met the wisdom of this world and the foolishness of preaching. Here the Cross of Christ came into contact with the best that human reason had been able to discover. Here, as elsewhere, the preached gospel will be a dividing word. The cross raised on the Areopagus will be like the cross erected by Pilate's soldiers on Calvary in this-that on one side of it there will be a scorner, and on the other side a sinner saved by faith. From the one side you hear the sneer, "If thou be Christ, save thyself and us;" from the other the prayer, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." In Athens, as in Jerusalem, it is "on either side one, and Jesus in the midst."

XXIII

ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN.

ACTS xvii. 22–31.

Patt's address on the Areopagus is, even in a merely literary and archæological point of view, one of the most beautiful gems that have descended from ancient to modern times. In itself, and in its adaptation to circumstances, it exhibits great literary power and consummate skill. It is a fine example of the preacher's own rule-that is, of becoming all things to all men that he might gain some. He grasps firmly at the same moment both his own aim as a missionary of Christ, and the peculiar character of his audience. His speech is a noble effort to win for the gospel the most cultivated and refined people of that age. It is a grand crisis; and this Jew is equal to it. The apostle of Jesus Christ is at length face to face with human civilization in its highest form, and his aim is to overturn it-to place it on a new foundation and animate it with a new spirit. He stands up, waves his hand, and begins. "Athenians, everything I behold gives evidence that you are very devotional." The words of the English version-"too superstitious"-are not happily chosen. It is quite true that in Paul's view their worship was superstition, and in his mind the word he employed attributed to them a reverence for demons. But the word was ambiguous, and to his audience it might convey the idea of religiosity without suggesting anything offensive. They will discover as he proceeds what he thinks of their religious rites; but, in the first instance, he conveys to their minds only the idea that he considered them very religious. He speaks the truth according to his own judgment; but he carefully avoids such harshness at the outset as might have bereft him of his coveted opportunity. He will not offend the audience in the first sentence.

This missionary is a philosopher as well as a Christian. He will preach Christianity, not philosophy; but he will employ philosophy as an instrument in his work. According to the symbolic phraseology of the Apocalypse, the earth will help the woman. In the intense devotion of the Athenians Paul recognized a power which might

yet be turned to good account. This appetite for the spiritual proclaims man to be the child of God, although in a state of disease it seeks impure food. This appetite may yet be fed with the bread of life. He knew that the "demon-dread" with which his audience were affected was a dark superstition; but he did not openly or offensively, in the first instance, say so. He will lead them by a gentler and, as he hopes, a surer method to the truth. He conciliates their favour by acknowledging their religiousness; and then endeavours to turn the wandering stream of their piety into the right channel.

Paul paced the streets of Athens like other strangers. He looked eagerly on every object of interest. He observed men as well as things; actions as well as scenes. He took mental note of all that he saw, and classified the facts in his memory for subsequent use. This is a most precious faculty. Any person can see the objects; not every person can arrange his observations in order, and lay them where they will be available in time of need.

Of the various objects which had attracted his attention on the streets, one now started to his memory, and leaped to his lips. "As I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God." Some pilgrims were bringing a votive offering and laying it on an altar as the apostle passed. He will turn aside and study them. He sees the inscription-"To the unknown God." The sad words are written not with a pencil in a note-book, but with a pen of iron on his memory. He weeps in secret over the blindness of the heathen. He possesses a light which will chase away that darkness. He longs to make God known in the Mediator.

These idolaters seem to have advanced one step beyond their own idolatry. They felt, and sadly owned, that with their thirty thousand deities, and their city full of temples, they had not yet discovered the truth. There remained something which they could not reach, and without which they could not be happy. After this unknown One they grope blindfold. They stretch out their arms into night, and on closing them embrace only the damp air.

The astronomers Leverrier and Adams, in separate countries at the same time, observing certain motions among the spheres which could not be accounted for by any known cause, concluded that there must be a body not yet discovered, somewhere in the regions of space in which the disturbances were observed. Seeking in the direction thus indicated, they found the far distant and hitherto unknown world. So Greek philosophy was able, from the appetites and vacancies of the human mind, which all the idols could not satisfy, to determine that there must be some God hitherto from them concealed, to whom these appetites pointed, and without whom they could not be satisfied. Their skill could discover in a general way their need, but they could not by their searching find the missing Portion for a human soul. This messenger who now speaks to them can supply the

lack. Through Christ he can make known to them the Father. "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." Paul was willing to take their confessed sense of want as inquiry after the living God, and offered to lead them by the gospel into his pre

sence.

Incidentally, while preaching to the philosophers, the apostle declares the unity of the human race. Of one blood are all nations. The blood is the life. He conceives of it as a river flowing from one fountain, and branching out into many channels. The stream has, in point of fact, been continuous, like waters that fail not. The blood that flows in the veins of this generation has descended in an uninterrupted stream from the primeval man. This stream is one; it had not several

distinct fountains.

The Greeks were a fine race of men; and they knew it. In regard to physical symmetry, they thought of themselves as the Pharisees thought of their spiritual attainments. They trusted in themselves that they were intellectually and physically beautiful, and despised others. Mankind were divided in their conception into two great sections - Greeks and Barbarians. They would not admit a community of race with other peoples; but, alas, in order to isolate and so distinguish themselves, the highest fiction they could invent was that they had sprung from the soil of Greece !

This old heathen fable is curiously cognate with the latest speculations which a sect of secular philosophers are at this day zealously propagating. The old fiction assumed a poetical form-the living men, full-bodied and perfect, sprang from the mother earth; the modern myth, as becomes its date, is dressed up in a complete suit of scientific garments. But it is the same in its substance; for it represents that men, body and soul as you now behold them, came, through an infinite succession of steps indeed, but still came, without an intelligent cause, from dead matter-that is, that they sprang from the ground. Thus human reason, when left to itself in matters that relate to God and the soul, spins round in a giddy circle, and thinks it is making progress.

After glancing at God's providential reign over the world, the preacher comes more closely home to his heathen audience, and out of their own lips convicts them of not acting up to the light they possessed. By the mouth of their own poets they professed themselves to be the offspring of God, and yet they worshipped wood and stone-the work of their own hands. It is worthy of remark here that Aratus, the poet whom Paul quotes, was a native of Tarsus. Paul must have been acquainted with his writings in the schools of his native place. An almost identical phrase occurs also in the hymn to Jupiter by Cleanthes, a distinguished disciple of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect. Perhaps the preacher glanced toward the colossal statue of Minerva, the patron saint of the city, fixed on the top of the temple that crowned the Acropolis, the pride of Athens and the work of her greatest artist, while he uttered the

withering words, "Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device."

The times of this ignorance God looked over-that is, he waited for his own set time, and then sent the Word forth from Jerusalem to the nations. In that Word he commands all men everywhere to repent. God in the gospel not only permits and invites, he commands men to repent and believe and live. This is his commandment to Greeks and to Britons-in the first century and the nineteenth-his commandment is, "That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent."

XXIV.

GO THY WAY FOR THIS TIME.
ACTS xvii. 32.

ON the Areopagus, as elsewhere, Paul would have more fully opened the gospel of Christ if the proud audience had been willing to hear him. But when he reached his favourite theme, the resurrection of Christ, they lost patience, and raised an uproar. They rudely shut the preacher's mouth, and so shut the door of mercy against themselves. It is instructive to observe wherein the offence of the cross specifically lay in those times and for those people; it lay in the resurrection of Christ, which implied so his death as an atonement for sin. The Athenians could bear the cutting remarks of the stranger on their own ignorance, as confessed in the memorable altar-inscription; they could bear the exposure of their own inconsistency in acknowledging God their Father, and yet paying homage to a marble statue; they could bear the announcement of a great assize in which the whole world must stand before a human judge, divinely appointed to distribute rewards and punishments: but when Paul proceeded to declare the central fact on which the hope of men must hangthe atoning death and the glorious resurrection of the man Christ Jesus-their philosophy and politeness could not bear them further-they broke out into scornful interruptions, and the speaker's voice was drowned in the tumult. This is the offence of the cross to-day. How significant in this aspect are the words of the Lord: "Blessed is he who shall not be offended in me.”

Paul departed from among them doubtless with a heavy heart. It seemed to him at that moment that his labour was lost. Not long after, however, he learned that some of the good seed had fallen into broken ground. Even on the hard soil of the Areopagus, where he had scattered his seed weeping, he gathered sheaves with joy.

That congregation of Greeks was divided into three distinct parts. The descriptions are given with great distinctness. Paul rightly divided that day the Word of truth, and the Word divided the hearers into dis

tinct and well-defined groups: into mockers, hesitators, and cleaving believers. Examine them one by one.

1. The mockers. When the preacher spoke of the resurrection of the dead, a portion of the audience loudly jeered him. Paul told the story of the cross : how the Son of God took our nature, and in it suffered death for our sin; that through divine power he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven; and that all who accept him as their Saviour, will rise to reign with him for ever. It was at this point that a portion of these volatile Athenians began to make sport of the reacher. These, whether socially higher or lower, were in spirit the hardest and coldest of the company. They were fast and free livers. Probably they belonged to the sect of Epicureans. They enjoyed life, and kept the thought of death away. They made no apology to the distinguished stranger; they did not take the trouble of making a hypocritical promise to consider the subject and call again. Nor were they content with simply neglecting the message. They made sport of the preacher and his theme in presence of the assembly. They went away laughing at the truth of God and the God of truth.

If our voice could reach the modern representatives of these jolly Greeks, we should affectionately and solemnly suggest to them that if God is, their laugh will not make him cease to be; that their destiny is long, but their views at present short; that they have not made sure that when we are dead we are done; that it is a fearful thing for a scoffer to fall into the hands of the living God. What if the very intellect that enables you to entertain the question whether there be a God, be conclusive evidence that there is a God who gave it? What if this "No God," a judgment pronounced by an intelligent self-conscious spirit, be itself evidence that God is? If God had not been, there could have existed no creature capable of entertaining the question whether there be a God.

2. The hesitators. "Others said, We will hear thee again of this matter." They listened respectfully to the public address; and when the hubbub caused by the scorners had subsided, they approached the speaker and politely excused themselves for not complying with his invitation. These men were between two opposites, and perhaps found themselves in a strait. On the one side, in a group that clustered round the preacher, they might observe gushing tears and other symptoms of broken hearts; and on the other side, they might see the smile of scorn curling on the lips of scoffers as they descended the steps into the forum again. Perhaps these men were really perplexed, and meant to reconsider the subject. Convinced in their consciences that the testimony of the apostle had all the air of truth, they did not dare to scoff; but, wedded to their own ease and pleasure, they were not willing to take up the cross and follow Christ. Accordingly they adopted an intermediate course. They made respectful apology to the preacher and went away. Counting the time of

closing with Christ an evil day, they put it as far off as they could. They did not venture to say Never; but they went the length of saying, Not now.

This intermediate class is very numerous in our own age. They are a very large flock; and in their present condition it is not the Father's good pleasure to give them the kingdom. They do not erase the gospel from their creeds; but they will not permit it to reign in their hearts and mould their lives. They are willing to possess a religion; but not willing that religion should possess them. They will wear it as a very becoming ornament; but they will not flee to hide in it as their life. They will keep near the door which it opens, that they may run into it at any moment when their case becomes desperate; but they will not press through it now, lest some right arm should be torn off in the passage, and the presence of Christ within should cast a damp over their vain pleasures. They would fain hope that Christ will stand ready to open the door of heaven for them on that day; but they are not willing to open the door of their hearts for him this day. They slumber while the Bridegroom passes; alas! it is to be feared the Bridegroom will refuse to open when at length they begin to knock and cry.

XXV.

HE GAINS SOME.

ACTS xvii. 34.

WE have reached deep waters at last, after passing the noisy foam and the deceitful shallows. After passing in review the scorners and the procrastinators, we have come to the believers. "Howbeit, certain men clave unto him and believed." First of all, it is instructive to observe the relations in which the Athenian believers stood to Paul the minister on the one hand, and to Christ the Redeemer on the other. They clave-they were glued to the preacher. As iron under the influence of the magnetic current cleaves to the magnet, their hearts held to the man who made the Saviour known. To the stranger Jew who told of Jesus crucified and risen, those Greek citizens, including one at least of the ruling class, fondly, firmly clung as to their life. Strange; and that too at the moment when their quickwitted countrymen were making merry with the outlandish opinions and speech of the foreigner. A principle more secret and more strong than magnetism had been generated in their hearts by this preacher's word. By an irresistible law of the new nature they were drawn to the man who made known the Saviour of sinners. But, tender though their love was to Paul, through whom the word came, it did not terminate on him. They cleaved to him and believed; that is, while this man's lips were the channel through which the word of life reached them, the ultimate longing of their hearts—their ultimate grasp―reached and rested on Christ crucified, whom Paul preached. They believed Paul, but they believed in Christ.

No wonder that these newly converted Greeks cleaved to the skirts of Paul. He was already a strong man. He had reached full stature, and was more vigorous in faith and hope than others, because his graces had all been greatly tried. They were little children, and the world a treacherous sea; it was natural that they should cling to their spiritual father, as if for their life.

An artist has painted a marine scene at the crisis of a heart-stirring event, and the group is constituted thus: From the rigging of a distressed ship on a wild sea a stout rope hangs over the side. In the lower extremity of that rope a solitary seaman, evidently a volunteer in the business, his strong limbs and stronger heart going into it with all their might, a solitary seaman hangs. To the seaman clings a mother, and to the mother, seen dimly through the drifting spray, clings an infant. The cry, "They're saved," rings out that moment from the eager spectators who watch the crisis from the deck. The seaman was the child's saviour that day; yet the seaman touched not the child; the child touched not the seaman. The mother was sustained by that hero's strength, and the child hung upon the mother. It is in some such way as this that Christ was the Saviour of those Greeks, although they grasped Paul, as if they were glued to his person. The apostle served at the moment as a link between them and the Lord: "ministered by us."

We know that this minister was faithful. He was zealous for the honour of his Lord and the safety of his brethren. If he had seen that those Greeks were making him their idol, he would have shaken off their grasp with livelier loathing than that with which he shook the venomous reptile from his hand into the fire at Malta. If he had seen that they were superstitiously looking to him for help, he would have rebuked them as he rebuked others with that terrible demand, "Was Paul crucified for you?"

There is a world of meaning in this cleaving-this gluing of themselves to their instructor. The danger is great, the time is short, the struggle is hard. Christianity is not a pleasant dream; it is a real warfare. The corresponding expression in Peter's exhortation throws light on the eager cleaving of our text. "The righteous," he intimates, "are scarcely saved." It is a close run, a hair-breadth escape, like the escape of Lot from Sodom when the angels laid hold of him and dragged him away from doom. It is the salvation of one who strips off not only his wealth and his pleasures and his ornaments to escape through the narrow gate as poor as he was born, but of one who strips himself off-the old man with his deeds-and enters life as he was born againthe new creature only. I think I see groups of sinners saved, assembling immediately within the gate, telling each other of their dangers and escapes, every heart beating with the recent tumult, but every eye beaming with unspeakable delight. Through fire and water they have been brought; but now they are in a wealthy place.

Let none be surprised when they see the anguished earnestness of awakened souls. Be surprised and suspicious rather when the matter is taken coolly.

The first sensations of this cleaving are beyond measure sweet to a missionary at home or abroad. He has toiled in the ministry for a series of years, wearied, and almost wearied out, by a dreary alternation of Paul's first two Athenian experiences-the scoff of the mockers, and the heartless, soulless apology of the worldling as he turns his back. When he is at the point of giving over in despair, he is startled by an unwonted, almost unexpected sensation. Surely the line that he has held dangling loose over that dreary sea for so many nights was tightened a little. It is even so. The line is tight and heavy. His heart leaps for joy. The missionary feels living souls cleaving to his own, that he may help them to Christ their life. This cleaving to the servant is a symptom of believing in the Lord.

Although Christ alone is the Saviour, the ministry of man holds an important place. How tender are these relations in time! How happy in eternity!

XXVI.

TO THE JEWS A STUMBLING-BLOCK, AND TO THE GREEKS FOOLISHNESS.

ACTS xviii. 1-9.

"AFTER these things Paul departed from Athens." Alas! he had seen little fruit in that city. "The world by wisdom knew not God."

The apostle seems to have been interrupted by an outburst of contempt, as soon as he reached his main subject,-Jesus and the resurrection. They listened respectfully as long as he contended with the Epicureans and the Stoics: they were interested by his discourse on natural religion; perhaps they admired his dialectic against idolatry: but as soon as he began to preach Jesus, they raised a shout of derision and drowned the preacher's voice.

"They walked according to the course of this world, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." The spirit that ruled then permitted them to hear Parl's philosophy, but raised a tumult to prevent them from listening to Paul's gospel. The strong man armed kept his goods in peace, as long as the preliminary argument lasted; but at the approach of this testimony to Jesus, he dreaded lest a stronger than he should burst in; accordingly he quickly shut the gates.

It is a melancholy reflection that the gospel in great measure failed in Athens. There is no epistle of Paul to the Athenians, while no less than two letters of his to each of the two great mercantile cities, Thessalonics and Corinth, have come down to us. Athens in the midst sat alone as a queen, representing the philosophy and the art of Greece. There the kingdom of Christ could not obtain a footing. But Thessalonica on the one side, and Corinth on the other, became the scenes of