The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 301
indeed have read with interest the moral inscriptions on the Henna which
were presented to her citizens
1
by the tyrant Hipparchus, and would have
looked with something of sympathy on such altars as those to Modesty and
to Piety. But, among the many altars visible in every street, there was one
by which he lingered with special attention, and of which he read with the
deepest emotion the ancient inscription
"To the unknown God."
The better-known altars, of which the inscriptions were in the plural, and
which merely bore witness to the catholicity of Paganism, would have had less
interest for him. It is merely one of the self-confident assertions which are
too characteristic of 'Jerome 3 that St. Paul misquoted the singular for the
plural. The inscription to which he called attention on the Areopagus was
evidently an ancient one, and one which he had observed on a single altar. 4
Whether that altar was one of those which Epimeuides had advised the
Athenians to build to whatever god it might be rf rpoffriKorrt e< wherever
the black and white sheep lay down, which he told them to loose from the
Areopagus ; or one dedicated to some god whose name had in course of time
become obliterated and *
forgotten ; or one which the Athenians had erected
under some visitation of which they could not identify the source 6 was to
St. Paul a matter of indifference. It is not in the least likely that he supposed
the altar to have been intended as a recognition of that Jehovah 7 who
seemed so mysterious to the Gentile world. He regarded it as a proof of the
confessed inadequacy, the unsatisfied aspirations, of heathendom. He saw in
it, or liked to read into it, the acknowledgment of some divinity after whom
they yearned, but to the knowledge of whom they had been unable to attain ;
and this was He whom he felt it to be his own mission to make known. It
was with this thought that he consoled his restless loneliness in that uncongenial
city; it was this thought which rekindled his natural ardour as he
wandered through its idol-crowded streets. 8
1 1
Such as MI/T; ua roj "Imrapxov