me was Athanasius,--neither Greek nor
Roman, but a Coptic African. He was bitterly opposed to Arius and his
doctrines. No one could withstand his fervor and his logic. He was like
Bernard at the council of Soissons. He was not a cold, dry,
unimpassioned impersonation of mere intellect, like Thomas Aquinas or
Calvin, but more like St. Augustine,--another African, warm, religious,
profound, with human passions, but lofty soul. He also had that
intellectual pride and dogmatism which afterward marked Bossuet. For two
months he appealed to the assembly, and presented the consequences of
the new heresy. With his slight figure, his commanding intellectual
force, his conservative tendencies, his clearness of statement, his
logical exactness and fascinating persuasiveness, he was to churchmen
what Alexander Hamilton was to statesmen. He gave a constitution to the
Church, and became a theological authority scarcely less than Augustine
in the next generation, or Lainez at the Council of Trent.

And the result of the deliberations of that famous council led by
Athanasius,--although both Hosius and Eusebius of Caesarea had more
prelatic authority and dignity than he,--was the Nicene Creed. Who can
estimate the influence of those formulated doctrines? They have been
accepted for fifteen hundred years as the standard of the orthodox
faith, in both Catholic and Protestant churches,--not universally
accepted, for Arianism still has its advocates, under new names, and
probably will have so long as the received doctrines of Christianity are
subjected to the test of reason. Outward unity was, however, restored to
the Church, both by prelatic and imperial authority, although learned
and intellectual men continued to speculate and to doubt. The human mind
cannot be chained. But it was a great thing to establish a creed which
the Christian world could accept in the rude and ignorant ages which
succeeded the destruction of the old civilization. That creed was the
anchor of religious faith in the Middle Ages. It is still retained in
the liturgies of Christendom.

It is not my province to criticise the Nicene Creed, which is virtually
the old Apostles' Creed, with the addition of the Trinity, as defined by
Athanasius. The subject is too complicated and metaphysical. It is
allied with questions concerning which men have always differed and ever
will differ. Although the Alexandrian divines invoked the aid of reason,
it is a matter which reason c