they knew God (that is, knew that there must be one supreme Creator) they glorified him not as God; did not pay to him that exclusive honour and worship which were due to the one true God; neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools; and changed the glory of the incorruptible God, into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. These are the words of St. Paul himself; and we may therefore easily conceive the reflexions which passed through his mind, and filled him with a pious indignation, or, as St. Luke says, stirred his spirit within him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. The original word, which is more correctly rendered in the margin of our translation, full of idols, is very expressive of the fact to which the historian alludes. The city of Athens was proverbially crowded with temples, and altars, and statues.

turies after the visit of

More than two cen

St. Paul, a heathen

author ridicules it on this account.*

*

Not only

was it adorned with the more splendid monuments of genius and superstition, which crowned

* Lucian Prometh. I.

its Acropolis, or studded its olive groves, but the images of gods and heroes met the passenger at every turn; and the meetings of the ways. were distinguished by ancient pieces of sculpture, holden in such sacred estimation, that to have injured them was a capital accusation, the odium of which crushed the most distinguished of the Athenian citizens.*

Therefore, continues the historian, speaking of St. Paul, disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons (worshippers of the true God), and in the market daily, with them that met with him. The word market would be more properly rendered the publie place of these there were several at Athens, to which resorted not only the men of business, but the philosophers, the politicians, and the idlers of the city. These were the places where Socrates, the great founder of practical philosophy, delivered those colloquial lectures, in which he had intimated the necessity of a divine instructor; and here a greater and wiser than Socrates spoke, to his crowd of promiscuous hearers, of Jesus, and the resurrection.

Now it appears, that the Jews had a synagogue in Athens; and that there were also

* Alcibiades.

proselytes, persons who worshipped the one true God. There was, then, the less excuse for those who still continued idolaters. But we may collect from this fact, that if St. Paul had confined himself to a declaration of the truth, that there is one supreme God, the maker and preserver of the universe, his discourse would not have excited any attention, beyond what might have been awakened by his earnestness and eloquence. His doctrine would have been contradicted by one sect of philosophers, and his proofs would have been ridiculed by another; but the assertion of it would neither have surprised nor offended the Athenians, already accustomed to the religious peculiarities of the Jews, and to the simpler theism of the proselytes. But when hé proceeded to insist upon those consequences of the doctrine in question, which had been matter of doubtful speculation to the philosopher, but had been brought to light by the Gospel; the immortality of the soul, and a judgment to come; the pride and the passions of his hearers revolted: and when he declared that fundamental truth of Christianity, upon which human reason had not even hazarded a conjecture, the resurrection of the same body; and when he proclaimed the crucified Jesus as the appointed

judge of mankind, he was treated as a visionary enthusiast.

His first opponents were certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics. There were at that time two other sects at Athens, the Academic and the Peripatetic. It is not said that the partizans of either had any controversy with St. Paul; probably because they were less bigoted to a particular set of opinions; especially the Academic philosophers, who professed to be constantly inquiring for that which presented the greatest appearance of truth; and who, therefore, could not consistently treat the doctrine of St. Paul with contempt or anger, for they themselves also maintained the immortality of the soul. Indeed, if the Apostle had confined his reasonings to a proof of that doctrine, which is suggested by the consciences of mankind, the belief of which is instinctive, and has been general in all ages of the world, he would have given no offence; although the authority upon which he grounded his assertion might have been treated by his hearers with contempt. But the doctrine which incurred their unmeasured ridicule, as it appeared to outrage all philosophy and experience, was the doctrine of a bodily resurrection. The transition of the disembodied

spirit into another earthly tabernacle they could comprehend; but not its reunion to the same body, once destroyed and dissipated by death.

But the philosophers of the Garden and the Porch were utterly disqualified, by the principles which they professed, for the reception of Gospel truth; the former being virtually atheists, either denying the existence of a God, or allowing him only an inert and inoperative existence, without any control over, or concern for mankind; the other, not indeed in terms rejecting the notion of a Deity, but arrogating to themselves an equality with him in point of virtue and merit.

These two sects of heathen philosophers had their parallels amongst the Jews, in the persons of the Sadducees and Pharisees; the former of whom were practically atheists, as to belief, and dissolute as to conduct; while the latter, although they entertained juster notions of God than the Stoics, corrupted and nullified religion, as to its effects upon themselves, by their spiritual pride and arrogance. St. Paul was treated by the vain Athenians, as his blessed Master had been treated by the Pharisees and Sadducees; the one sort deriding him as a babbler, for proclaiming the resurrection and a judgment to come; the other, opposing him as an innovator