The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1891-11-27


to bear; had in the theater of
Dionysius, at the foot of the Acropolis
(he ruins of its piled up amphitheater
and the marble floor of It's orchestra
still there), seen enacted the tragedies
of Eschylus and Sophocles, but neither
had the ancestors of these Grecians on
Mars Hill, or themselves, ever heard or
witnessed such tornadoes 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 mocked."
suppose it means that they mimicked
the solemnity of his voice, that they
took off his imprisoned gesticulation,
and they cried out: Jew Jewl Where
did you study rhetoric2 You ought to
hear our orators speak, You had bet
ter go back to your business of tent
making, 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 eyes
froma Ha Ha! You try to teach us Gre
clans 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
mocked." But, that scene adjourned
to the day of which the sacred orator
had spoken-the day of Resurrection
and Judgment.
/ THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.
As in Athens, that evening in 1889,
I 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 Acropolis and Mars
Hill in the gathering shadows of even
( tide seemed to hear those two hills in
sublime and awful converse. II 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 lawgivers are
dead. My poets are dead. My archi
tects are dead. My sculptors are dead.
! am monument of the dead past. |
shall never again hear a song sung.
shall never again see column lifted.
shall never again behold goddess
crowned"
Mars Hill responded II, too, have
had a history. I had on my heights
warriors who will never again unsheath
the sword, and judges who will never
again utter a doom, and orators who
will never again make 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 exciting day in the hearing of the
wisest men and the populace on my
rocky shoulders, have only begun their
majestic ROLL the brotherhood of man,
snd the Christ of God, and the perora-
tion OF Resurrection and Last Judgment
with which the Tarsian orator closed
his sermon that day amid the hooking |
crowd shall yet revolutionize the planet. |
O-Acropols! have stood here long
enough to witness that your gods are no
gods at ALL Your Boreas could not
control the winds. Your Neptune
could not manage the sea- Your Apollo |
never evoked a musical note. Your
god Ceres never grew a harvest. Your
goddess of wisdom, Minerva, never
knew the Greek alphabet. Your Ju-
piter could not handle the lightnings.
But the God whom l proclaimed on
the day when Paul preached before
the astounded assemblage on my rough |
heights is the God of music, the God
of wisdom, the God of power, the God
of mercy, the God of love, the God of
storms the God of sunshine, the God
of the land, and the God of the sea.
the God over all, blessed forever"
Then the Acropolis spake and said, as
though in self defense, ''My Plato
argued for the immortality of the soul,
and my Socrates praised virtue, and my
Miltiades at Marathon drove back the
Persian oppressors.
t'Yes;" said Mars Hill, your Plato
laboriously guessed at the Immortality
of the soul, but my Paul, divinely in
spired declared it as fact straight
from God. Your Socrates praised vir-
tue, but expired as a suicide. Your
Mitiades was brave against earthly
foes, yet died from wound ignonlini-
eusly gotten in after defeat But my
Paul challenged all earth and all hell
with this battle shout we wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against
the rulers of the darkness of this world
against spiritual wickedness in high
places, and then on the 29th of June,
in the year 66, on the road to Ostia,
after the sword of the headsman had
given one keen stroke. took the crown
of martyrdom
ALAS, AND HOSANNAHl
After a moments silence by both
hills the Acropolis moaned out in the
darkness, "Alas! Alas!' and Mars Hill
responded, 'Hosannahl Hosannahr
Ilpi TIC NOtCeS Vi DOL4l HIS DtCdlllc
indistinct, and as passed on and away
in the twilight | seemed to hear only
two sounds--a fragment of Pentelicon
marble from the archtrave ofthe Acrop-
oils dropping down on the ruins of a
shattered idol, and the other sound
seemed to come from the rock on Mars
Hill, from which we had Just descended
But we were by this time so far of
that the fragments of sentences were
smaller when dropping from Mars Hill
than were the fragments of fallen mar
bic on the Acropolis, and | could only
hear parts of disconnected sentences
waited on the night air God who
made the wor!d"-''of one blood ali
cations appointed a day in which
he will judge thpworld"-' raised him
from the dead
As that night in Athens | put my