will reveal. Let every mother learn more of her glorious might. Often the Christian mother, in loving fancy, has before her mind's eye the beautiful picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and sees in it her own loved and prayed-for boy, a Samuel in heart if not by name. Thus this incident is even now a living power in our midst. The infant son of the praying, believing mother often through her sweet prayers, sweet hymns, and sweet piety, hears the voice of God in the night-season, and finds a home in the temple of His grace for time and for eternity. Athanasius. I. Concerning his early years.-He was probably born about the year 300, A.D., in Alexandria, in Egypt. Of his parents we know nothing, and very little concerning his race and lineage. His name is Greek; but his friend Antony was a Copt, though his name is Latin, and therefore the name, in this case, proves nothing. Athanasius was probably also a Copt, —that is, a descendant of the ancient Biblical Egyptians, of whom the present lower orders of Egypt are the modern remnants and refuse. Con cerning his personal appearance, we read that when grown-up he had "a short beard, which spread out into large whiskers, and light auburn hair. This last characteristic has been found on the heads of Egyptian mummies, and therefore is compatible with pure Egyptian descent." His first appearance on the stage of history connects itself with a romantic story, of which Dean Stanley gives the following version: "Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, was entertaining his clergy in a tower, or lofty house, overlooking the expanse of sea beside the Alexandrian harbour. He observed a group of children playing on the edge of the shore, and was struck by the grave appearance of their game. His attendant clergy went, at his orders, to catch the boys and bring them before the bishop, who taxed them with having played at religious ceremonies. At first, like boys caught at a mischievous game, they denied, but at last confessed, that they had been imitating the sacrament of baptism; that one of them had been selected to perform the part of bishop, and that he had duly dipped them in the ATHANASIUS. sea, with all the proper questions and addresses. When Alexander found that these forms had been observed, he determined that the baptism was valid; he himself added the consecrating oil of confirmation, and was so much struck with the knowledge and gravity of the boy-bishop, that he took him under his charge. This little boy was Athanasius, already showing the union of seriousness and sport which we shall see in his after-life. This childish game is an epitome of the ecclesiastical feelings of his time and of his country. The children playing on the shore-the old man looking at them with interest-these, indeed, are incidents which belong to every age of the world. But only in the early centuries could have been found the immersion of the baptized, the necessity of a bishop to perform the ceremony, the mixture of freedom and superstition which could regard as serious a sacrament so lightly performed. In the Coptic Church is there the best likeness of this Eastern reverence for the sacred acts of children. A child still draws the lots in the Patriarchal elections. By children is still performed the greater part of their innocent childlike services." In personal appearance the youth Athanasius was not to the youth Alexander Pope, the unlike very poet; for both were physically deformed, and both were unmistakably of an intellectual aspect. Athanasius "was of very small stature, a dwarf rather than a man (so we know from the taunt of Julian), but, as we are assured by Gregory Nazianzen, of almost angelic beauty of face and expression. To this tradition adds that he had a slight stoop in his figure, a hooked nose, and small mouth." The gifted youth grew in favour with the bishop, made good use of the literary and sacred advantages which were now within his reach, and became "archdeacon" to Alexander-not archdeacon in the modern sense of the word, but chief attendant upon the bishop-and as such accompanied him to the famous Council of Nicaea, or Nice, when he was about twenty-five years of age. Athanasius at the Council.-The deputation from the Church of Egypt to the Council contained three notable men, who were leaders of a group, who were "shrill above all other voices, vehement above all other dislike spears against those who sat putants, brandishing their arguments under the same roof and ate off the same table as themselves." Foremost in dignity, though not in power, was the aged Alexander just referred to. logical tumult which the Council He was the cause of the theowas called to calm. He was known in the Assembly as "Pope," or "Father." "The Pope of Rome" was tory, but "Pope of Alexandria" was a phrase at present unknown to hisstrange and universal mixture of a recognised dignity." "Papa-that familiar endearment and reverential awe, extended in a general sense to all Greek presbyters and all Latin bishops long before the names of Patriarch -was the special address which, or of Archbishop, was given to the head of the Alexandrian Church." A younger, but much greater, man is at "Papa's" side. He is calm in in stature, but lively in speech, witty countenance, almost angelic, defective in retort, and able to rivet the attention of the " grave and reverend seniors" by the strength and vehemence of his arguments. He treats child, "taking the words out of the "Papa" very much as if he were a bishop's mouth," and acting the part of a leader really, as he had done so in sport on the banks of the Nile. great Athanasius, the champion of That small insignificant man is the Orthodoxy, and who then and afterrightly given, which means "The wards proved that his name was Immortal." "Next after the Pope and Deacon of Alexandria, we must turn to one of its most important Presbyters-the parish priest of its principal church, which bore the name of Bauclis, and marked the first beginnings of what we should call a parochial system. In appearance he is the very opposite of Athanasius. He is sixty years of age, very tall and thin, and apparently unable to support his stature; he has an odd way of contorting and twisting himself, which his enemies compare to the wrigglings of a snake. He would be handsome, but for the emaciation and deadly pallor of his face, and a downcast look, imparted by a weakness of eyesight. At times his veins throb and swell, and his limbs tremble as if suffering from some violent internal complaint the same, perhaps, that will terminate one day in his sudden and frightful death. There is a wild look about him, which, at first sight, is startling. His dress and demeanour are those of a rigid ascetic. He wears a long coat with short sleeves, and a scarf of only half-size, such as was the mark of an austere life, and his hair hangs in a tangled mass over his head. He is usually silent, but at times breaks out into fierce excitement, such as will give the impression of madness. Yet, with all this, there is a sweetness in his voice, and a winning earnest manner, which fascinates those who come across him. Amongst the religious ladies of Alexandria he is said to have had, from the first, a following of not less than seven hundred. This strange, captivating, moonstruck giant is the heretic Arius, or, as his adversaries called him, the madman of Ares, or Mars." We thus see that Arius, the Heretic at the Council, and Athanasius, the Champion of Orthodoxy there, both came from Egypt, and from the famous city of Alexandria. The opinions of Arius were condemned at the Council, and manifold perse 66 cutions were the result-which, of course, only confirmed the " moonstruck man in his previous creed. In the course of a few years the Imperial Court became Arian. Then, of course, Arius was right in his views : he became the lion" of the time, and Athanasius fled for his life. Strange to say, that on the day in which Arius was to be restored to Christian communion in the Cathedral of Constantinople, he died a dreadful death-his bowels gushed out. His enemies called it a miracle of wrath-his friends uttered the word "poison!" Both probably were wrong; for a man of such a strange physique, and such strong passions, would be likely, in his old age, to rupture himself, and thus terminate his wild career. Those who have no sympathy with the opinions of this strange man cannot refrain from regret at the unseemly exultation of Athanasius over the sudden and solemn death of his foe. But so, alas! it has always been. The Theologicum odium taints the blood of the best. How hateful the conduct of Luther towards even some of his fellow-Reformers; what a blot upon the character of Calvin is the death of Servetus! How difficult not to transfer our hatred of any creed to the persons of those who profess it! Athanasius as a Bishop.-He became one at the early age of twenty-six, on the deccase of his aged patron, Alexander, a year after the Council of Nice was held. He was his old friend's successor in the important see of Alexandria. He had been named as such by the dying bishop and the voice of the city. It was a great promotion for a mere youth to become the Primate of the most important see of the whole Church in the most powerful city of the East. "The prestige of its founder " still clung to Alexandria. The deformed Coptic peasant-boy-perhaps a street arab-once sporting in the mud of the Nile, is now, in early manhood, a bishop, a bishop of bishopsthe head of the Church, the companion of prince-their instructor, and, if need be, their antagonist and invincible foe. On his episcopal appointment Athanasius felt or feigned great regret, and tried to escape election by concealment or absence. "To this day the formalities which accompany the election of his successors to the see of Alexandria are intended to indicate the same reluctance. The future Patriarch is brought to Cairo, loaded with chains, and strictly guarded, as if to prevent the possibility of escape." Athanasius had now reached the summit of sacred and almost of secular ambition. He was a "Prince of the Church," and, as such, sometimes more than a Prince of the Empire. "The Alexandrian Church" was the only great seat of Christian learning. Its episcopate was "the evangelical see,' as founded by St. Mark. "The Chair of St. Mark " was, and still is, the name of the patriarchal throne of Egypt. Its occupant, as we have seen, was the only potentate of the time who bore the name of "Pope;" and the obedience paid to his judgment in all matters of learning, sacred and secular, almost equalled that paid in later days to the ecclesiastical authority of the Popes of the West. "The head of the Alexandrian Church," says Gregory Nazianzen, "is the head of the world." so, almost in a secular sense : For," says Gibbon, in his stately style, at a distance from court, and at the head of an immense capital, the Patriarch of Alexandria had gradually usurped the state and authority of a civil magistrate, 66 He was 66 and the Prefects of Egypt were awed or provoked by the Imperial power of these Christian Pontiffs." But if Athanasius sometimes ex hibited the lofty pride of the "Pontiff," he was too great a man not to know how and when to temper it with prudence, and too good a man not to atone for it by the exhibition of all the softer graces of the Christian character. He was, probably, one of the most popular ministers who ever occupied an episcopal throne. He was equally at home with peasants and princes, with nonks and monarchs-a stranger in no part of his diocese; feared by some, loved by more, respected by all. The opinions of two very different writers may be quoted to prove the generally elevated and noble character of Athanasius as a Christian bishop. The following words are those of Hooker, the gifted author of "Ecclesiastical Polity":-" Athanasius, by the space of forty-six years, from the time of his consecration till the last hour of his life in this world, they never suffered to enjoy the comfort of a peaceable day. The heart of Constantine torn from him; Constantius his scourge and torment by all the ways that malice, armed with sovereign authority, could devise and use; under Julian no rest given to him, and in the days of Valens as little. Crimes there were laid to his charge, many... His judges were evermore the selfsame men by whom his accusers were suborned... ... Those bishops and prelates who should have ac counted his cause theirs . . . . . were sure, by bewraying their affections towards him, to bring upon themselves those maledictions whereby, if they could not be drawn to seem his adversaries, yet others should be taught how unsafe it was to be his friends. Whereupon it came to pass in the end that (very few excepted) all became subject to the sway of time, saving only that some fell away sooner, some later, some were leaders in the either yielding through fear, or brought under with penury, or by flattery ensnared, or else beguiled through simplicity, which is the fairest excuse that well can be made for them . . . . . . Such was the stream of those times that all men gave place to it . . . . . Only of Athanasius there was nothing observed through that long tragedy, other than such as very well became a wise man to do, and a righteous to suffer. So that this was the plain condition of those times: the whole world against Athanasius, and Athanasius against it; half a hundred years spent in doubtful trial, which of the two in the end would prevail, -the side which had all, or else that part which had no friend but God and death; the one a defender of his innocency, the other a finisher of his troubles." The above picture is a little too flattering to be quite correct. Athanasius was too sincere a man to declare himself faultless, and too great a man not to wish to be known in history as he really was. He doubtless felt as Cromwell did when he said to the limner: "Paint me with all my warts, or you will get no money for your pains." The historian Gibbon had certainly no prejudices in favour of bishops; and therefore, comparing his words with those of Hooker, we shall not be far from the truth in our estimate of the espiscopal character of the great Primate of Alexandria. The following are Gibbon's words:" He filled the eminent station above forty-six years, and his long administration was spent in a perpetual combat against the powers of Arianism. Five times was Athanasius expelled from the throne; twenty years he passed as an exile or a fugitive; and almost every province of the Roman Empire was successively witness to his merit, and his sufferings in the cause of the Homoousians, which he considered as the sole pleasure and business, as the duty and as the glory of his life. Amidst the storms of persecution, the Archbishop of Alexandria was patient of labour, jealous of fame, careless of safety; and although his mind was tainted by the contagion of fanaticism, Athanasius displayed a superiority of character and abilities, which would have qualified him far better than the degenerate sons of Constantine for the government of a great monarchy. His learning was much less profound and extensive than that of Eusebius of Cæsarea, and his rude eloquence could not be compared with the polished oratory of Gregory or Basil; but whenever the Primate of Egypt was called upon to justify his sentiments or his conduct, his unpremeditated style, either of speaking or writing, was clear, forcible, and persuasive. He has always been revered in the Orthodox school as one of the most accurate masters of the Christian theology; and he was supposed to possess two profane sciences, less adapted to the episcopal character-the knowledge of jurisprudence, and that of divination. Some fortunate conjectures of future events, which impartial reasoners might ascribe to the experience and judgment of Athanasius, were attributed by his friends to heavenly inspiration, and imputed by his enemies to infernal magic. But as Athanasius was continually engaged with the prejudices and passions of every order of men, from the monk to the Emperor, the knowledge of human nature was his first and most important science. He preserved a distinct and unbroken view of a scene which was incessantly shifting, and never failed to improve those decisive moments which are irrecoverably past before they are perceived by a common eye. The Archbishop of Alexandria was capable of distinguishing how far he might boldly command, and where he must dexterously insinuate-how long he might contend with power, and when |