Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1891-12-11

paralleled splendor, and have we had the
greatest OF all sculptors Phidias with his
men chiseling away at those wondrous peii-
msnts and cutting away at these frieZes, and
have we taxed the nations resources TO the
utmost, now to be told that those statues see
nothing, hear nothing. know nothing:
Oh, Paul, stop for a moment and give
these startled and overwhelmed auditors
time to catch their breath Make a rhetorical
pause! Take look around you at the inter
esting landscape and give your hearers tina
to recover! No, he does not make even a
period, or so much as colon or semicoion.
but launches the second thunderbolt right
after the first, and in the same breath goes
on to say, God ''dwelleth not in temples
made with hands" o., Paul! Is not deity
more in the Parthenon, or more In the The
scum, or more in the Erechtneium, or moro
in the temple of Zeus Olympus than in the
open air, more than on the hill where are
sitting, more than on Mount Hymettus out
Wonder from which the bees get their
honey? mo mOrew responds Paul, HE
dwelleth not in temples made with hands"
But surely the preacher on the pulpit o.
rock on Mars Hill will stop now. His au-
dience can endure no more. Two thunder
bolts are enough. No, in the same breath he
launches the third thunderbolt, which to
them IS more fiery, more terrible, more de-
moiishing than the Others, as he cries out:
hath made OF one blood all nations" Oh,
Paul! you forget you are speaking to the
proudest and most exclusive audience 10 tie
world. Do not say ''of one blood" GU
cannot mean that. Had Socrates and Plato
and DenoSthenes and Scion and LycurSus
and Draco and Sophocles and Euripides and
1Eschylus and Perices and Phidias and Mill
tiades blood just like the Persians, like the
Turks, like the Egyptians, like the common
herd of humanity? YES" says Paul, ''of
one blood ali nations"
Surely that must be the closing paragraph
of the sermon. His auditors must let up
from the nervous strain. Paul has smashed
tie Acropolis and smashed the national pride
OF the Greeks and what more can he say:
Those Grecian orators, standing on that
place always closed their addresses with
something sublime and cimacteric-a peror-
ation-and Paul is going to give them
peroration which will eclipse in power and
majesty all that he has yet said. Hereto
fore he has hurled one thunderbolt at a
time: now he will close by hurting two
at once. The little old man, under the
power of his speech, has Strengthened
himself up, and the stoop has gone out
OF his shoulders. and he looks about
three feet taller than when he began; and
flames of fire: and his face, which was calm
in the introduction, now depicts a whr'i=
wind of emotion as he ties the two thunder
bolts together with cord of inconsumable
courage and hurls them at the crowd now
standing or sitting aghast-the two thun-
derbolts of Resurrection and Last Judg-
ment. His closing words were, Because
He hath appointed day in the winch He will
judge the world in righteousness by thas
man whom He hath ordained whereof He
hath given assurance unto all men in that
He hath raised him from the dead,
Remember those thoughts were to them
novel and provOcative: that Christ. the de-
spised NaZarene, would come to be their
judge, and they should have to get up out
OF their cemeteries to stand before Him and
take their eternal doom. Mightiest burst Of
evolutionary power ever heard. The ances-
tors of some of those Greeks had heard
Demosthenes in his grafton on the crown,
had heard LESchines in his speeches against
Ilmarchus and Ctesiphon, had heard Plato
IN his great argument for Immortality Of
the soul, had heard Socrates on his death
bed, suicidal cup of hemlock in hand, leave
his hearers in emotion too great too bear;
had in the theater OF Di0nysius at the
foot of the AcropoGs (the ruins
OF it's piled up amphitheater and the
marble floor Of it's orchestra still there seen
enacted the tragedies of HGschylus and Sopho-
Giles. but neither had the ancestors of these
Grecians on Mars Hill or themselves ever
heard or witnessed such tornadoes Of moral
power that with which Paul now whelmed
his hearers. At those two thoughts Of re-
surrection and judgment the audience sDrang
TO their feet. Some moved they ad jOurn to
some other day to hear more on the same
theme, but others would have torn the sacred
orator to pieces
The record says. "Some Knocked" sup
pose it means that they minlicked thu
solemnity of his voice; that they took Off
his impassioned gesticulation, md they cried
out: jew! jew: Where did you study
rhetoric? You ought to hear our orators
speak! You had better go back to your
business of tentmaking. Our Lycurgus
knew more IN a minute than you will know
in a month. Say. where did you get that
crooked back, and those weak ewes FROM
Hal hal You try to teach us GreciansI
What nonsense you talk about when you
speak of resurrection and judgment. Now,
little old man, climb down the side Of Mars
Hill and get out of sight as soon as possible"
''Some Knocked" But that scene ad journe
TO the day Of which the sacred orator had
spoken-the day OF resurrection and judg-
ment.
AS ID Athens, that evening in 1899 we
climbed down the pile of slippery rocks.
where all this had occurred on our way back
to our hotel, [ stood half way between the
Acropois and Mars Hill in the gathering
shadows Of eventide, 1 seemed to hear those
two hills IN sublime and awful converse. 81
am chiefly of the past;'' said the Acropolis.
Il am chiefly Of the future;" replied Mars
Hill. The Acropolis said: MY orators are
dead. My 1aWGiverS are dead NV poets
are dead. My architects are dead. Nv
sculptors are dead. 1 am a monument of
the dead past. l shall never again hear a
song sung. will never again see column
lifted. | will never again behold goddess
crowned"
Mars Hill responded: 81, too have his
tory. l had on my heights warriors who
will never again unsheath the sword. and
judges who will never again utter doom,
and orators who will never again make a
plea. But my influence is to be more in the
future than it ever was in the past. The
words that missionary, Paul, uttered that