Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1891-11-23

wondrOus pediments and cutting away a
these friezes, and have we taxed the ma
tiOn's resources to the utmost, now to b,
told that those statues see nothing, heaI
nothing, know nothing"
Oh, Paul. stop for moment and give
these startled and overwhelmed auditors
time to catch their BREATH Make rhe
torical pause! Take look around you al
the interesting landscape, and give YOU
hearers time to recover! No, he does moi
make even a period, or so much as a color
or semicolon, but launches the seconl
thunderbolt right after the first, and in the
same breath goes on to say, God "dwelletl
not in temples made with hands" Oh
Paul! Is not deity more in the Parthenon
or more in the Theseum, or more in the
Erechtheium, or more in the temple oil
Zeus Olympus than in the open air, more
than on the Hill where we are sitting more
than on Mount Hymettus out yonder
from which the bees get their honey? "Nl
morer' responds Paul, "He dwelleth not
i'll temples made with hands"
But surely the preacher on the pu Init OF
rock on Mars Hill will stop now. His au-
dence can endure no more. Two thun
derbolts are enough, No, in the same
breath he launches the third thunderbolt
which to them is more fiery, more terrible
more demolishing than the others, as he
cries out, "hath made of one blood all Ia.
tions." Oh, PAUL. you forget you are
speaking to the proudest and most eXclu
sive audience in the world. Do not say col
one blood" You cannot mean that. Had
Socrates and Plato and Demosthenes and
Scion and Lycurgus and Draco and Sopho.
Giles and Euripidcs and Hlschylus and Peri.
cles and Phidias and Mitiades blood just
like the Persians, like the Turks, like the
Egyptians, like the common herd of hu
mainly? yes" says Paul, "of one blood
all nations"
THR ORATORS OF GREECE.
Surely that must be the closing para
graph of the sermon. His auditors must
let up from the nervous strain. Paul has
smashed the Acropolis and smashed the
, national pride of the Greeks, aud what
more can he say? Those Grecian orators,
standing on that place, always closed their
addresses with something sublime and eli.
macteric--a peroration--nnd Paul is going
to give them peroration which will eclipse
in power and majesty all that he has yet
said. Heretofore he has hurled one thun.
derbolt at time; now he will close by
hurting two at once. The little old man,
under the power of his speech, has straight.
ened himself up, and the stoop has gone
out of his shoulders, and he looks about
three feet taller than when he began; and
his eyes, which were quiet, became two
flames of fire; and his face, which was
calm in the introduction, now depicts a
whirlwind of emotion as he ties the two
thunderbolts together with a cord of in.
Consumable courage and hurls them at the
crowd now standing or sitting aghast-the
two thunderbolts of Resurrection and Last
Judgment. His closing words were, "Be
cause he hath appointed a day in the
which he will judge the world in righteous
ness by that 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
despised 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 an
cestors of some of those Greeks had heard
Demosthenes in his Grafton on the crown,
llhu HCdIu i4SCulIGS III MS SltCtufN
against Timarchus and Ctesiphon, haG
heard Plato in his great argument for
Immortality of the soul, had heard Socra.
ties on his deathbed, suicidal cup of hem
lock in hand, leave his hearers in emotion
too great to bear; had in the theater of
Dionysius at the foot of the Acropolis (the
ruins of its piled up amphitheater and the
marble floor of its orchestra still there
seen enacted the tragedies of Eschylus and
SOphocles, but neither had the ancestors
of these Grecians on Mars Hill or them
selves ever heard or witnessed such tor
nadoes of moral power as that with which
Paul now whelmed his hearers AT those
two thoughts of resurrection and judg
ment the audience sprang to their feet
Some moved they adjourn 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 mimicked the
solemnity of his voice; that they took off
his imprisoned gestculation, and they
cried out: "Jewl Jewl Where did you
study rhetoric? You ought to hear our
orators speak! You had better go back to
your business of tentmaking. Our Lycur
gus knew more in minute than you will
know in a month Say, where did you get
that crooked back and those weak eyes
FRONT Hal hal You try to teach us Gre
ciansl What nonsense you talk about
when You speak of resurrection and judg,
ment Now, little old man, climb down
the side of Mars Hin and get out of sight
as soon as possible" "Some mocked."
But that scene adjourned to the day of
which the sacred orator had spoken-the
day of resurrection and judgment
WEAKNESS OF THE GREEKS.
As in Athens, that evening in 1889, we
climbed dow the pile of slippery rocks,
where all this had occurred, ON our way
back to our hotel, | stood half way be-
tween the Acropolis and Mars Hill in the
gathering shadows of eventide, | seemed
TO hear those two hills in sublime and aw-
full converse. 81 am chiefly of the past"
said the Acropolis. | am chiefly of the
future,' replied Mars Hill. The Acropolis
said; My orators are dead My lawgivers
are dead. My poets are dead My archi-
tects are dead. My sculptors are dead. |
am a monument of the dead past. | shall
never again hear a song sung. will never
again see column lifted. | will never
again behold u goddess crowned"
Mars Hill responded: 81, too have n his
tory. had on my heights warriors who
will never again uusheath the sword and
judges who will never again utter IA 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 word, that missionary, Paul, uttered
that exciting day in the hearing of the
wsest men and the popuace on my rocky
shoulders have only begun their majestic
role; the brotherhood of man, and the
Christ Of God, and the petoration Of resur-
rcction aud last Judgment with which the