Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by the art and device of man.

Howbeit, those past times of ignorance God hath overlooked; but now He commandeth all men every where to repent, because He hath appointed a day wherein He will judge the world in righteousness, by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all,' in that He hath raised Him from the dead.

God had over

looked the

past, but now

calls the worl

to prepare for Christ's judg

ment.

Christ's mis

sion is proved by His resurrection.

St. Paul was here suddenly interrupted, as was no doubt frequently the case with his speeches both to Jews and Gentiles. Some of those who listened broke out into laughter and derision. The doctrine of the "resurrection" was to them ridiculous, as the notion of equal religious rights with the "Gentiles" was offensive and intolerable to the Hebrew audience at Jerusalem. Others of those who were present on the Areopagus said, with courteous indifference, that they would "hear him again on the subject." The words were spoken in the spirit of Felix, who had no due sense of the importance of the matter, and who waited for "a convenient season." Thus, amidst the derision of some, and the indifference of others, St. Paul was dismissed, and the assembly dispersed.

4

But though the Apostle "departed" thus "from among them," and though most of his hearers appeared to be unimpressed, yet many of them may have carried away in their hearts the seeds of truth, destined to grow up into the maturity of Christian faith and practice. We cannot fail to notice how the sentences of this interrupted speech are constructed to meet the cases in succession of every class of which the audience was composed. Each word in the address is adapted at once to win and to rebuke. The Athenians were proud of everything that related to the origin of their race and the home where they dwelt. St. Paul tells them that he was struck by the aspect of their city; but he shows them that the place and the time appointed for each nation's existence are parts of one great scheme of Providence; and that one God is the common Father of all nations of the earth. For the general and more ignorant population, same words occur also in the Hymn of Cleanthes [p. 5. n. 3], which is quoted at length in Dr. Bloomfield's Recensio Synoptica.

1 See notes upon St. Paul's speech at Lystra. It should be observed that no such me taphor as "winked at" is to be found in the original.

'Observe the coincidence between this sentiment and that in Rom. i. 4.

Acts xxii. 22.

• Some commentators find again in these two classes the Stoics and Epicurean It is not necessary to make so precise a division.

And when the

some of whom were doubtless listening, a word of approbation is bestowed on the care they gave to the highest of all concerns; but they are admon shed that idolatry degrades all worship, and leads men away from true notions of the Deity. That more educated and more imaginative class of hearers, who delighted in the diversified mythology, that personified the operations of nature, and localised the divine presence in sanctuaries adorned by poetry and art, are led from the thought of their favourite shrines and customary sacrifices, to views of that awful Being who is the Lord of heaven and earth, and the one Author of universal life. "Up to a certain point in this high view of the Supreme Being, the philosopher of the Garden, as well as of the Porch, might listen with wonder and admiration. It soared, indeed, high above the vulgar religion; but in the lofty and serene Deity, who disdained to dwell in the earthly temple, and needed nothing from the hand of man, the Epicurean might almost suppose that he heard the language of his own teacher. But the next sentence, which asserted the providence of God as the active, creative energy,—as the conservative, the ruling, the ordaining principle,-annihilated at once the atomic theory, and the government of blind chance, to which Epicuru: ascribed the origin and preservation of the universe." Stoic heard the Apostle say that we ought to rise to the contemplation of the Deity without the intervention of earthly objects, and that we live and move and have our being in Him-it might have seemed like an echo of his own thought -until the proud philosopher learnt that it was no pantheistic diffusion of power and order of which the Apostle spoke, but a living centre of government and love-that the world was ruled, not by the iron necessity of Fate, but by the providence of a personal God-and that from the proudest philosopher repentance and meek submission were sternly exacted. Above all, we are called upon to notice how the attention of the whole audience is concentered at the last upon JESUS CHRIST,' though His name is not mentioned in the whole speech. Before St. Paul was taken to the Areopagus, he had been preaching "Jesus and the resurrection ;" and though his discourse was interrupted, this was the last impression he left on the minds of those who heard him. And the impres sion was such as not merely to excite or gratify an intellectual curiosity, but to startle and search the conscience. Not only had a revival from the dead been granted to that man whom God had ordained-but a day 1 The sacred grottoes in the rocks within view from the Areopagus should be remembered, as well as the temples, &c. See Wordsworth.

ܐܐ܂

* Milman's History of Christianity, vol. II. p. 18. See his observations on the whole peech. He remarks, in a note, the coincidence of St. Paul's o¿dèv пoodɛóμɛvos with the "nihil indiga nostri" of the Epicurean Lucretius.

3 This strikes us the more forcibly if the quotation is from the Stoic Cleanthes See above.

had been appointed on which by Him the world must be judged in right

eousness.

Of the immediate results of this speech we have no further knowledge, than that Dionysius,' a member of the Court of Areopagus, and a woman. whose name was Damaris, with some others, were induced to join themselves to the Apostle, and became converts to Christianity. How long St. Paul staid in Athens, and with what success, cannot possibly be determined. He does not appear to have been driven by any tumult or persecution. We are distinctly told that he waited for some time at Athens, till Silas and Timotheus should join him; and there is some rea son for believing that the latter of these companions did rejoin him in Athens, and was dispatched again forthwith to Macedonia. The Apostle himself remained in the province of Achaia, and took up his abode at its capital on the Isthmus. He inferred, or it was revealed to him, that the Gospel would meet with a more cordial reception there than at Athens. And it is a serious and instructive fact that the mercantile population of Thessalonica and Corinth received the message of God with greater readiness than the highly educated and polished Athenians. Two letters to the Thessalonians, and two to the Corinthians, remain to attest the flourishing state of those Churches. But we possess no letter written by St. Paul to the Athenians; and we do not read that he was ever in Athens again.'

5

Whatever may have been the immediate results of St. Paul's sojourn at Athens, its real fruits are those which remain to us still. That speech on the Areopagus is an imperishable monument of the first victory of Christianity over Paganism. To make a sacred application of the words used by the Athenian historian, it was 66 no mere effort for the moment," but it is a "perpetual possession," wherein the Church finds ever fresh supplies of wisdom and guidance. It is in Athens we learn what is the highest point to which unassisted human nature can attain; and here we learn also the language which the Gospel addresses to man on his proudest eminence of unaided strength. God, in His providence, has preserved to us, in fullest profusion, the literature which unfolds to us all the life of 1 See above, p. 375, n. 2.

8 Nothing is known of Damaris. But, considering the seclusion of the Greek women, the mention of her name, and apparently in connection with the crowd on the Areopa gus, is remarkable. Stier throws out the suggestion that she might be a hetæra, called like Mary Magdalene to repentance. Reden der Apostel. II. 21.

3 See 1 Thess. iii. 1. For the movements of Silas and Timotheus about this time, ree the note at the end of Ch. XI.

The church of Athens appears to have been long in a very weak state. In the time of the Antonines, Paganism was almost as flourishing there as ever. The Christian community seems at one time to have been entirely dispersed, and to have been Dollected again about A.D. 165. See Leake, p. 60.

5 Κτῆμα ἐς ἀεὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆγα ἀκούειν συγκεῖται. Thuc. i 22

the Athenian people, in its glory and its shame; and He has ordained that one conspicuous passage in the Holy Volume should be the speech, in which His servant addressed that people as ignorant idolaters, called them to repentance, and warned them of judgment. And it can hardly be deemed profane if we trace to the same Divine Providence the preservation of the very imagery which surrounded the speaker-not only the sea, and the mountains, and the sky, which change not with the decay of nations-but even the very temples, which remain, after wars and revolutions, on their ancient pedestals in astonishing perfection. We are thus provided with a poetic and yet a truthful commentary on the words that were spoken once for all at Athens; and Art and Nature have been commissioned from above to enframe the portrait of that Apostle, who stands for ever on the Areopagus as the teacher of the Gentiles.

CHAPTER XI.

"1 adjure you, in the name of our Lord Jesus, to see that this letter be read to all the brethren."-1 Thess. v. . 27.

"I, Paul, add my salutation with my own hand, which is a token whereby all my letters may be known."-2 Thess. iii. 17.

LETTERS TO THESSALONICA WRITTEN FROM CORINTH.-EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM ROME.-AQUILA AND PRISCILLA.-ST. PAUL'S LABOURS.-FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.-ST. PAUL IS OPPOSED BY THE JEWS; AND TURNS TO THE GENTILES. -HIS VISION-SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.-CONTINUED RESIDENCE IN CORINTH.

COIN OF CORINTH.1

WHEN St. Paul went from Athens to Corinth, he entered on a scene very different from that which he had left. It is not merely that his residence was transferred from a free Greek city to a Roman colony; as would have been the case had he been moving from Thessalonica to Philippi. His present journey took him from a quiet provincial town to the busy metropolis of a province, and from the seclusion of an ancient university to the seat of government and trade. Once there had been a time, in the flourishing age of the Greek republics, when Athens had been politically greater than Corinth; but now that the little territories of the Levantine cities were fused into the larger provincial divisions of the empire, Athens had only the memory of its preeminence, while Corinth held the keys of commerce and swarmed with a crowded population. Both cities had recently experienced severe vicissitudes; but a spell was on the fortunes of the former, and its character remained more entirely Greek than that of any other place: while the latter rose from its ruins, a new and splendid city, on the Isthmus between its two seas, where a 1 From the British Museum. The emperor is Claudius. See Acts xviii. 2. See above, p. 333.

3 A journey in the first century from Athens to Corinth might almost be compared to a journey, in the eighteenth, from Oxford to London.

See the preceding Chapter on Athens.