Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, owes his great celebrity
chiefly to the controversy with the Arians, in which for half a
century he was at the head of the orthodox party in the Church. He
was born at Alexandria in the year 298, and was ordained a priest at
the age of twenty-one. He accompanied his bishop, Alexander, to the
Council of Nice in 325, and when under thirty years old succeeded to
the bishopric, on the death of Alexander, His success in the Arian
controversy was not achieved without cost, since, as an incident of
it, he spent twenty years in banishment. His admirers credit him
with "a deep mind, invincible courage, and living faith," but as his
orations and discourses were largely controversial, the interest
which now attaches to them is chiefly historical. The following was
preached from the seventh and eighth verses of the Forty-Fifth
Psalm.