The life and work of St. Paul

806 THE LIFE AND -WORK OF ST.
With some heavers, however, amusement and curiosity won the (lay.
far as they could understand him ho seemed to be announcing a new religion.
The crowd on the level space of the Agora rendered it difficult for all to hear
him, and as the Areopagus would both furnish a convenient area for an
harangue, and as it was there that the court met which had the cognizance of;
all matters affecting the State religion, it was perhaps with some sense ofj
burlesque that they led him up the rock-hewn steps which still exist to the.
level summit, and placed him on the " Stone of Impudence," from which the
defendants before the Areopagus were wont to plead their cause.1
So
Then, with;
a politeness that sounds ironical, and was, perhaps, meant by the volatile ring-;
leaders of the scene as a sort of parody of the judicial preliminaries, they
began to question him as ia old days their ancestors had tried and condemned'
Anaxagoras, Diagoras, Protagoras, and Socrates, on similar accusations.*
They said to him, " May we ascertain from you what is this new doctrine
about which you have been talking P You are introducing some strange topic
to our hearing. We should like, then, to ascertain what these things mighti
mean P" And so the audience, keenly curious, but brimming over with illsuppressed
contempt and mirth, arranged themselves on the stone steps, and
wherever they could best hear what sort of novelties could be announced by
this strange preacher of a new faith. :
But it was in no answering mood of levity that St. Paul met their light
inquiries. The " ugly little Jew," who was the noblest of all Jews, was,
perhaps, standing on the very stone where had once stood the ugly Greek who
was the noblest of all Greeks, and was answering the very same charge. And;
Socrates could jest even in immediate poril of his life ; but St. Paul, though
secure in the tolerance of indifference, had all the solemnity of his race, and
was little inclined to share in any jest.
which are too sad and too serious for light humour ;
His was one of those temperaments
one of those characters
which are always and overwhelmingly in earnest. To meet badinage by
badinage was for him a thing impossible. A modern writer is probably correct
when he says that in ordinary society St. Paul would certainly not have beeu
regarded as an interesting companion. Ou the other hand, he was too deeply
convinced of his own position as one to which he had been called by the very
voice and vision of his Saviour to be in the least wounded by frivolous
innuendos or disdainful sneers. He was not overawed by the dignity of
his judicial listeners, or by the reputation of his philosophic critics, or
by
the stern associations of the scene in the midst of which he stood.
1 Acts xvii. 19, ciriA.ajSofxci'oi av-rov. It Is quite a mistake to suppose that any violence ia
Intended. Cf. ix. 27. Pausaniaa (Attic, i. 28, 5) is our authority for the \C8os '
Ai-atfo/oj.
3 It was the express function of the Areopagus to take cognizance of the introduction
of iri0rra Upa. Many writers hold that this waa a judicial proceeding, and Wordsworth
that it might have been an Anakrisia ; and our translators, from their marginal note,
" it was the highest court in Athens," probably shared the same view. The narrative,
however, gives a very different impression. The Athenians were far less in earnest aboui
their religion than Anytus and Meletus had been in the days of Socrates, and if this was
exeaut for a trial it could only have been by way of conscious parody, as I have suggested,