I
That afternoon was one of comparative calm for the infant Church. She was three hundred and ten years old. The pagan persecutions had ceased, and disputes about the Nature of Christ, over which blood was more freely to flow, had not yet matured. It still seemed that under her inspired guidance the old world would pass without disaster into the new. What lovely weather! The month was June, and the beacon of smoke that rose from the summit of the Pharos was inclined over Alexandria by a northerly wind. Both harbours were filled with ships; the Eastern Harbour was lined with palaces. The Western Harbour—and to it we must turn—was indeed less splendid. Then, as now, it washed the business quarter, the warehouses, the slums where the dock hands lived. Hardness and poverty edged it as they do to-day, and Christianity had settled here early, as she settled on all spots where the antique civilization had failed to make men dignified. Issuing out of the Gate of the Moon, the great Canopic Way here lost its straightness and split into ignoble lanes. There was only one redeeming feature—a house in which a real bishop was sitting. His name was Alexander.He has invited some clergymen to lunch, and they are late.
Bishops existed then in a profusion we can scarcely conceive. Every large village produced one, and they even went so far as to disorganize the postal service by galloping about in troops upon the government horses. But he of Alexandria was a bishop of no ordinary brand. He bore the title of "Patriarch of all the Preaching of St. Mark," and a prestige that only Rome challenged. If he lived in these slums, it was because historical associations detained him. The sainted shoemaker Annianus had plied his trade hard by. A church to the right—St. Theonas'—had been built by another local saint. Here were the origins of his power, but its field lay elsewhere eastward among the splendours of the town; southward, hundreds of miles southward, up the valley of the Nile. The whole of Egypt was ripe for Christianity. A magnificent prize!
The waters of the harbour, placid and slightly stale, came almost up to his house. He gazed at them, and at the grubby beach where some little boys were playing. They were playing at going to church. They were poor, they had no toys, and, since railway trains did not exist, going to church was the only game they could command. Indeed, it is a fascinating game. Even Anglican nurseries have succumbed to it. Scantily robed, they processed and inclined, and the Bishop, being not Anglican, but African, only smiled. Boys will be boys! He was specially diverted by their leader, a skinny but sportive youth, who would take his flock for a swim and, diving, reappear when and where they least expected. Then more solemn thoughts returned.
The whole of Egypt was ripe for Christianity. Ah, but for what kind of Christianity? That was the trouble. Fancy if, with Arius, it adopted the heresy of "Time was when He was not"! Fancy if it paltered with Gnosticism, and believed that creation, with its palaces and slums, is the result of a muddle! Fancy if it Judaized with Meletius, the disobedient Bishop of Assiout! Alexander had written to Meletius, asking him to Judaize less, but had had no reply. That was the disadvantage of a copious episcopy. You could never be sure that all the bishops would do the same thing. And there were dreadful examples in which flighty laymen had lost their heads, and, exclaiming, "Me be bishop too!" had run away into the desert before any one could stop them. The Emperor Constantine (that lion-hearted warrior !) was a further anxiety. Constantine so easily got mixed. Immersed in his town-planning, he might stamp some heresy as official and then the provinces would take it up. How difficult everything was! What was to be done? Perhaps the clergymen, when they arrived for lunch, would know. There used to be too little Christianity. Now there almost seemed too much. Alexander sighed, and looked over the harbour to the Temple of Neptune that stood on the promontory. He was growing old. Where was his successor?—someone who . . . not exactly saintliness and scholarship, but someone who would codify, would define?
Stop! stop! Boys will be boys, but there are limits. They were playing at Baptism now, and the sportive youth was in the act of pouring some of the harbour water over two other Gippoes. To enter into the Bishop's alarm we must remember the difference between Northern and Southern conceptions of impiety. To the Northerner impiety is bad taste. To the Southerner it is magic—the illicit and accurate performance of certain acts, and especially of sacramental acts. If the youth had made any mistake in his baptismal ritual it would not have mattered, it would have remained play. But he was performing accurately what he had no right to perform; he was saying, "Me be bishop too," and Heaven alone knew the theological consequences. "Stop! stop!" the genuine article cried. It was too late. The water fell, the trick was done . . . and at the same moment the clergymen arrived, offering such apologies for their unpunctuality as are usual among Egyptians.
It was long before lunch was served. The culprits were summoned, and in terrific conclave their conduct was discussed. There was some hope that the two converts were Christians already, in which case nothing would have been affected. But no. They had bowed the knee to Neptune hitherto. Then were they Christians now? Or were they horrid little demons who, outside or inside the Church, would harm her equally? The sportive youth prevailed. He won over the Bishop, and calmed the clergymen's fears, and before evening fell and the smoke on the Pharos turned to a column of fire, it was settled that he had by his play rendered two souls eligible for immortal bliss. And his action had a more immediate consequence: he never washed again. Taken into the Bishop's house, he became his pupil, his deacon, his coadjutor, his successor in the see, and finally a saint and a doctor of the Church: he is St. Athanasius.
II
At the other end of the city there lived another clergyman. His name was Arius, and it was a very long time indeed since the Bishop had asked him to lunch. He took duty at St. Mark's, a small church that stood on the brink of the Mediterranean. The neighbourhood was of the best—palaces, zoological gardens, lecture-rooms, etc.—and over some trees rose the long back of the temple that Cleopatra had built to Antony. That temple would make a seemly cathedral, Arius often thought, and the obelisks in its forecourt—Cleopatra's Needles—would be improved if they supported statues of God the Father. The whole of Egypt was ripe for Christianity—for the right kind of Christianity, that is to say: not for the kind that was preached at the western end of the town.
Arius was elderly by now. Learned and sincere, tall, simple in his dress, persuasive in his manner, he was accused by his enemies of looking like a snake and of seducing, in the theological sense, seven hundred virgins. The accusation amazed him. He had only preached what is obviously true. Since Christ is the Son of God, it follows that Christ is younger than God, and that there must have been a condition—no doubt before time began—when the First Person of the Trinity existed, and the Second did not. This has only to be stated to be believed, and only those who were entirely possessed by the devil, like doddering Alexander and slippery Athanasius, would state the contrary. The Emperor Constantine (that lion-hearted warrior!) would certainly see the point, provided it was explained to him. But Constantine so easily got mixed, and there was indeed a danger that he would stamp the wrong type of Christianity as official, and plunge the world into heresy for thousands of years. How difficult everything was! One's immediate duty was to testify, so day after day Arius preached Arianism to the seven hundred virgins, to the corpse of the Evangelist St. Mark who lay buried beneath the church, and to the bright blue waves of the sea that in their ceaseless advance have now covered the whole scene.
The quarrel between him and his bishop grew so fierce and spread so far that Constantine was obliged to intervene and to beg his fellow-Christians to imitate the Greek philosophers, who could differ without shedding one another's blood. It was just the sort of appeal that everyone had been fearing that the Emperor would make. He was insufficiently alive to eternal truth. No one obeyed, and in desperation he summoned them to meet him at Nicæa on the Black Sea, and spent the interval in trying to find out what their quarrel turned on. Two hundred and fifty bishops attended, many priests, deacons irmumerable. Among the last named was Athanasius, who, thundering against Arius in full conclave, procured his overthrow. Amid scenes of incredible violence the Nicene Creed was passed, containing clauses (since omitted) in which Arianism was anathematized. Arius was banished. Athanasius led his tottering but triumphant bishop back to Alexandria, and the Emperor returned to the town-planning and to the wardrobes of wigs and false hair that sometimes solace the maturity of a military man.
The powers of Athanasius were remarkable. Like Arius, he knew what truth is, but, being a politician, he knew how truth can best be enforced; his career blends subtlety with vigour, self-abnegation with craft. Physically he was blackish, but active and strong. One recognizes a modern street type. Not one single generous action by him is recorded, but he knew how to inspire enthusiasm, and before he died had become a popular hero and set the pace to his century. Soon after his return from Nicæa he was made Patriarch of Alexandria, but he had scarcely sat down before Arius was back there too. The Emperor wished it. Could not Christians imitate, etc. . . .? No; Christians could not and would not; and Athanasius testified with such vigour that he was banished in his turn, and his dusty theological Odyssey begins. He was banished in all five times. Sometimes he hid in a cistern, or in pious ladies' houses, or in the recesses of the Libyan desert; at other times, going farther afield, he popped up in Palestine or France. Roused by his passage from older visions, the soul of the world began to stir, and to what activity! Heavy Romans, dreamy Orientals and quick Greeks all turned to theology, and scrambled for the machinery of the Pagan State, wrenching this way and that until their common heritage was smashed. Cleopatra's temple to Antony first felt the killing glare of truth. Arians and Orthodox competed for its consecration, and in the space of six years its back was broken and its ribs cracked by fire. St. Theonas'—the episcopal church—was gutted, and Athanasius nearly killed by some soldiers on its altar. And all the time everyone was writing—encyclicals as to the date of Easter, animadversions against washing, accusations of sorcery, complaints that Athanasius had broken a chalice in a church in a village near Lake Mariout, replies that there was no chalice to break, because there was no church, because there was no village—reams and reams of paper on this subject travelling over the empire for years, and being perused by bishops in Mesopotamia and Spain. Constantine died; but his successors, whatever their faith, were drawn into the dance of theology, none more so than Julian, who dreamed of Olympus. Arius died, falling down in the streets of Alexandria one evening while he was talking to a friend; but Arianism survived. Athanasius died too; but not before he had weaned the Church from her traditions of scholarship and tolerance, the tradition of Clement and Origen. Few divines have done more for her, and her gratitude has been both profound and character istic; she has coupled his name to a Creed with which he had nothing to do—the Athanasian.
Were his activities all about nothing? No! The Arian controversy enshrined a real emotion. By declaring that Christ was younger than God Arius tended to make him lower than God, and consequently to bring him nearer to man—indeed, to level him into a mere good man and to forestall Unitarianism. This appealed to the untheologically-minded to Emperors, and particularly to Empresses. It made them feel less lonely. But Athanasius, who viewed the innovation with an expert eye, saw that while it popularized Christ it isolated God, and raised man no nearer to heaven in the long run. Therefore he fought it. Of the theatre of this ancient strife no trace remains in Alexandria. Not even Cleopatra's Needle stands there now. But the strife still continues in the heart of men, ever prone to substitute the human for the divine, and it is probable that many an individual Christian to-day is an Arian without knowing it.