Acts 17

Acts 17:1-34

The Acts of the Apostles Chapter 17:1-34 Acts 17:1-15 In our previous study we considered the first victories of Christianity through Paul in Europe, those won in Philippi. In this paragraph the movement is carried forward. Through trial and persecution, it was necessary for the apostle to leave Philippi. In all probability leaving Luke behind him there, Paul travelled a hundred miles to Thessalonica, and on the way passed through two cities, apparently without preaching or bearing any testimony. He went through Amphipolis, which was a military station, a journey of three-and-thirty miles from Philippi, and through Apollonia, thirty miles still further; until he came to Thessalonica, seven and thirty miles further yet.

One wonders why he passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia. Perhaps on the human side the most probable answer is that there were no synagogues in those towns; and even though Paul’s mission was now distinctively to the Gentiles, he still observed the invariable rule of preaching to the Jew first, wherever he came. All that, however, is merely speculation. In the passing of these cities we recognize the constantly varying guidance of the Spirit of God. One is growingly impressed in our study of the book, that we cannot tabulate rules or regulations as to spiritual conduct therefrom. Underlying principles are revealed on every page, and in every movement.

Matters of supreme, permanent, and abiding value to the work of the Church and the Christian missionary, and the testimony of the Word, are revealed by the apparently most accidental and unimportant events. Things upon which we in this age are apt to lay great emphasis are either wholly absent, or perpetually changing.

In this paragraph then, the story of the work in Europe gathers round two places, Thessalonica and Beroea; and in each it is the same story of triumph and travail, which we beheld in Philippi, and which we have observed in the whole of the apostolic work.

Let us first study the story; and then let us gather certain lessons therefrom of permanent value and immediate application.

There is a difference between these two places, not merely between the Jews inhabiting them, but between the two places themselves, Thessalonica and Beroea. Thessalonica was on the highway; Bercea was on the byway. Thessalonica was on the ordinary route of travel. Having landed where Paul did, and calling at Philippi, Amphipolis and Apollonia were practically in a direct line of march along the great and well-known Roman road, and so also was Thessalonica. Beroea was on a byway. It is an interesting fact which Farrar records, about Cicero, when he tells us that:

“. . . In his passionate philippic against Piso, he says to Piso that after his gross maladministration of Macedonia, he was so unpopular that he had to slink into Thessalonica, incognito and by night; and that from thence, unable to bear the concert of wailers, and the hurricane of complaints, he left the main road, and fled to the out-of-the-way town of Beroea.”

That is an interesting fragment of profane history, but it illuminates this story. To Thessalonica Paul came, and he came, not slinking in, but quite openly and definitely. By night he quietly escaped from Thessalonica, and as Piso had done, he went to an out-of-the-way place, off the main line.

Therefore in this paragraph we have the revelation of triumph and travail upon the highway of a definite line of progress; and have the account of triumph and travail on the byway, in the unexpected place; the place to which it would appear Paul did not come for the specific purpose of missionary enterprise, but for an escape into solitude for a little from the persecuting spirit of the Jews.

Paul first paused at Thessalonica. He went to the synagogue of the Jews. What wonderful fidelity to principle is manifested in this fact. Think of all that we have already considered, of his experiences in those Asian cities on the first missionary journey. He had gone in town after town, first to the Jews; sometimes he had to turn, with determination and proclamation from them to the Gentiles because of their hostility. All the persecutions that followed this man through those Asian cities were due to the Jews.

Here was a new beginning. He had left behind him that first chapter of his work. He had followed the vision of the man of Macedonia. He had crossed from Troas to Philippi, and at Philippi where there was no synagogue, he had gone to the Jewish place of prayer by the river. What an opportunity for breaking a tradition that had been so costly to him. Having followed that method throughout the cities of Asia, he was now in Europe, and remembering the persecutions of the past, he might have avoided them by going straight to the Gentiles.

But he who presently wrote his Roman letter, and called God to witness that he had continual sorrow and heaviness of heart for his brethren after the flesh, went even in Thessalonica, in spite of all the experiences of the past, to the Jew first.

So we find him in the synagogue, and that for three Sabbaths. His messages therein were taken “from the scriptures.” That of course means the Scriptures of the Old Testament. There was no New Testament in the hand of the apostle as he went on his journeyings. Whether there were any of the Gospel narratives extant, as authentic stories, who shall tell? The Scriptures that he would use in the Jewish synagogue would be the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The words “opening and alleging,” reveal his method.

The word “opening” here is Luke’s word, only occurring in one other place in the New Testament, and that in his Gospel the twenty-fourth chapter, when he records that Jesus, after His resurrection, opened the Scriptures to the men walking to Emmaus. Paul now did exactly the same thing in that synagogue in Thessalonica. The word simply means making plain, expounding, giving an exposition. “Alleging” is a word which may mislead, and while this is a technical matter, we must nevertheless note it, for it is important. The word does not mean stating dogmatically. It means setting out in order, and displaying. Paul took up the Scriptures, and opened them, and explained them; and he did so by a sequence of arrangement, laying out before them the relation of this part to that, and of that to the other; of the law to the prophets, and of the law and the prophets to the hagiographa, the psalms, or devotional writings.

Two facts he declared in that synagogue. He first declared that according to their Scriptures, Messiah must suffer and rise. Taking up the Old Testament, he showed them that their own Scriptures declared that their own Messiah must die and rise again. That was the first burden of his teaching. The order in which it is stated here reveals to us the fact that before he told the story of Christ, he made them see what their own Scriptures taught about their own Messiah; and this was exactly what the Jew had entirely failed to grasp, or had completely forgotten. With the ancient prophecies in our hands, with the one prophecy of Isaiah for instance, it seems as though it were impossible for men ever to have studied them without seeing that the pathway of the Servant of God toward His triumph must be that of travail; but the Jew had failed to see it.

There were in those days interpreters of the prophecies, scribes and teachers, rabbis, who had discovered a difficulty, and who were teaching that two Messiahs would come for the fulfillment of the ancient ideal; one who should be a suffering Messiah; and another who should be a Messiah winning battles, and establishing the throne. That view possibly lurked behind John’s question to Jesus upon one occasion: “Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?” It did not reveal John’s ignorance of the prophetic writings, but his familiarity with them, and his sense of difficulty. While he had declared Jesus to be the Christ, he heard of no mighty manifestations of power by which the sceptre should be wrested from the Roman government. He had expected to hear of these things, and in prison he thought to himself, Are these rabbis right after all? Must there be two Messiahs?" Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?" Is there to be a second? That was, I think, the meaning of his question.

Paul’s work was now to declare to these Jews that the Scriptures taught that the Messiah must suffer, and that He must rise again. One wonders what particular passage he took, whether the prophecy of Isaiah, or those still more mystic and profound words in Hosea. Could he possibly have omitted that sixteenth psalm, which Peter on the day of Pentecost definitely quoted as applicable to the resurrection of Jesus?

“Thou wilt not leave My soul to Sheol; Neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy One to see corruption,” and which Paul himself quoted at another place? Or did he do that which his Master did, after resurrection; commencing at Moses and the prophets and the psalms or hagiographa, open to them the whole of the Scriptures ? Be that as it may, we know that the first part of his work was to show these people what their own Scriptures really taught, that their long-looked for, and hoped-for, and longed-after, and waited-for Messiah, must die and rise again.

Then he declared that the One Who fulfilled that portraiture of their ancient Scriptures was Jesus Himself. He preached to them concerning the Kingdom, for they charged him with preaching another King, one Jesus, and when he wrote to the Thessalonians, he comforted them because they were suffering for their loyalty to the Kingdom principle. He preached the Kingship of Christ, and showed Him to be Messiah to the Jews. The revelation of Paul’s method in Thessalonica is that the true understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures must issue in proof of the Messiahship of Jesus. So he presented Christ to them.

There was triumph in Thessalonica. Some of the Jews believed, convinced against their prejudice; devout Greeks believed in numbers, convinced without prejudice; and some of the chief women, attracted by the new light that flashed from this great evangel upon them, who were so largely without light and without hope, were also persuaded. The words here “were persuaded,” signify convinced by the argument of the teacher. They consorted with the apostles, joined the community, and in that hour we see the birth of that Church in Thessalonica, to which two letters were presently sent by Paul.

But the work in Thessalonica was not one o triumph only. It was one of trial, springing out of the jealousy of the Jews. The word “jealousy” is a very awkward word here. It should read springing out of the zeal of the Jews; for it is the very word that Paul used concerning them in his Roman letter, “I bear them witness that they have a seal for God, but not according to knowledge.”

These Jews stirred up “certain vile fellows”; if we would translate in the actual language, which is somewhat colloquial, they stirred up the loafers of the market-place, gathered a multitude, and caused an uproar.

The charge brought against these preachers was first a charge of revolution, but in its form it is a wonderful revelation of the victories already won. “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.” The central charge, however, was that of high treason against Caesar; that they were preaching “that there is another King, one Jesus.”

With the result we are familiar. The apostle left Thessalonica; but the victory there must be measured by the Thessalonian letters. It became a centre from which the Gospel sounded out through the whole region, even after the apostle had left; and the Thessalonians themselves are revealed in his description, “Ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.” Paul and Silas were sent away. Jason the man into whose house the apostle went, the man whom they arrested, and bound over to keep the peace, helped the apostle to escape. He was a man of Thessalonica; we know him by just a few graphic touches, for we never hear of him again, except perchance he may be referred to in the sixteenth chapter of Romans as Paul’s kinsman.

So they passed to Bercea, and there again to the synagogue of the Jews they came. Undoubtedly the process of preaching was identical, but notice the difference. These people were more noble than those in Thessalonica,: in that they searched the Scriptures daily, examining them, sifting the evidence. In what did their nobility consist? We generally say in reading the story, that they were more noble in that they manifested greater readiness to receive. That is so, but in what did that readiness consist? In that they were determined to find out. It was not quick belief that made them noble, for they were sceptical; but their scepticism was accompanied by determined anxiety to find out.

The noble hearer is not the man who immediately says Yes, to the interpretation of the preacher. The noble hearer is the man who appeals again and again to the Scriptures themselves, to find out if these things be true. I sometimes think that the great advantage that the Beroeans had was that they lived on the byway, and not on the highway. We who live in cities come to strange conceits, that all the intelligence is in the cities. By no means. Some men have an idea that to preach in a London pulpit is the most difficult thing.

It is by no means necessarily so. Among the mountains of Wales, and in the highlands of Scotland, are men and women who will make the preacher preach as it is by no means necessary that he should always do in London; men who will get their Bibles down, and say, Is this man right?

That is nobility. It is not the nobility of readiness to believe anything. It is the nobility of being determined to find out if human interpretation is in accord with the actual Scripture. Paul interpreted the Scripture before the Beroeans, and they listened with a sceptical and honest enquiry, a determination to seek and know and examine, and they made the Scriptures the test of the interpretation. It is an interesting fact that the word used for the belief of those in Thessalonica is not the word used for the belief of those in Beroea. The root significance is the same, but in the very difference of the words there is a shade of meaning.

The Revisers have changed the word in the case of the Thessalonians. With a fine accuracy they render it that those in Thessalonica were persuaded, and that those in Bercea believed. The word used of those in Thessalonica means persuaded by argument. The word used of those in Bercea means that fullness of belief which is not only persuasion by argument, but full spiritual apprehension. The men who were not so noble, needed persuasion, and came into belief on the ground of persuasion; but the men who sifted for themselves, and were sceptical, came to find a larger faith their own.

Then we may expect that these men more noble, in the Out-of-the-way, quiet village, Bercea, will become a great company, and we shall hear much of them later on. There is never a word! And we might imagine that Thessalonica, with its faith following upon persuasion, would never be heard of again! But it was not so. There are two letters sent to the Thessalonians and Paul declared that the Word sounded out from them through the whole region. Does that mean then that the Church in Thessalonica was a finer one than that in Bercea? By no means. Often the people and the churches about which least is said are the mightiest.

The story of this paragraph is but a continuation of the whole book. Every page reveals the relation between travail and triumph in the Christian campaign. This great movement with which Paul is now so closely identified, commenced when the persecution in Jerusalem broke out, and the witnesses were scattered from Jerusalem, through Judea and Samaria. Out of the travail came the triumph; but triumph produces travail. Every new victory is a new baptism in blood. Every new victory is a new era of persecution in some form.

But travail always leads to triumph, and so the ceaseless cycles run; triumph unto travail; travail back into triumph. Let the principle be applied to our own lives. The measure of our triumph in work for God is always the measure of our travail. No propagative work is done save at cost; and every genuine triumph of the Cross brings after it the travail of some new affliction, and some new sorrow. So we share the travail that makes the Kingdom come.

We notice also the value of the Scriptures in the Christian campaign. The method of the preachers at Thessalonica is the method of the preacher for all time. The one work of preaching is the opening and alleging, or displaying of the teaching of the Scriptures about Christ; the presentation of Christ as fulfilling these Scriptures. At Bercea we learn the true attitude of the hearers. Two things are stated: they heard, that is the open mind; they examined, that is the mind of caution. Those are needed to-day. First, the open mind. God have mercy on us if we have closed the mind, so that no new light can come in. But God have mercy on us if we open windows and doors to anything that claims to be light. There needs to be the cautious mind. “Take heed how ye hear.”

The final note of the paragraph is its revelation of the lines of victory in the Christian campaign. What are the most difficult conditions with which preachers have to deal? Religious prejudice and religious pride. What are the most hopeful conditions as here revealed? The heart and mind open, as in the case of these Greek women. In that is a revelation of the glory and beauty of the Gospel. “What comfort was there for a Greek woman in the cold gray eyes of Athene, or the stereotyped smile of the voluptuous Aphrodite?” What was there in Greek religions or philosophic thought for a woman?

I am not surprised to read that these Greek women turned readily to the great Gospel. What is there in the world to-day for womanhood other than this great evangel? Let there be no undervaluing of the meaning of this. The women of high and noble estate, the convinced daughters of Greek culture, sick at heart because of the degradation of womanhood, as the result of Greek philosophy, turned to this great evangel with its broad and spacious outlook, with its light flashing and shining upon them. These were great victories.

But the Greek men also listened, and were eager; because their religion was dead. In the times in which Paul lived, there were Greek proselytes crowding to Judaism by the hundreds. They were tired of false religion, tired of the philosophies that had no satisfaction for the soul. They had turned to Judaism because it brought them the doctrine of one God; but they were without the Jewish prejudice and pride, and when this great Word came to them, the Word of the one God, and the one God manifest, and the one God winning victory by death, some of the profoundest secrets of their own mysteries were drawn into the light and redeemed. The greatest triumphs of the Gospel to-day are not won among the people who are religiously proud and prejudiced. The hardest place in which the Gospel has to win its victory is a congregation hardened to its message, and satisfied with its external forms of religion. With what perfect understanding one reads that there were occasions when Paul turned from the people of religious pride and prejudice, to reach the people with hearts and minds hungry and ready for the Gospel.

These after all, are preliminary revelations of the great message to Europe. The complete unveiling came at Athens.

Acts 17:16-34 In certain respects there is no more fascinating story in the book of the Acts of the Apostles than this of Paul in Athens. The very conjunction of names is arresting and interesting; -Athens, “the most sacred shrine of the fair humanities of paganism”;-Paul, the most faithful incarnation of the Christian temper and passion.

Our business is with Paul in Athens. Pursued by Jews from Thessalonica, the apostle was conducted by loving disciples, who had been gathered in Berea; they accompanied him on that journey of two hundred miles to Athens, and then left him. Luke had been left behind in Thessalonica. Silas and Timothy had remained at Bercea. The first declaration of this passage is that he was waiting in Athens. That in itself is an arresting and suggestive word, for it reminds us that we shall see how a Christian man waits in a godless city. Therein is the whole value of this scene.

The story may be divided into two parts. First of all, beginning with the sixteenth verse, and ending in the twenty-first (Acts 17:16-21), we have what may be described as the first mutual impressions; the impression that Athens made on Paul, and the impression that Paul made on Athens. Then immediately following, beginning with the twenty-second verse, and on to the end of the chapter (Acts 17:22-34), we have the second part of the narrative, which we may describe as the final mutual impressions. Here we first find the final impression which Paul made on Athens, and then the final impression which Athens made on Paul. It is the story of a Christian man in a decadent pagan city, for Athens was then long past its highest and its best.

Notice first the impression that Athens made on him. He was provoked in spirit. Notice the impression that he first made upon Athens; he preached of Jesus and the resurrection; and the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were interested, and asked him to tell them something more definitely.

There are three things to note as to the impression which the city made on Paul. First it aroused his interest; secondly, it stirred his emotion; and thirdly, it inspired his service, and drove him to attempt even there also, to discharge that great debt which he referred to in his Roman letter, in the words, “I am debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians.”

The city aroused his interest. We are familiar with a criticism of Paul, which declares that he passed through all these Greek cities, and even came to Athens, and never by word, or speech, or in letter afterwards written, did he seem to have taken the slightest notice of the things which principally attracted other men. We are impressed with the fact that he was not impressed by things which would impress other men. All that splendid history of Athens, running back at least four centuries before he came to the city, to those wonderful days when Socrates stood on Mars’ Hill, perhaps almost exactly where he stood, was ignored. Of the whole of the outstanding names of Greek thought, Paul hardly referred to one, save to certain poets, not among the finest, the highest, or the noblest. One writer declared that it was easier to find in Athens a god than to find a man; which was a reference to the fact that Athens was filled with statuary of the most wonderful and the most beautiful kind.

It was the very home of art, but there was no reference to the art of Athens by Paul. It was the centre of philosophy.

He did come into contact with certain of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers; but it is a very remarkable fact how in his dealing with them, he ignored their peculiar philosophies, or only referred to them to show their folly. Here was a man indifferent to the very things which had peculiarly arrested attention, to the very things which had caused other men to write at length of their beauty. There was another traveller who came, perhaps only fifty years later, certainly less than a century later than Paul,-Pausanias the traveller. He gave, in the six volumes of his descriptions of Greece, more room to Athens than to any other city. His descriptions were detailed, and very remarkable. He described how, landing at Piraeus, and riding up from the port into the city, one encountered temples to Demeter; and how, scattered through the city, there were statues of every kind, in stone, in marble, in wood, in gold, in silver.

One cannot read Pausanias without feeling the artistic magnificence of Athens. But this man Paul saw everything, and Luke summarizes his outlook upon all these things by one phrase “full of”!

The brilliant Frenchman, Renan, says that the ugly little Jew abused Greek art by describing the statues as idols. This man was unimpressed by the things which impressed others. These very things of history, of art, of philosophy, when Paul and Pausanias came to Athens, were not alive; they were dead. Let me quote some brief sentences in description: “At that time these men of Athens were trading on the memory of achievements not her own.” So much for her history. What of her philosophy? She was “repeating with dead lips the echo of old philosophies.” What of her art and her glory? “Her splendour was no longer an innate effulgence, but a lingering reflex.”

So when we are inclined to criticize Paul because he was not impressed, though he was in the midst of things of art and philosophy, we should remember that they were not living, but dead. Notwithstanding the splendour that remained, there was lack of life everywhere in Athens when he came to the city.

But what did Paul see in Athens? Two things impressed him. First the city was full of idols; secondly, one altar arrested his attention, an altar that bare an inscription, “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.” In that little phrase “full of idols” is packed everything that Pausanias gave in detail. Pausanias described the temples, and said that as he moved up to the centre of Athens there were altars on every hand. He declared that there were altars devoted to Philosophy and Beneficence, to Rumour and Shame. The Athenians were deifying, not only men, but ideas and capacities.

In every niche in the city there was some representation which these men were worshipping. Pausanias also tells us that there were altars to an unknown God; and Paul discovered one of these, “I found also an altar with this inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.” These were the things that arrested his attention; the idols, and this one altar.

What was the effect produced upon him by what he saw? “His spirit was provoked within him.” Do not soften that word “provoked.” The Greek word is the one from which we derive our word paroxysm. “His spirit was provoked within him.” In the midst of the beauty and the glory and the art and the philosophy and the history of Athens, proud and wonderful Athens, this man Paul was in a rage, was provoked. The emotion produced was not piquant and passing, the emotion of a tourist. His spirit was provoked within him, he was angry, he was in a rage, and that because every idol he saw demonstrated the capacity of the man who built it, for God; and because all the idols demonstrated the degradation of that selfsame capacity. He was provoked because he knew that these idols and temples and altars all meant that these men were made for worship, and for God; and he knew that these idols, temples, and altars issued in that diffusion of devotion that had broken up the individual man, disorganized society, and made Athens what she was. Pausanias was a tourist, looking at the art and things of beauty in the city. Pausanias did not understand the slavery that was beneath; he seems to have been entirely indifferent to the heartache and agony that was expressing itself in the degenerate philosophies which men were teaching.

But this little Jew, this great Christian, had no time for a description of art, of painting, and the things of beauty, because his heart was hot and angry in the consciousness of the degradation of humanity, issuing from humanity’s false attempts to satisfy its profoundest need, that of God, with all its idols and its temples, its worship of Athene, the mother of the air, its worship of Demeter, the mother of the earth, its worship of Zeus, the god of force; these altars to Shame, to Rumour, and Philanthropy; these idols everywhere. Men were worshipping everything, and therefore were worshipping nothing. At last the little Jew, the great Christian, found one altar to an unknown God, and that altar for him was the focussing of a tragedy. Paul saw and read into it the ultimate agony of idolatry; that, unable to satisfy itself with its many gods, restless by the very diffusion of devotion, it travels out beyond and knows nothing, and yet is sure that in the beyond is the thing it wants; and it erects an altar to the unknown God.

Therefore a paroxysm, a rage, and a driving, and a fire, and a flaming passion, in the heart of the man. It was the rage of truth with a lie, it was the anger of the constructive against the destructive. It was the passion of a man who found in Athens capacity for God, and that capacity degraded and spoiled for lack of God. So the first impression that Athens made upon him was that of the arousing of his interest, and the second was that of the stirring of his emotion.

But it also inspired his service. He began his work, first in the synagogue, and then in the market-place, the Agora, where perchance Socrates four hundred years before had stood! That sermon, that wonderful address, so full of instruction for all missionary enterprise, is not the sermon he preached in the market-place. Luke has given us no details of the preachings. He does not record what Paul talked about in the market-place, and to the groups; because he did not imagine any man would need to be told. Presently we find out, because of what the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers said.

The burden of his talking had been that of Jesus and the resurrection, and that had startled them, “May we know what this new teaching is?” Think of the fitness of it; it was the gospel for a dead city; Jesus and the resurrection. Paul was not the Philistine some people imagine him to have been. He saw the beauties, he felt the irresistible appeal of the glamour of Athens; and therefore in the midst of the death of its history, and of its art, and the moribund condition of its philosophy, he preached Jesus and the resurrection. He knew full well that by that risen One alone, could Athens arise from the ashes of her dead self to higher and to nobler things.

What impression did Paul first make upon Athens? He went to the synagogue, but there is no word of any impression made there. An argument from silence may be dangerous, and yet it is noticeable that there is no record of their receiving his message, as they had done in other places. Neither is there any record of their objecting. These Jews were living and worshipping in a city that was always listening to new things. Therefore they would be more likely to listen to him when he talked of what seemed to them to be a new thing. On the other hand they would be less likely to persecute him, or they would have had Athens on his side.

An impression was made in the market-place, and made principally upon these philosophers, Epicureans and Stoics. The Epicureans were those who declared that the highest good is pleasure. The Stoics were those who declared the highest good is virtue. And yet when Paul came to Athens, these philosophies were degenerate. The philosophy of the Epicureans as then taught, and as then practised, was degenerate. Epicurus had declared that the highest in life was pleasure, but by that he had meant something far higher and nobler than the men understood in the day in which Paul came to Athens.

He had lived the garden life; and according to his teaching, pleasure consisted in freedom from physical pain, and mental unrest; and the way in which he declared freedom from physical pain and mental unrest to be possible, was the way to borrow a modern phrase of the simple life. The ideal of Epicurus was high and noble, but the whole philosophy was degenerate; and the interpretation of the meaning of the declaration that the highest good is pleasure, was at fault. The whole story may be told in one word. The Epicurean philosophy in practice, habit, and experience, when Paul came to Athens, was lust, in its most degrading form.

The Stoic philosophers had declared that the highest good was virtue, but that idea also was degenerate. There was theory without practice. There was the assumption, and the profession of indifference to the things which the Epicureans taught, but there was insincerity; and beneath the profession there was the most degrading form of evil; and the ultimate word of the Stoic was suicide. Yet these were the men who listened to this man preaching.

The impression he made on them was not the same in all cases. There were those who spoke of him with contempt. They said, “What would this babbler say?” this seed-pecker, this man who is content to have picked up something here and there, and to go round reciting it; this man who gets his living by telling tales, this ignoramus, this babbler. To understand it we have only to listen to the way in which some men still treat the gospel preacher. But there were others who said, “He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods.” There was a gleam of light. These men were really so ignorant of what Paul meant that they said Resurrection was one god; and Jesus another; they deified an idea.

These men were impressed that Paul was speaking in the realm of religion. “He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods.” Then the conception created curiosity, for when we read, “They took hold of him,” we must not think of any violent action on their part. They brought him to Mars’ Hill, and said, “May we know what this new teaching is, which is spoken by thee?” They placed him on what Pausanias described as the stone of impudence, where men had to defend their facts while the listeners, sat round. That is the first impression he has made on Athens: contempt; a question as to whether there is not perhaps some profounder claim; and a dilettante curiosity to hear what he said.

We are far from the Athens of Paul and of Pausanias. Yet sometimes I think how near we are. History is interwoven with the influence of Christ, and men are forgetting Him. Art has been glorified by making Christ its supreme subject, and is drifting away from Him. Philosophy has been permeated with the conceptions of Christ, and is now inclined to ignore Him. We are largely living in the past, and our cities are as full of idols as was Athens.

The influence of Christ has made impossible the erection of material altars, or the putting up of images that we worship, but the spirit of idolatry is still with us; and I very much question whether one can find any temple, or altar or idol in Athens, that cannot be reproduced in the great cities of to-day. We are still worshipping Athene, in the deification of the mental; and Demeter too, the earth mother, in the apotheosis of the physical; and Zeus, the god of force, even until this hour. We also have our altars reared, even to philosophy, most certainly to rumour. Rumour, the base goddess, has had her scriptures issued morning by morning until the very life of man is made restless by her lying. We are worshipping shame; there are altars to shame upon our highways everywhere. We are still idolaters.

The Epicurean is with us still; indifferent. The Stoic is here still, gathered into so-called ethical societies. Where are the Christian men and women of the city? We shall find them and know them by the paroxysm of their unrest. But that is not the ordinary stamp of Christian men and women. They are quiet, content, reverent, worshipful.

No; if there be no paroxysm, no force, no agony, no heart-break, no sacrifice, they are pagans and not Christians. F. W. H. Myers was a poetic interpreter of Paul, and so of the Christian experience. Here is the story of every Christian man in a great city.

“Oft when the Word is on me to deliver Lifts the illusion, and the truth lies bare Desert or throng, the city or the river Melts in a lucid paradise of air. “Only like souls I see the folk thereunder Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings. Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder Sadly contented with a show of things. “Then with a rush, the intolerable craving Shivers throughout me, like a trumpet call, Oh, to save these, to perish for their saving, Die for their life, be offered for them all!” That is Christianity. May we know it experimentally.

Acts 17:22-34 In our previous study we considered the first impression which Athens made on Paul, and the first impression which Paul made on Athens. In this paragraph we have the result of that contemptuous curiosity which the Athenians manifested, in the account of Paul’s answer delivered on Mars’ Hill.

This is the final scene in Athens, so far as the New Testament is concerned. There is no further reference to it. In writing to the Thessalonians Paul reminds them that he sent Timothy from Athens to them; and we may imaginatively fill up much by that reference. After Paul had waited a while, Timothy came to him. He did not however retain him, but sent him back to Thessalonica. Paul departed from Athens alone.

We are now to see him in the Areopagus, that is, in the midst of the council. Mars’ Hill was the place of the Supreme Court. The interpretation of the passage which supposes that Paul stood there as a prisoner, is not warranted by the story. I believe these Stoic philosophers took him away to the greater quietness and seclusion of the Areopagus, that they might hear what he had to say more particularly. He stood there, in all probability upon the stone of impudence, which Pausanias described so particularly, perhaps in the very place where Socrates had stood, a prisoner. Athens was not so much in earnest in Paul’s day as it had been in that of Socrates.

These were decadent days in Athens. All around were the signs and symbols of departed greatness. Philosophers were bandying words with each other, but making no application of their philosophy to life. Art was practically dead, save as the city was full of things artistic, all having come from a departed age. Four centuries had passed since Socrates had stood there; and now there Paul stood; but Athens, having lost its earnestness, had not arraigned him. He was not on trial.

The word made use of-“they took hold of him”-does not suggest violence, but courtesy. They led him there. There was no passionate protest in the mind of these Athenian philosophers. That would have been a far more healthy condition of affairs. Paul never hopelessly abandoned a centre of persecution, but he abandoned this. These men were indulging in dilettante fooling with philosophies and religions, and they wanted to hear what he had to say, this babbler, this seed-pecker, for they “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.”

It was a great moment, and a great location. There at his feet as he stood on that stone of impudence, was the Theseum, the wonderful Doric temple, which abides even until this hour, one of the most perfect examples of art. On his right stretched the upper city, the Akropolis; and there, in all its significance, the Parthenon devoted to the worship of Athene. Everywhere were altars and temples and images; statuary the most beautiful and perfect, in marble, in stone, in gold, in silver, in bronze, and in wood.

Still further let it be remembered, as we said before, this address was not Paul’s preaching of the evangel. This was his defence of his preaching, under circumstances that were peculiar, to the place and occasion. When he tarried and waited, and saw the city given to idols, when his spirit was provoked within him, swept by a paroxysm of rage, the rage of truth with a lie, the protest of the constructive passion against the destructive element, then he preached his evangel to individuals and groups in the busy market-places. To this, the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers had listened, and they said, “What would this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.” The address delivered on Mars’ Hill was Paul’s answer to that enquiry.

We shall now only attempt to gather from this address the final mutual impressions, and deduce therefrom some lessons of permanent value. We will notice first, the impression that Paul now made upon Athens, in the person of these Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, as they, having challenged him, he answered their challenge; and secondly the final impression Athens made upon Paul.

To discover the impression which Paul made on Athens we need to consider first his method, then his actual teaching, and finally the result.

There can be no study of this address of Paul on Mars’ Hill that does not lead to the conclusion that his method was conciliatory. There is no single sentence or phrase that has in it anything of harshness. In the English Revised Version the twenty-second (Acts 17:22) verse reads, “Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye men of Athens, In all things I perceive that ye are somewhat superstitious.” The marginal reading suggests the substitution of the word “religious” for “superstitious.” The Greek word was certainly sometimes used in the sense of superstitious, and sometimes in the sense of religious. I believe however that the American revisers were right when they translated thus: “Ye men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are very religious.” Paul really began with the note of conciliation, and from beginning to end there was nothing calculated to offend, or drive away the men whom he desired to gain. In this address he recognized their religious instincts. Every idol proved capacity for God.

Every temple demonstrated man’s need of worship. The idols did not prove that men would find God. The temples did not give evidence of the fact that through them men would discover the central place of worship. But these things did reveal the religious capacity of the men who made them; and that capacity the apostle recognized.

He found the open door to their mind in one of their own altars. He discovered as he looked at the city, one altar with the strange inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. He made that altar, not one which he had erected, but one which belonged to their own city, the open door through which he proceeded.

He also cited their own poets. He quoted from Aratus and Cleanthes. Aratus, by the way, was also of Cilicia. With these writings in all probability this man Paul, brought up in Tarsus, would be familiar. The whole address is characterized by the spirit of conciliation, of courtesy, of kindness. He would capture these men by an attitude before he proceeded,-as he did ere he had done,-to denounce their activities, to show the unutterable folly of their methods, and finally to proclaim to them the great evangel.

Again, his method was apologetic, in the true sense of that word. In answer to criticism he took up one of their own words. Compare here verses eighteen and twenty-three (Acts 17:18-23).

“Certain also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, What would this babbler say? Other, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods,” of foreign gods.

“As I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto you.”

“He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods.” No, said the apostle, I am not a setter forth of a foreign god; I am here to set forth the God to Whom you have already erected an altar. His word was an answer to theirs, and this use of a word had in it the force of an arresting argument.

His speech was apologetic moreover in that it was a defence of their own truth. Their poets had said, We are the offspring of God. Paul would defend their own truth against their abuse of it. Being the offspring of God we ought not to degrade God by making Him of gold, or silver, or wood. The poets of Athens had declared that men are offspring of Deity; and yet the men of Athens had made images less than themselves. That action was the result of a false deduction from their own truth.

If these men made something less than themselves, and worshipped that, they were degrading the truth that their poets had sung to them. They ought to worship the God of Whom they were the offspring; not the workmanship of their own hands which, at best, were base imitations of themselves. So he attempted to redeem their own truth from misapprehension and misapplication.

And finally, it was apologetic, in that it was an exposition of their own problems. In that inscription was discovered the final problem, not of Athens only, but of all paganism. To AN UNKNOWN GOD; that was the margin, the end of everything. All philosophies were silent there. No temple answered that. No idol cut and devised by craft and cunning of skilful workmen could solve that riddle. Athens knew that there was such a problem, that of the unknown God. The apostle said in effect: All the unutterable agony of your need is focussed and emphasized in that one inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD; and I declare that God to you. Thus in answer to their criticism, in defence of their own truth, and in exposition of their own problems, he delivered his message.

But his method was not only that of conciliation and apology, it was also that of positivism, of authority his-was a dogmatic statement. To summarize the whole authoritative declaration of this apostle on Mars’ Hill; it was first affirmed of God; and that secondly, in order to the reclamation of man; and so finally leading up to the proclamation of the central fact of the Christian evangel. He affirmed God. He did it in order to the reclamation of man from false conceptions of God, and false ideals concerning his own life. He thus gradually moved by this masterly method, to the declaration of the evangel.

This he introduced by saying, “The times of ignorance God overlooked.” The temples to Demeter, Athene, Zeus; the idols; the altars, were the pride of Athens. But there was that one altar to the unknown God, and that was the symbol of the time of their ignorance! Thus with one word the Christian apostle dismissed the whole fact of paganism, it was “ignorance.” Yet there was nothing unkind in the word, and he distinctly declared that “The times of ignorance God overlooked,” but he went on to say that a new day had come, a new era had dawned, created by the Christian evangel which he at once proclaimed.

Looking at the teaching of the apostle then we find in it theology, philosophy, and religion.

What was the theology that he preached on Mars’ Hill to these Epicurean and Stoic philosophers? He declared that God is Creator, that He is Sovereign, that He is Governor. If these truths have become commonplace, because of our Christian atmosphere and thinking, remember what these things meant as he uttered them there; how in the courteous and yet positive statement of the Christian apostle he was denying the whole theology of the men who had asked him to speak to them. The Stoics were Pantheists, and the final reduction of the Epicurean view of the universe was that of Atheism. Paul declared that the God, to Whom some of them had erected an altar, and called unknown, was the God he set forth to them. He declared Him to be the Creator, the Sustainer; not the sum and substance of all things, but the Cause and Creator of all things.

He declared that God cannot be expressed in the sum total of the things of which men are conscious. He lies far out beyond the ultimate bound of the most stupendous universe of which man has become conscious. He is the Creator.

Yet further he declared Him to be the Sovereign Lord. He is no impersonal abstraction, no mere tendency running through all things, but the Sovereign Master of all; not One Who is imprisoned in the creation, and the slave of the creation, but the One through Whom all created things came, and Who upholds them by the word of His power.

Therefore finally he announced that He is the Supreme Governor of the universe: “He made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation.” Thus he declared that the cycles and the centuries are all of God, as well as the things material. As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews also wrote, God fashions the ages. Thus he reminded them that they were not living in Athens as the result of some fortuitous accident; but that God had fixed the bounds of human habitation. He claimed that God was the sovereign Lord and Master, that therefore He was transcendent, and more than all the rest.

Therefore he argued that temples are useless to Him, for He “dwelleth not in temples made by hands”; that all altars are in some sense worthless, for altars are places to which men bring gifts to God. He cannot be served by gifts. He does not require anything men can offer Him. If men are His offspring, do they imagine that these things that have no breath, no emotion, no intellect, which men have to carry and place and fix, and which never move when placed, can express God? Surely these Epicurean and Stoic philosophers had a vision of greater and nobler things, as Paul talked to them.

The philosophy of all this is discovered in his insistence upon the fact that God is transcendent, above, beyond all, and yet that He is immanent. “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” This was the startling challenge he flung out to these Greeks. Discover God by attaining to what you are in yourselves. You are His offspring. Why then try to express Him in these idols which, at their best, are poor and feeble and foolish imitations of yourselves? Paul had seen all their things of artistic beauty, those idols in gold, and silver, but he set up against those golden images one Athenian man, and the gold was seen to be dross. That is always the Christian outlook.

We call to mind the fine sarcasm of Peter’s word, you were not redeemed, “with corruptible things, with silver or gold.” This man Paul stood there in the midst of Mars’ Hill, and said to these men, If you really want to find God, do not degrade yourselves in erecting images of gold and silver. Listen to the deepest fact of your own being; be silent in the presence of the mystery of what you are; and then look out beyond to that unknown God Whom I declare to you.

The final thing in the teaching was that of religion. “The times of ignorance God overlooked; but now”! A new hour had struck on the horologue of eternity, and men in time were arrested, for a new day had dawned. What is this new day? “Now He commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.” Why? “Inasmuch as He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man Whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.” Into those few sentences the whole fact of the Christian religion is condensed. The great word is the first, “Repent.” The central thing the apostle declared on Mars’ Hill was that God had appointed a day in which He would judge the world in righteousness. How were men to know that this was true? He has “given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.” That is the proof.

The duty was declared in the word “Repent.” The times of ignorance God had overlooked. God had seen those proud temples in Athens. God had seen those altars and those idols, but He had overlooked them in pity and compassion. But a new hour had now come. God had appointed a Man by Whom He will judge the world in righteousness. That was not a reference to a final day of judgment.

It was a declaration that God had not only willed that ultimately the whole world should be governed upon principles of righteousness, He had done more; He had ordained the Man Who is to be King. The government of the world in righteousness would be brought about, not by an idol, not by an altar, not by an abstraction, not by a philosophy, but by a Man. Of that God had given assurance in that He had raised Him from the dead. To deny that resurrection is to have no evangel, and no Christian religion; and all talk of the judgment of the world in righteousness is futile unless it be true that this Man was raised from the dead.

What then was Athens to do? Repent, change its mind, think over again, reconsider its position; get away from the false conceptions, that had issued in false conduct, that had issued in false character. That is the key word of the evangel. Think again in the light of the day when God will judge the world in righteousness by the Man Whom He hath ordained.

What was the result? When they heard of the resurrection, some mocked, and others postponed. Humanity is the same in every age. These are not dead things at which we are looking. When did they begin their mockery and decide for postponement? At the point of resurrection?

No, that was the excuse. Where then? At the point of moral application. While Paul discussed round their altar the doctrine of an unknown God, while he enunciated philosophies, even though his enunciations contradicted their philosophies, they listened; but when he said, “Now He commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent: inasmuch as He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness,” they mocked. Men often find an intellectual excuse for refusing to be moral when God demands morality. Paul, discussing an altar and a theory of a God, will fail unless he say, “But now . . . repent.” That is the point where men begin to mock, and postpone.

But there was another result. Dionysius, Damaris, and others, believed. From Church history we know that there were wonderful results in Athens. In the next century that Church at Athens gave to the Christian Church Publius, Quadratus, Aristides, Athenagoras, and others, bishops and martyrs; and in the third century the church there was peaceable and pure. In the fourth century the Christian schools of Athens gave to the Christian Church Basil and Gregory. Men cannot wholly mock the Christian fact out of existence. Men cannot entirely postpone. The apostle may pass, his work being done, but he always leaves behind him Dionysius and Damaris. Christ always wins a vantage-ground.

What was the final impression which Athens made on Paul? Two sentences tell the story, one in this paragraph and one in the first verse of the next chapter. “He went out from them. . . . He departed from Athens.” When men were angry with him, he argued with them, and triumphed over them. When men persecuted, he went back again to the place of persecution. But for intellectual flippancy and moral dishonesty this man had no further word. That is the true attitude. It was the attitude of his Master before him. It should be the attitude of the Christian preacher to-day.

From every system of false religion there is an open door into the true. Men often decline to take the journey through that open door. The fault is with the men. Our evangel is that of the risen Man, and it is only as we lead men to Him that they begin to find the value of those true things in their own false systems. Let us be solemnly warned lest we imagine that the men who are in the midst of false systems, will one day find their way into truth, because there are elements of truth in their systems. It is well also to remember that we must always begin with the open door, but not end there. Our message is never complete until we have proclaimed to men the risen Man, and the necessity for repentance.