slight for supporting such an accusation, especially as the civil authorities were not predisposed to receive it. At this time, a political accusation, the crimen majestatis, was likely to be more successful, a device that was often employed in a similar way, at a later period, by the enemies of the Christian faith. Paul had spoken much at Thessalonica of the approaching kingdom of Christ, to which believers already belonged; and by distorting his expressions, the accusation was rendered plausible. He instigated people (it was averred) to acknowledge one Jesus as supreme ruler instead of Cæsar. But the authorities, when they saw the persons before them who were charged with being implicated in the conspiracy, could not credit such an accusation; and after Jason and his friends had given security that there should be no violation of the public peace, and that those persons who had been the alleged causes of this disturbance should soon leave the city, they were dismissed.

On the evening of the same day, Paul and Silas left the city, after a residence of three or four weeks. As Paul could not remain there as long as the necessities of the newly formed Church required, his anxiety was awakened on its behalf, since he foresaw that it would have to endure much persecution from the Gentiles at the instigation of the Jews. He had formed, therefore, the intention of returning thither as soon as the first storm of the popular fury had subsided; 1 Thess ii. 18. Possibly he left Timothy behind, who had not been an object of persecution, unless he met him first at Beræa, after leaving Philippi. Paul and Silas now proceeded to Berea, a town about ten miles distant, where they met with a better reception from the Jews; the gospel here found acceptance also with the Gentiles; but a tumult raised by Jews from Thessalonica forced Paul to leave the place almost immediately. Accompanied by some. believers from Berea, he then directed his course to Athens.*

It is doubtful whether Paul went by land or by sea to Athens, the as in Acts xvii. 14, may be understood simply

Though the consequences which resulted from the apostle's labours at Athens were at first inconsiderable; yet his appearance in this city (which in a different sense from Rome might be called the metropolis of the world), was in real importance unquestionably one of the most memorable signs of the new spiritual creation. A herald of that divine doctrine which fought with divine power, was destined to change the principles and practices of the ancient world, Paul came to Athens, the parent of Grecian culture and philosophy; the city to which, as the Grecian element had imbued the culture of the West, the whole Roman world was indebted for its mental advancement, which also was the central point of the Grecian religion, where an enthusiastic attachment to all that belonged to ancient Hellas, not excepting its idolatry, retained a firm hold till the fourth century. Zeal for the honour of the gods, each one of whom had here his temple and his altars, and was celebrated by the master-pieces of art, rendered Athens famous throughout the civilized world.* It was at first Paul's intention to wait for the arrival of Silas and Timothy before he en

as marking the direction of his route. See Winer's Grammatik, 3d edition, p. 498. [4th ed. p. 559.] Berea lay near the sea, and this was the shortest. But the s may also signify, that they took at first their course towards the sea, in order to mislead the Jews (who expected them to come that way, and were lying in wait for Paul in the neighbourhood of the port), and afterwards pursued their journey by land. So we find on another occasion, when Paul was about to sail from Corinth to Asia Minor, he found himself in danger from the plots of the Jews, and preferred going by land; Acts xx. 3. The first interpretation appears to be the simplest and most favoured by the phraseology. The iws adopted by Lachmann [and Tischendorff. Lips. 1841] appears to have arisen from a gloss.

* Apollonius of Tyana (in Philostratus) calls the Athenians paura. Pausanias ascribes to them (Attic. i. 17), το εις θεους ευσεβεῖν ἄλλων πλεον ; and (c. 24), το περισσότερον τῆς ἐις τα θεῖα σπουδῆς. In the religious system of the Athenians, there was a peculiar refinement of moral sentiment, for they alone among the Greeks erected an altar to Pity, iλsos, as a divinity.

tered on the publication of the gospel, as by his companions who had returned to Beræa, he had sent word for them to follow him as soon as possible. But when he saw himself surrounded by the statues, and altars, and temples of the gods, and works of art, by which the honour due to the living God alone was transferred to creatures of the imagination-he could not withstand the impulse of holy zeal, to testify of Him who called erring men to repentance and offered them salvation. He spoke in the synagogue to the Jews and Proselytes, but did not wait as in other cities till a way was opened by their means for publishing the gospel to the heathen. From ancient times it was customary at Athens for people to meet together under covered porticoes in public places, to converse with one another on matters of all kinds, trifling or important; and then, as in the time of Demosthenes, groups of persons might be met with in the market, collected together merely to hear of something new.* Accordingly, Paul made it his business to enter into conversation with the passers-by, in hopes of turning their attention to the most important concern of man. The sentiments with which he was inspired had nothing in common with the enthusiasm of the fanatic, who is unable to transport himself from his own peculiar state of feeling to the standing-point of others, in order to make himself acquainted with the obstacles that oppose their reception of what he holds as truth with absolute certainty. Paul knew, indeed, as he himself says, that the preaching of the crucified Saviour must appear to the wise men of the world as foolishness, until they became fools, that is, until they were convinced of the insufficiency of their wisdom in reference to the knowledge of divine things, and for the satisfaction of their religious wants; 1 Cor. i. 23; iii. 18. But he was not ashamed, as he also affirms, to testify to the wise and to the unwise, to the Greeks and to the barbarians, of what he

* As Demosthenes reproaches them in his oration against the epistle of Philip; ἡμεῖς δε οὐδεν ποιοῦντες ἐνθαδε καθήμεθα και πυνθανόμενοι κατα την άγοραν, ει τι λέγεται νεωτερον; Acts xvii. 21.

knew from his own experience to be the power of God to save those that believe; Rom. i. 16. The market to which he resorted was near a portico of the philosophers. Here he met with philosophers of the Epicurean and Stoic schools. If we reflect upon the relative position of the Stoics to the Epicureans, that the former acknowledged something divine as the animating principle in the universe and in human nature, that they were inspired with an ideal model founded in the moral nature of man, and that they recognised man's religious wants and the traditions that bore testimony to it ;-while on the other hand, the latter, though they did not absolutely do away with the belief in the gods, reduced it to something inert, non-essential, and superfluous; that they represented pleasure as the highest aim of human pursuit, and that they were accustomed to ridicule the existing religions as the offspring of human weakness and the spectral creations of fear; we might from such a contrast infer that the Stoics made a much nearer approach to Christianity than the Epicureans. But it does not follow that the former would give a more favourable reception to the gospel than the latter, for their vain notion of moral self-sufficiency was diametrically opposed to a doctrine which inculcated repentance, forgiveness of sins, grace, and justification by faith. This supreme Godthe impersonal eternal reason pervading the universewas something very different from the living God, the heavenly Father full of love whom the gospel reveals, and who must have appeared to the Stoics as far too human a being; and both parties agreed in the Grecian pride of philosophy, which would look down on a doctrine appearing in a Jewish garb, and not developed in a philsophic form, as a mere outlandish superstition. Yet many among those who gathered round the apostle during his conversations, were at least pleased to hear something new; and their curiosity was excited to hear of the strange divinity whom he wished to introduce, and to be informed respecting his new doctrine. They took him to the hill, where the first tribunal at Athens, the Areopagus, was accustomed to hold its sittings, and where he could

easily find a spot suited to a large audience.* The discourse of Paul on this occasion is an admirable specimen of his apostolic wisdom and eloquence: we here perceive how the apostle (to use his own language) to the heathens, became a heathen that he might gain the heathens to Christianity.

Inspired by feelings that were implanted from his youth in the mind of a pious Jew, and glowing with zeal for the honour of his God, Paul must have been horrorstruck at the spectacle of the idolatry that met him wherever he turned his eyes. He might easily have been betrayed by his feelings into intemperate language. And it evinced no ordinary self-denial and self-command, that instead of beginning with expressions of detestation, instead of representing the whole religious system of the Greeks as a Satanic delusion, he appealed to the truth which lay at its basis, while he sought to awaken in his hearers the consciousness of God which was oppressed by the power of sin, and thus aimed at leading them to the knowledge of that Saviour whom he came to announce. As among the Jews, in whom the knowledge of God formed by divine revelation led to a clear and pure development of the idea of the Messiah, he could appeal to the national history, the law and the prophets, as witnesses of Christ; so here he appealed to the undeniable anxiety of natural religion after an unknown God. He began with acknowledging in the religious zeal of the Athenians a true religious feeling, though erroneously directed, an undeniable tending of the mind towards something divine. † He begins with acknow

*The whole course of the proceedings and the apostle's discourse prove that he did not appear as an accused person before his judges, in order to defend himself against the charge of introducing religiones peregrinæ et illicitæ. Athenians did not view the subject in so serious a light.

The

† Much depends on the meaning attached to the ambiguous word dadawy, Acts xvii. 22. The original signification of this word, in popular usage, certainly denoted something good-as is the case in all language with words which denote the fear of God or of the gods-the feeling of dependence on a higher power, which, if we analyse the reli