J pretends that it was. It was always a denial, and a denial presupposes an affirmation. The denial of a God presupposes the existence in man of some faculty anterior to reflection which may apprehend Infinite Being. It is a denial, also, which has always been preceded by misapprehension of God. Pseudo-theism precedes atheism. The first denial of God is made unintentionally. Men begin to worship remarkable peculiarities of the material universe. Thus worship fell from its primitive spirit and truth into deification of the heavens and earth, to which the overflowing soul of man lent some of its own unbounded life. The Book of Job, one of the oldest of human writings, re- ', fers to this primitive idolatry in the following words : , ' If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walk- ! ing in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand, this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge ; for I should have denied the God that is above.' This dec- laration plainly shows that such things had begun to be in his day, but were not universal. It is a very simple expositien of the rise of idolatry everywhere. Pseudo-theism is incipient atheism ; but it testifies to a pure theism going before it. The mistake of this early false worship is, as every one sees, the radical mistake of materializing the conception of God. It is the result of idly resting in an impression made by material objects. This impression would never have been made unless those objects expressed a life corre- sponding to ours. It was an impression at first per- haps innocently cherished as a religious influence ; but it proved the means of shutting out God, the Being of love, wisdom, and power, as an object of true faith", and the source of a glowing worship. It ended in atheism. In modern times, the same result has followed from men's seizing on the external as their means of mak- ing clear the Divine Life. It would be quite possible to trace a parallel between the consequences of giving the great name of God to the sun, moon, and earth, and the consequences of giving the same august name to laws of nature which are simple categories of the human understanding; for the forms of the under- standing may stand between the soul and God, pre- venting his immanence in the consciousness, no less than the stars of heaven and the imposing forms of earth. The forms of the understanding, though im- palpable, are media, no less than visible and palpable matter; and it is important to observe that they are as much so. They have proved as fruitful sources of atheism when rested on as ultimate ; for if they have not corrupted man's sensual nature by making his rites of worship bodily vice, they have paralyzed his spirit by substituting intellectual speculation for the fervent spiritual exercise which involves his might and heart, no less than his mind, in a reasonable service. But to give a logical priority of matter to mind, in an argu- ment for the being of the spiritual God, is to beg the question at once. This Plato has observed. He says in his Lairs: 'Atheists make the assumption that fire and water, earth and air, stand first in the order of ex- istences, and calling them nature, they evolve soul out of them. In scrutinizing this position of the class of men who busy themselves with physical investiga- tions, it will perhaps appear that those who come to conclusions so different from ours, and irreverent of God, follow an erroneous method. The cause of pro- duction and dissolution, which is the mind, they make, not a primary, but a secondary existence" {Christian Examim r, Sept. 1858). See the articles Infidelity ; i Materialism ; Pantheism; Theism. See also , be- sides the authors cited in the course of this article, BuddsBUS, Theses de Atheismo (Jena, 1717; in German, 1723); Heidenreich, Briefs fib. d. Athe'ismus (Leipzig, 1796) ; Reimann, Historic atheismi (Hildesh. 1725); Stapfer, Tnstxt. Theol. Polem. vol. ii, ch. vi ; Doddridge, J.i cturt s "a I'm wmatdogy, etc., Lect. xxxiii ; Cudworth, Intellectual System, bk. i, ch. iii; Buchanan, Modern
ATIIEXAGORAS
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ATHENS
Atheism, under its Farms of Pantheism, Secularism, De- velopment, and Natural Lairs (Boston, 1859, 12mo) ; Gioberti, V etude de la Philosophie, iii, 105 ; Thompson, Christian Theism (N. Y. 1855, 12mo) ; Tulloch, Theism (N. Y. 1855. 12mo) ; Morell, History of Modern Philos- ophy ; Constant, Be la Religion, iii, 20 ; New A merican Cyclopedia, s. v. ; Hcrzog, Real-Encyklopadk, i, 577 ; Bartholmess, Hist. Crit. des Doctrines de la Philoso- phie Moderne, bk. xiii; Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, chap, vii ; Pearson, Modern Infidelity, chap, i, and Appendix ; Chalmers, Institutes of Theology, book i, chap, iii ; Riddle, Bampton Lecture, 18G2, Lec- ture iii; Van Mildert, Boyle Lectures (London, 1820, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Watson, Theological Institutes, part ii, chap. i.
Athenagoras ^ASrrjvayopag, a frequent Greek name), a philosopher of Athens, celebrated for his knowledge of theology and science, both Christian and pagan. lie flourished about 177. (This has been shown by Mosheim in his essay De vera at ate Apologe- tici quern A then, scrips't, in his Dissert, ad Hist. Fccles. pertin. i, 272 sq.) Neithsr Eusebius nor Jerome men- tion Athenagoras, but he is cited by Methodius in a passage preserved by Epiphanius (Hcer. G5) and by Photius (Biblioth. Cod 234). Philip Sidetes (5th centu- ry) gives an account of him in a fragment first publish- ed by Dodwell (Append, ad Dissert, in Irena?uni) , but Basnagc and others have shown that this account is in- accurate, to say the least. It is said that when a Gentile, Athenagoras strove against the Christian faith ; but as he was engaged in searching the Holy Scriptures for weapons to turn against the faithful, it pleased God to convert him. After this he left Athens and went to Alexandria, where, according to the account of Side- tes, he became head of the catechetical school there ; but this account is not to be relied upon. He wrote a work called Upivfitia ttkh Xpianav&v, An Apology (or Embassy) in behalf of the Christians, and addressed it either to Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Verus (about A.D. 16(5), or to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus (about A.D. 177). In this apology he refutes the three chief calumnies urged against the Christians in that day, viz. (1) that they were athe- ists ; (2) that they ate human flesh; (3) that they committed the most horrible crimes in their assemblies. He also claimed for the Christians the benefit of the toleration which in the Roman Empire was granted to all religions. Athenagoras wrote another treatise on the doctrine of the Resurrection (— tpi (\va(jra<Jiuc tujv viKp&v), arguing the doctrine from the goodness, wis- dom, and power of God, together with the natural con- stitution of man. On the clearness of his conception of God, see Dorner, Doct. of the Person of Christ, i, 283. The best editions of his works are those of the Bene- dictines (Par. 17-42, fol.) and of Otto (Jena, 1857, 8vo). Separate editions of his Apology were published by Lindner (Langensal. 1774) and by Paul (Halle, 1856). There is an English translation by David Humphreys, The Apologetics of Athenagoras (Loud. 1714, 8vo) ; and an older one of The Resurrection by Richard Porder (Lond. 1573, 8vo). See Landon, Ecclesiastical Diction- ary, i, 602; Lcyserus, Diss. de Ath< nagora p'tilos. Chris- tiana (Lips. 17:;G, 4to); Fabricius, Bihliotheca Grceca, vi, 8G ; Clarisse, De . I thenagoree Vila ef. Scriptis (Lugd. Bat. 1810) ; Mosheim, Comm. i, 394 ; Neandcr, Ch. Hist. i, G73; Guericke, De scholi once Aler. floruit, catech. ; Dupin, Hist. Eccles. Writers, i, GO; Cave, Hist. Lit. anno 177; Lardner, Works, ii, 193; Smith's Diet, of Classical Bipg. s. v.; Zeitschr. far d. histor. Theol. 1856, iv ; Donaldson, Hist, of Christ. Lit. iii, 107 f q.