Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1891-11-27


IN righteousness by that man whom he
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 shonld
have to get up out of their cemeteries
to stand before him and take their
eternal doom. Mightiest burst of
elocutionarv power ever heard. The
ancestors of some OF those Greeks had
heard Demosthenes In his Grafton on
the crown, had heard Hschines in his
speeches against Timarchus aud Ctesi-
phon, had heard Plato In his great
argument for Immortality of the soul,
had heard Socrates on his death
bed, suisldal cup of hemloclS 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 ampitheater
and the marble floor az Its orchestra
still there seen enacted the tragedies
of Kschylus 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 judy
ment the audience sprang 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" l suppose it means that
they mimicked the solemnity of his
voice. that they took Off his impas-
stoned gesticulation, and they cried
out, "Jew! jew! Where d you
study rhetoric? You ought to hear
our orators speak! You had better go
back to your business of tent making.
Our Lycurgus knew more in n minute
than you will know in month. Say,
where did you get that crooked back,
and those weak eyes from? Ha! Ha.
You try to teach us Grecians! What
nonsense you talk about when you
speak of resurrection and Judgment.
Now, little old mon, climb down the
side of Mars Hill and get out of sight
as soon as possible" "Some Knocked"
But that scene adjourned to the day Of
! which the sacred orator had spoken
the day of resurrection and Judgment.
AS in Athens that evening in 1889,
we climbed down the pile of slippery
rocks, where all this had occurred. on
our way back TO our hotel, | stood
halfway between the Acropolis and
Mars Hill in the gathering shadows of
eventide, seemed to hear those two
hills in sublime and awful converse.
81 am chiefly of the past said the
IT ,taH - he
ture." replied Mars Hill The 4.cro-
polls said: my orators are dead. My
aw.givers are dead. My poets are
dead My architects are dead. My
sculptors are dead. am a monument
of the dead past shall never again
hear q song sung. will never again
see a column lifted. l will
never again behold goddess
crowned" Mars Hill responded:
~, too, have had a history. l had on
my heights warriors who will never
again unsheath the sword, and Judges
who will never again utter doom, ana
orators who will never again make "a
plea. But my influence is to be more
in the future than il ever was in the
past The words that missionary,
Paul, uttered that exciting day in the
populace on nv rocky shoulders, have
only begun their ma jestic roll; the
brotherhood of man, and the Christ of
God, and the peroration of resurrection
and last Judgment with which the
Tarsian orator closed his sermon
that day amid the hooking crowd,
shall yet revolutionize the planet. Oh,
Acropolisl I have stood here long
20, 10
no gods at all. Your Boreas could not
could not control the sea- Your Apollo
never evoked musical note. Your
god Ceres never grew harvest
Your goddess OF wisdom, Minerva,
never knew the Greek alphabet. Your
Jupiter could not handle the light
nings But the God whom l pro-
claimed on the day when Paul preached
before the astonished assemblage on
my rough heights, IL the God of music,
the God of wisdom, the Goa 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 Acropolls
spalSe and said, as though in self-de-
lChoC' Il INV uO0 All WIG III
mortality of the soul, and my Socrates
praised virtue, and my Miltiades at
Marathon drove back the Persian OPP
pressors." "Yes," said Mars Hill,
''your Plato laboriously guessed at the
immortality of the soul, but my
Paul divinely inspired, declared
it as fact straight from God
Your Socrates praised virtue
but expired as a suicide. Your
Miltiades was brave against earthly
foes, yet died from n wound ignomin-
ously gotten In after-defeat But nv
Paul challenged all earth and all hell
with this battle shout: we wrestlo
not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of
this world, against spiritual wicked
ness in high places, and then on the
2sth of June, In the year SO, on the
road to Ostia, after the sword Of the
headsman had given one keen stroke,
took the crown of martyrdom.'
After moments silence by both
hills, the Acropolis moaned ont in the
darkness: "Alasl Alas!' ard Mars
Hill responded: "Hosannahl Hosan-
nahl" Then the voices of both hills
became indistinct. and as passed on
and away in the twilight, seemed to
haar only two eo,,n6aa fy,.onnank -