xvii. 17), and preached to the Jews and proselytes, and during the week

he was to be found in the busy Agora at the foot of the Acropolis and the Areopagus, conversing with any who would listen to his words.

In such a place and among such a people he was not likely to lack an audience. _All the Athenians and the strangers that were there_, writes St Luke, _spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing_ (Acts xvii. 21). To them, therefore, the coming of one like the Apostle, burning with zeal, and setting forth with learning and ability new and unheard-of doctrines respecting _Jesus and the Resurrection_ (Acts xvii. 18), would be certain to awaken no little interest. Amongst others, who heard him and marvelled at his words, were certain of the world-famous Epicurean and Stoic schools of philosophy. On them his preaching produced a varied effect. Some treated it with scorn, saying, _What doth this babbler[997] mean?_ Others remarked that he appeared to be setting forth certain new divinities. At length they determined to ascertain the point more closely, and taking him to the Areopagus[998], requested to know[999] the meaning of what he preached (Acts xvii. 19, 20).

So the Apostle took his stand, alone[1000] and unaided, “his bodily aspect still showing what he had suffered from weakness, toil, and pain,” on the summit of the hill of Areopagus (Acts xvii. 22) in the midst of temples, statues and altars dedicated to the _gods many and lords many_ of the heathen world. Horror-struck as he must have been at the spectacle of idolatry which confronted him on every side, he yet with peculiar prudence did not begin by attacking in intemperate language the national worship of his hearers. During his brief sojourn in the city he had observed an altar with the inscription, _To an unknown God_[1001] (Acts xvii. 23). “Taking his stone,” therefore, to use the expressive language of Chrysostom, “out of their own brook,” he determined to make this inscription and the mournful testimony it bore to the vanity of heathenism his text, and from it to speak to them words of eternal life.

This altar, he began, like all things else he had seen in their city, proved their carefulness in religion[1002], their earnest desire to worship, and at the same time their ignorance in worshipping. “The unknown God,” whose power, by their own confession, they acknowledged, he would declare unto them. The Lord of heaven and earth, who had made the world and all things therein, dwelt not in temples made with hands[1003]. He was subject to no exigencies, which made him need anything from his worshippers, seeing that He gave to all life, and breath, and all things. For all the nations of mankind, originally made by Him of one blood[1004], He had assigned the seasons of their existence and the bounds of their habitation, to the end that they should feel after Him, if haply they might find Him, though in truth He was not far from any of them, as one of their own poets had said,

_For we are also His offspring_[1005].

As the offspring, therefore, of God, and endowed with the faculty of knowing Him, they ought not to have imagined that the Godhead was like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by the art and device of man. Such imaginations they might have indulged in times past of ignorance. But these God had overlooked[1006], and now commanded all men everywhere to repent, for He had appointed a day, wherein He would judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He had ordained, and of this He had given to all a pledge and an assurance, in that He had raised Him from the dead (Acts xvii. 30, 31).

At this point the Apostle’s address was suddenly interrupted. Some who heard him broke out into laughter, regarding the idea of the resurrection as ridiculous. Others, in the spirit of Felix afterwards (Acts xxiv. 22, 25), said they would hear him again on the subject; and thus amidst mingled indifference and division, the hearers of the Apostle dispersed, and he _departed from among them_. The word spoken, however, did not fall utterly to the ground. Dionysius, a member of the Court of Areopagus, a woman named Damaris[1007], and some others, professed themselves believers in that Redeemer and Judge of all mankind, whom he had preached to them.