The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PAUL AT ATHEKS. 307
Above him, to the height of ono hundred foot, towered the rock of the
Acropolis like the vast altar of Hellas that Acropolis which was to the
Greek what Mount Sion was to the Hebrew, the splendid boss of the shield
ringed by the concentric circles of Athens, Attica, Hellas, and the world. 1
Beneath him was that temple of the awful goddesses whose presence was
specially supposed to overshadow this solemn spot, and the dread of whose
name had been sufficient to prevent Nero, stained as he was with the guilt of
matricide, from setting foot within the famous city. 2 But Paul was as little
daunted by the terrors and splendour of Polytheism in the scat of its grandest
memorials and the court of its most imposing jurisdiction, as he was by the
fame of the intellectual philosophy by whose living representatives he was
encompassed. He know, and his listeners knew, that their faith in these gay
idolatries had vanished. 3 He knew, and his listeners knew, that their yearn-
ing after the unseen was not to bo satisfied either by the foreign superstitions
which looked for thoir votaries in the ignorance of the gynaeceum, or by those
hollow systems which wholly failed to give peace even to the few. He was
standing under the blue dome of heaven, 4 a vaster and diviner temple than
any which man could rear. And, therefore, it was with the deepest serious-
ness, as well as with the most undaunted composure, that he addressed them :
"Athenians! " 5 he said, standing forth amongst them, with the earnest gaze
and outstretched hand which was his attitude when addressing a multitude,
" I observe that in every respect you are unusually religious." 8 Their atten-
tion would naturally be won, and even a certain amount of personal kindliness
towards the orator be enlisted, by an exordium so courteous and so entirely in
accordance with the favourable testimony which many writers had borne to
their city as the common altar and shrine of Greece/
"
For," he continued,
i Aristid. Panatken. i. 99 ; 0. and H. i. 383.
8 The Semnae, or Eumenides. (Suet. Net: 34.)
8 It is Lard to conceive the reality of a devotion which laughed at the Infamous gibea
of Aristophanes against the national religion (Lysintr. 750).
4
"Yircufipioi fSiieaoTo (Pollux, viii. 118).
8
*Av8p 'Afrprcuot, &c. It was the ordinary mode of beginning a speech, and it seems
to be strangely regarded by the author of Supernatural Religion, iii. 82, aa a sign that
these speeches are not genuine.
8 Acts xvii. 22, S(i