The life and work of St. Paul

312 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL.
speaker deserved at least a show of urbanity, said to him, " Enough for one
day. Perhaps some other time we will listen to you again about Ilim." But
even if they were in earnest, the convenient season for their curiosity recurred
no more to them than it did afterwards to Felix. 1 On that hill of Ares,
before that throng, Paul spoke no more. He went from the midst of them,
Borry, it may be, for their jeers, seeing through their spiritual incapacity, but
conscious that in that city his public work, at least, was over. He could brave
opposition ; he was discouraged by indifference. One dignified adherent, indeed,
he found but one only 2
in Dionysins the Areopagite; 3 and one more in a
woman possibly a Jewess whose very name is uncertain: 4 but at Athens he
founded no church, to Athens he wrote no epistle, and in Athens, often as ho
passed its neighbourhood, ho never set foot again. St. Luke has no pompous
falsehoods to tell us. St. Paul was despised and ridiculed, and ho does not for a
moment attempt to represent it otherwise ;
St. Paul's speech, so far as any im-
mediate effects were concerned, was an all but total failure, and St. Luke does not
conceal its ineffectiveness. 6 He shows us that the Apostle was exposed to the
ridicule of indifforentism, no less than to the persecutions of exasperated bigotry.
And yet his visit was not in vain. It had been to him a very sad one.
Even when Timothous had come to cheer his depression and brighten his
solitude, he felt so deep a yearning for his true and tried converts at
Thessalonica, that, since they were still obliged to face the storm of persecution,
he had sacrificed his own feelings, and sent him back to support and
comfort that struggling Church. 6 He left Athens as he had lived in it, a
despised and lonely man. And yet, as I have said, his visit was not in vain.
Many a deep thought in the Epistle to tho Romans may have risen from the
Apostle's reflections over the apparent failure at Athens. The wave is flung
back, and streams away in broken foam, but the tide advances with irresistible
majesty and might. Little did those philosophers, in their self-satisfied
superiority, suppose that the trivial incident in which they had condescended
to take part was for them the beginning of the end, 7 Xerxes and his Persians
1 Acts xxiv. 25.
8 "
Le p6dagogue est le moins convertissable dcs hommea " (Kenan, p. 199). " (Test qu'il
faut plus d'un miracle pour convertir a Fhumilite' de la croix un sage uu siecle " (Quesnel).
3 Christian tradition makes him a bishop and martyr (Euseb. H.E. iii. 4 ; iv. 23 ;
Nic^ph. iii, 11), and he is gradually developed into St. Denys of France. The books
attributed to him, On the Heavenly Hierarchy, On the Divine Names, &c., are not earlier
than the fifth century.
4
Aa/j Ai ? , "heifer," would be a name analogous to Dorcas, &c. ; Damaria occurs
nowhere else, and is probably a mere difference of pronunciation. It can have nothing
to do with Sa/xap, and has led to the conjecture that she was a Syrian metic. Absolutely
nothing is known about her.
* Yet we are constantly asked to believe, by the very acute and impartial criticism of
sceptics, that St. Luke is given to inventing the names of illustrious converts to do credit
to St. Paul. If any one will compare Philostratus's Life of Apollonius with the Acts
of the Apostles he will soon learn to appreciate the difference between the cloudy romance
of a panegyrist and the plain narrative of a truthful biographer.
' As may be inferred from 1 Thess. iii. 2. Did Silas also join him at Athens, and was he
also sent back (to Bercea) ? The >jjr is in favour of the supposition, the jxdi-ot is against it.
7 Renan alludes to the Edict of Justinian suppressing the Athenian chair of Philosophy
474 years after.