled the liberty of speech enjoyed now by the members of a certain legislative assembly on the other side of the Channel, where the measures to be adopted are all fixed previous to discussion, a mere flourish of rhetoric, the letting off of harmless fireworks to divert the public gaze, without any effect for good or for evil. Nor can we by any means admit the statement, that the first example of the unfettered use of biblical and historical criticism was given at Nicea, when we remember the learned labours and acute researches of Origen and Dionysius of Alexandria in the preceding century. The reverse is the truth. Free learning, with few exceptions, virtually ceased from that time, and was superseded by ecclesiastical dogmatism. Again, it is not consistent with historical fact to represent "the first signal instance of the strange sight of Christians persecuting Christians" as afforded by the case of Athanasius, and as proceeding, "not from the orthodox against the heretics, but from the heretics against the orthodox." More than a century before, Origen had been excommunicated in Egypt, and the Artemonites at Rome. All that can be said is, that the spirit of intolerance grew by time, and that the Council of Nicæa, instead of mitigating, organised and justified it. Arius, Secundus, and Theonas were deposed and banished before Athanasius himself was persecuted. No doubt they would have visited him with a similar penalty, had they carried the day. It was a simple question of who was uppermost. To attempt to find precedents for free thought and general toleration in any of the events and characters of this period, strikes us as a simple abuse and perversion of historical facts. Probably intolerance was then inevitable in all minds of earnest purpose and strong conviction; perhaps it was a temporary condition of the final triumph of vital truth; but it is impossible to translate its words and acts into the language of freedom and mutual toleration. Viewed independently of their historical development, and in relation to a state of things when men must be allowed to think for themselves, if there is to be any social progress, all dogmatic creeds we hold to be utterly mischievous and impracticable; mischievous, because impracticable, and, when made authoritative, holding out a snare and delusion to the mind. We can conceive no healthy bond of comprehensive union in faith and * Eastern Church, p. 135. + Ibid. p. 281. worship, but such as springs from sympathy in great fundamental spiritual principles, which have an undying root in humanity, and exist in our highest consciousness as the revelation of something above and beyond ourselves. Earnest and thoughtful natures feel there is a mysterious awfulness in these principles, and pray with trembling for a more complete realisation of them in heart and life. Men call them by various names,-conscience, the voice of God, the moving of the Spirit, the highest reason; but they mean at bottom one and the same thing: a profound sense of relationship and responsibility to an Invisible. Power, in whom their highest conceptions of excellence terminate, in self-devotion to whose will they find the strongest incentive to virtuous exertion, and from reliance on whose justice and mercy comes their firmest support under sorrow and trial. When these principles stand before us in the light of history, fixed and embodied in a life of perfect religiousness, like that of the Christ of the New Testament, they acquire a distincter aspect and more decisive influence; human reverence and affection more largely mingle in them; the Divine itself is humanised; and the spiritual sympathy which grows out of them, and unites men in faith and worship, becomes at once purer and more intense. This is what no dogmatic creed, no intellectual shaping of theological opinion, ever can accomplish, but, as experience has shown, constantly prevents. Our spiritual sympathies are universal, and widen with the enlargement of our knowledge and the expansion of our faculties; whereas our intellectual conception of the subjects most deeply affecting us, is individual, and becomes increasingly so, as that individuality of character, which is a sure result of advancing civilisation, is more fully developed. The Infinite Mind has a common relation to the universal soul of humanity, and we are all drawn towards it, as soon as the spiritual life is awakened in us, by an attractive force, which carries with it the highest aspirations of our being. Every mind that has a faith of its own, and does not merely reflect an authoritative faith, hews its way, through doubt and error and ignorance, to the central light of existence; but through that passage, narrow and tortuous as it may be, a vivifying beam reaches it, more directly and more efficaciously than it could be reached through any other avenue. Man's power of conceiving God, and God's manifold dealings with the human soul, is conditioned by the original constitution of his mind, by the influences which have developed it, and by the culture which it has received. It is only through his own mental vision that each man gets a sight of the living God. He cannot see through the eyes of another mind. Of no two men is the intellectual form of religious belief on any one subject, if they think at all, precisely the same. Yet the faith which consoles and strengthens, which preserves and guides, is compatible with all these forms. Moral conditions alone are indispensable. We know, on the very highest authority, that "the pure in heart shall see God." Nor is this diversity of intellectual conception obviated by the interposition of a Divine Life, like that of Christ, between God and men. That Life, by the sympathy and the trust which it inspires, draws up our religious affections and our moral aspirations towards the Infinite Source of all perfection, but leaves the speculative intellect as free as before to come to its own conclusions on matters which are metaphysical rather than spiritual. Metaphysical theories, the most diverse and antagonistic, have spun themselves continually round a common centre in Christ. Indeed provision seems expressly to be made, by the very composition of the Christian Scriptures, for this free and varied exercise of the understanding. They are fragmentary, and multiform. Their central light nowhere shines out in one full and clearly defined orb; but on various sides, and through different media, each with some refraction of its own, gleams forth on the reverent eye with a splendour not too strong to overpower it, yet suggestive of infinitely more than is revealed. The light so imbibed is incorporated, if we may so express it, with the individuality of each believing soul. Through these endless modes of access, each appropriates the life of Christ in his own way; brings his own heart and his own reason to interpret and combine these scattered elements of Divine truth, and to read them off into meaning under the light of his own highest consciousness and experience; and by this free endeavour to enter into the mind of Christ, gets a living hold of it, and finally becomes one with him and God. No complete and stereotyped impression, made all at once, could possibly exert the same kindling effect on the soul, or equally bring the free action of the human faculties into harmonious coöperation with the quickening spirit of God. But this is precisely what dogmatic creeds aim at effecting. They would fain reverse the beneficent order of Providence and wise constitution of Scripture. They fill up with their arbitrary determinations the wide space which had been left free to the discursive intellect. They attempt to define the undefinable, and to arrest in permanent forms what must, from its very nature, be fluctuating and progressive as the understanding which holds it. By anticipating for future ages doctrinal results,-perpetuating mere opinions in definite formulas,-they imply distrust in the creative and regulative force of the grand root of spiritual principle, of which all dogma is but the ceaseless product, ever decaying and ever renewed. They will not leave God to take care of his own work through his human instruments from generation to |