The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 311
demonstration of error should end only in indifference or despair, he desired
to teach the Stoic to substitute sympathy for apathy, and humility for pride,
aud the confession of a weakness that relied on God for the assertion of a
self-dependence which denied all need of Him ; and to lead the Epicurean to
prefer a spiritual peace to a sensual pleasure, and a living Saviour to distant
and indifferent gods. He proceeded, therefore, to tell them that during long
centuries of their history God had overlooked or condoned 1 this ignorance,
but that now the kingdom of heaven had come to them now He called them
to repentance now the day of judgment was proclaimed, a day in which the
world should be judged in righteousness by One whom God had thereto
appointed, even by that Jesus to whose work God had set His seal by raising
Him from the dead "
That was enough. A burst of coarse derision interrupted his words. 3
The Greeks, the philosophers themselves, could listen with pleasure, even with
something of conviction, while he demonstrated the nullity of those gods of
the Acropolis, at which even their fathers, four centuries earlier, had not been
afraid to jeer. But now that he had got to a point at which he mixed up
mere Jewish matters and miracles with his predication now that he began to
tell them of that Cross which was to them foolishness, and of that Resurrection
from the dead which was inconceivably alien to their habits of belief all
interest was for them at an end. It was as when a lunatic suddenly introduces
a wild delusion into the [midst of otherwise sane and sensible remarks. The
"strange gods" whom they fancied that he was preaching became too
fantastic even to justify any further inquiry. They did not deign to waste on
such a topic the leisure which was important for less extraordinary gossip. 8
They were not nearly serious enough in their own belief, nor did they consider
this feeble wanderer a sufficiently important person to make them care to
enforce against St. Paul that decree of the Areopagus which had brought
Socrates to the hemlock draught in the prison almost in sight of them ; but
they instantly offered to the great missionary a contemptuous toleration more
fatal to progress than any antagonism. As they began to stream away, some
broke into open mockery, while others, with polite irony, feeling that such a
1 Ver. 30, vncpi&iav. "Winked at" is a somewhat unhappy colloquialism of the E. V.
(cf. Rom. i. 24). It also occurs in Ecclus. xxx. 11. "Times of ignorance" is a halftechnical
term, like the Arabic jahilujya for the time before Mahomet.
2 "
Acts xvii. 32. The moment they heard the words '
resurrection of the dead, 'some
began to jeer." 'ExAuX", which occurs here only in the N.T., is a very strong word.
It means the expression of contempt by the lips, as /uvKTTjpi'fw by the nostrils. It is used
by Aquila in Prov. xiv. 9, for "Fools make a mock at sin." Not that the ancients found
anything ludicrous in the notion of the resurrection of the soul ; it was the resurrection
of the body which seemed so childish to them. See Plin. N. H. vii. 55 ; Lucian, De Mart.
Percgr. 13. The heathen Caecilius in Minucius Felix (Oct. 11, 34) says, OraotUw fabulas
adstruunt. Kenasci se ferunt j>os< mortem el cineres ctfavillas, et netcio qua fiducid wtmdacii*
invicem credunt." See Orig. c. Celt, v. 14; Arnob. ii. 13; Athenag. De Rtsurr.
lii. 4 ; Tert. De Cam. Christi, 15 ; &c. .. .
3 There is a sort of happy play of words in the tuxm'pow of Acts xvii. 21. It is not a
classical word, but implies that they were too busy to spare time from the important
occupation of gossiping.