THERE was something, to such an one as Paul, that was spirit- stirring in the mighty array that he had to cope with at Athens.① He was full of courage and of hope. In the cause of Christ he hadgone on conquering, and would trust that, even here, he should conquer. He felt that it was enough, even if lie saved but one, to recompense the effort and the peril-that it was enough, if, by his faithfulness, he only delivered his own soul.
But his was a mind to look and aim at more than this. He felt the splendour of the triumph there would be in levelling the wisdom and the idolatry of Athens at the foot of the Cross. He burned to make Olym"pus② bow its awful head, and cast down its coronet of gods, at His feet who dwelt in Zion; and the p?ans of Bacchus and Apollo③ were, in his ear, but preludes to the swelling "song of Moses and of the Lamb."Animated by such feelings, we may now regard Paul, in what must have been one of the most interesting moments of even his eventful life, preparing himself on the Hill of Mars④ to address an auditory of Athenians on behalf of Christianity. He would feel the imposing associations of the spot on which he stood, where, in the darkness of night, and under the canopy of heaven, justice had been administered in its most awful form, by characters the most venerable. Accompanied as it was with the solemnities of religion, it was attended with an authority which public opinion assimilated rather with the decrees of conscience and of the gods than with the ordinary power of human tribunals.
He would look around on many an immortal trophy of architect and sculptor; where genius had triumphed, but triumphed only in the cause of that idolatry to which they hadbeen dedicated, and for which they existed. And beyond the city, clinging around its temples, like its inhabitants to their enshrined idols, would open on his view that lovely country and the sublime ocean, and the serene heavens bending over them, and bearing that testimony to the Universal Creator which man and man"s works withheld.
With all would Grecian glory be connected-the brightness of a day that was closing, and of a sun that had already set, where recollections of grandeur faded into sensations of melancholy. And he would gaze on a thronging auditory, the representatives, to his fancy, of all that had been, and of all that was; and think of the intellects with which he had to grapple, and of the hearts in whose very core he aimed to plant the barbed arrows of conviction.
There was that Multitude, so acute, so inquisitive, so polished, so athirst for novelty, and so impressible by eloquence; yet with whom a barbarian accent might break the charm of the most persuasive tongue; over whom their own oligarchy of orators would soon reassert their dominion, in spite of the invasion of a stranger; and with whom taste, feeling, and habit would throw up all their barriers against the eloquence of Christianity. There would be the Priest, astonished at an attempt so daring; and as the speaker"s design opened on his mind, anxiously, and with alternate contempt and rage,⑤measuring the strength of the Samsonwho thus grasped the
pillars of his temples, threatening to whelm him, his altars, and his gods beneath their ruins.
There would be the Stoic,⑥ in the coldness of his pride,looking sedately down, as on a child playing with children, to see what new game was afloat, and what trick or toy was now produced for wonderment. There the Epicurean,⑦ tasting, as it were, the preacher"s doctrine, to see if it promised aught of merriment; just lending enough of idle attention not to lose amusement should it offer; and venting the full explosion of his ridicule on the resurrection of the dead.
There the Sophist,⑧ won, perhaps, into something of anapproving and complacent smile by the dexterity of Paul"s introduction;⑨ but finding, as he proceeded, that this was no mere show of art or war of words; and vibrating between the habitual love of entangling, bewildering, and insulting an opponent, and the repulsiveness which there always is to such men in the language of honest and zealous conviction. There the Slave, timidly crouching at a distance to catch what stray sounds the winds might waft to him, after they had reached his master"s ears, of that doctrine, so strange and blessed, of man"s fraternity. And there the young and noble Roman, who had come to Athens for education; -not to sit like a humble scholar at a master"s feet, but, with all the pride of Rome upon his brow, to accept what artists, poets, and philosophers could offer as their homage to the lords of Earth.
If for a moment Paul was overwhelmed by the feeling, -in the circumstances, perfectly natural, -that he was the central object of such a scene and such an assemblage, there would rush upon his mind the majesty of Jehovah; and the words of the glorified Jesus; and the thunders that had struck himself to⑩the earth on the road to Damascus;and the sense of former
efforts, conflicts, and successes; and the approach of that judgment to come, whose righteousness and universality it was now his duty to announce.