his throne, amid the rejoicings of the people. He had begun his episcopal labours with renewed ardour, and assembled his bishops in Alexandria to decide various important questions, when an imperial mandate again—for the fourth time—drove him from his place of power. The faithful gathered around him weeping. “Be of good heart,” he said, “it is but a cloud: it will pass.” His forecast proved true; for within a few months Julian had closed his brief career of pagan revival. As early as September 363, Athanasius was able to travel to Jovian, the new emperor, who had sent him a letter praising his Christian fidelity and encouraging him to resume his work. He returned to Alexandria on the 20th of February 364. With the emperor he continued to maintain friendly relations; but the period of repose was short. In the spring of 365, after the accession of Valens to the throne, troubles again arose. Athanasius was once more compelled to seek safety from his persecutors in concealment (October 365), which lasted, however, only for four months. In February 366 he resumed his episcopal labours, in which he henceforth remained undisturbed. On the 2nd of May 373, having consecrated one of his presbyters as his successor, he died quietly in his own house.
Athanasius was a man of action, but he also knew how to use his pen for the furtherance of his cause. He left a large number of writings, which cannot of course be compared with those of an Origen, a Basil, or a Gregory of Nyssa. Athanasius was no systematic theologian. All his treatises are occasional pieces, born of controversy and intended for controversial ends. The interest in abstract exposition of clearly formulated theological ideas is everywhere subordinate to the polemical purpose. But all these writings are instinct with a living personal faith, and serve for the defence of the cause; for it was not about words that he was contending. Even those who do not sympathize with the cause which Athanasius steadfastly defended cannot but admire his magnanimous and heroic character. If he was imperious in temper and inflexible in his conception of the Christian faith, he possessed a great heart and a great intellect, inspired with an enthusiastic devotion to Christ. As a theologian, his main distinction was his zealous advocacy of the essential divinity of Christ. Christianity in its Arian conception would have evaporated in a new polytheism. To have set a dam against this process with the whole force of a mighty personality constitutes the importance of Athanasius in the world’s history. It is with good reason that the Church honours him as the “Great,” and as the “Father of Orthodoxy.”
The best edition of the works of Athanasius is the so-called Maurine edition of Bernard de Montfaucon in 3 vols. (Paris, 1698); this was enlarged in the 3rd edition by Giustiniani (4 vols., Padua, 1777), and is printed in this form in Migne’s Patrologia, vols. xxv.-xxviii. An English translation of selections, with excellent introductions to the several writings, was published by Archibald Robertson in the Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 4 (Oxford and New York, 1892). There is no biography satisfactory from the modern point of view. Studies preliminary to such a biography began to be published by E. Schwartz in his essays, “Zur Geschichte des Athanasius” (in the Nachrichten der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 1904, &c.). The life of Athanasius, however, is so completely intertwined with the history of his time that it is permissible to refer, for a knowledge of him, to the general descriptions which will be found at the close of the article Arius. Of the older literature, Tillemont’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles, vols. vi. and viii., are still a mine of material for the historian. Of the newer literature the following deserve to be read:—Johann Adam Möhler, Athanasius der Grosse und die Kirche seiner Zeit, 2 vols. (2nd ed., Mainz, 1844); and Fr. Boehringer, “Arius und Athanasius,” Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen, vol. i. part 2 (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1874). (G. K.)
ATHAPASCAN, a widely distributed linguistic stock of North American Indians, the chief tribes included being the Chippewyan, Navajo, Apache, Jicarilla, Lipan, Hupa and Wailaki. The Athapascan family is geographically divided into Northern, Pacific and Southern. The Northern division (Tinneh or Déné) is about Alaska, and the Yukon and Mackenzie rivers,—the eponymous “Athabasca” tribe living round Lake Athabasca, in the province of Alberta in Canada. The Pacific division covers a strip of territory, some 400 m. in length, from Oregon southwards into California. The Southern division includes Arizona and New Mexico, parts of Utah, Colorado, Kansas and Texas, and the northern part of Mexico. The typical tribes are those of the Northern division.
See Handbook of American Indians (Washington, 1907).
ATHARVA VEDA, the fourth book of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of the Brahman religion. Like the other Vedas it is divided into Samhita, Brahmanas and Upanishads, representing the spiritual element and its magical and nationalistic development. The mantras or sayings composing the Samhita of the Atharva Veda differ from those of the other Vedas by being in the form of spells rather than prayers or hymns, and seem to indicate a stage of religion lower than that of the Rig Veda.
ATHEISM (from Gr. ἀ-, privative, and θεός, God), literally a system of belief which denies the existence of God. The term as generally used, however, is highly ambiguous. Its meaning varies (a) according to the various definitions of deity, and especially (b) according as it is (i.) deliberately adopted by a thinker as a description of his own theological standpoint, or (ii.) applied by one set of thinkers to their opponents. As to (a), it is obvious that atheism from the standpoint of the Christian is a very different conception as compared with atheism as understood by a Deist, a Positivist, a follower of Euhemerus or Herbert Spencer, or a Buddhist. But the ambiguities arising from the points of view described in (b) are much more difficult both intellectually and in their practical social issues. Thus history shows how readily the term has been used in the most haphazard manner to describe even the most trivial divergence of opinion concerning points of dogma. In other words, “atheism” has been used generally by the orthodox adherents of one religion, or even of a single sect, for all beliefs which are different or even differently expressed. It is in fact in these cases, like “heterodoxy,” a term of purely negative significance, and its intellectual value is of the slightest. The distinction between the terms “religion” and “magic” is, in a similar way, often due merely to rivalry between the adherents of two or more mutually exclusive religions brought together in the same community. When the psalmist declares that “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,” he probably does not refer to theoretical denial, but to a practical disbelief in God’s government of human affairs, shown in disobedience to moral laws. Socrates was charged with “not believing in the gods the city believes in.” The cry of the heathen populace in the Roman empire against the Christians was “Away with the atheists! To the lions with the Christians!” The ground for the charge was probably the lack of idolatry in all Christian worship. Spinoza, for whom God alone existed, was persecuted as an atheist. A common designation of Knox was “the atheist,” although it was to him “matter of satisfaction that our most holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason.”
In its most scientific and serious usage the term is applied to that state of mind which does not find deity (i.e. either one or many gods) in or above the physical universe. Thus it has been applied to certain primitive savages, who have been thought (e.g. by Lord Avebury in his Prehistoric Times) to have no religious belief; it is, however, the better opinion that there are no peoples who are entirely destitute of some rudimentary religious belief. In the second place, and most usually, it is applied to a purely intellectual, metaphysical disbelief in the existence of any god, or of anything supernatural. In this connexion it is usual to distinguish three types of atheism:—the dogmatic, which denies the existence of God positively; the sceptical, which distrusts the capacity of the human mind to discover the existence of God; and the critical, which doubts the validity of the theistic argument, the proofs for the existence of God. That the first type of atheism exists, in spite of the denials of those who favour the second or the third, may be proved by the utterances of men like Feuerbach, Flourens or Bradlaugh. “There is no God,” says Feuerbach, “it is clear as the sun and as evident as the day that there is no God, and still more that there can be none.” With greater passion
