The life and work of St. Paul

296 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
perfect music of human expression its loftiest and deepest thoughts. Had it
been possible for the world by its own wisdom to know God ; had Jit been in
the power of man to turn into bread the stones of the wilderness had ; permanent
happiness lain within the grasp of sense, or been among the rewards of
culture ; had it been granted to man's unaided power to win salvation by the
gifts and qualities of his own nature, and to make for himself a new Paradise
in lieu of that lost Eden, before whose gate still waves the fiery sword of the
Cherubim, then such ends would have been achieved at Athens in the day of
her glory. No one who has been nurtured in the glorious lore of that gay and
radiant city, and has owed some of his best training to the hours spent in
reading the history and mastering the literature of its many noble sons, can ever
yisit it without deep emotions of gratitude, interest, and love. 1
And St. Paul must have known at least something of the city in whose
language he spoke, and with whose writers he was not wholly unfamiliar.
The notion that he was a finished classical scholar is, indeed, as we have shown
already, a mere delusion ; and the absence from his Epistles of every historical
reference proves that, like the vast mass of his countrymen, he was indifferent
to the history of the heathen, though profoundly versed in the history of
Israel. He was, indeed, no less liberal and cosmopolitan nay, in the best
sense, far more so than the most advanced Hellenist, the most cultivated
Hagadist of his day. Yet he looked at " the wisdom of Javan" as something
altogether evanescent and subsidiary an outcome of very partial enlightenment,
far from pure, and yet graciously conceded to the ages of ignorance. It
was with no thrill of rapture, no loyal recognition of grace and greatness, that
Paul landed at Phalerum or Peiraeus, and saw the crowning edifices of the
Acropolis, as it towered over the wilderness of meaner temples, stand out in
their white lustre against the clear blue sky. On the contrary, a feeling of
depression, a fainting of the heart, an inward unrest and agitation, seems at
once to have taken possession of his susceptible and ardent temperament;
above all, a sense of loneliness which imperiously claimed the solace of that
beloved companionship which alone rendered his labours possible, or sustained
him amid the daily infirmities of his troubled life. As he bade farewell to the
faithful Bercean brethren who had watched over his journey, and had been to
him in the place of eyes, the one message that he impresses on them is
urgently to enjoin Silas and Timotheus to come to him at once with all possible
speed. In the words of St. Luke we still seem to catch an echo of the yearning
earnestness which shows us that solitude 8 and above all solitude in such a
place was the one trial which he found it the most difficult to bear.
But even if his two friends were able instantly to set out for Athens, a full
week must, at the lowest computation, inevitably elapse before Silas could reach
1 We read the sentiments of Cicero, Sulpicius, Germanicus, Pliny, Apollonius, &c., in
Cic. Ep. ad Quint, jratr. i. 1 ; Epp. Fam, iv. 5 ; ad Att. v. 10 ; vi. 1 ; Tao. Ann. ii. 53 ;
Plin. Ep. viii. 24 ; Pliilostr. Vit. ApoU. v. 41 ; Renaii, St. Paul, 1G7 ; but, aa he adds,
"Paul belonged to another world ; his Holy Land was elsewhere."
2 Acts Xvii. 15, \af6yrn * r\ix irp&s rw St'Aav at -rbv Tinedtov Iv* s Taxiwra fAflwaw irpof
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