The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1891-12-16
Remember those thoughts were to them

L lah UhOA y LIZA W NNASS IN
elocutionary power ever heard. The ances.
tors of some of those Greeks had heard
Demosthenes in his Grafton on the crown,
had heard Eschines in his speeches against
Timarchus and Ctesiphop, 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 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 Sopho-
cles. 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 re-
surrection and judgment 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 of
his imprisoned gesticulation. and they cried
rhetoric? You ought to hear our orators
speak! You had better 90 back to your
business of tentmaking. Our Lycurgus
knew more 10 a minute than you will know
IN a month. Say, where did you get that
crooked back, and those weak eyes fromS
Ha! ha! You try to teach as Grecians!
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 adjourned
to the day OF which the sacred orator had
spoken-the day of resurrection and judg-
ment.
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, I stood half way between the
Acropolis and Mars Hill in the gathering
shadows of eventide, I seemed to hear those
two hills in sublime and awful converse n
am chiefly of the past;;' said the Acropolis.
Hill. The Acropolis said: my orators are
dead. My lawgivers are dead. Ny poets
are dead. My architects are dead. My
sculptors are dead. I am a monument Of
the dead past. ! shall never again hear q
song sung. Twill never again see a column
lifted. / will never again behold goddess
Mars Hill responded: 81, too, have q his
tory. I had on my heights warriors who
judges who will never again utter a 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
exciting day in the hearing Of the wisest
men and the populace on my rocky shoulders
have only begun their majestic role; 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,
Acropolis! / nave stood here lone enough
10 witness that your gods are no
gods ct all. Your Boreas could not con-
troll the winds. Your Neptune could not
manage the sea. Your Apollo never evoked
q musical note. Your god Ceres never grew
q harvest. Your goddess Of wisdom, Min
erva, never knew the Greek alphabet. Your
But the God whom I 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"
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 OPP
pressors." YES" said Mars Hill, your
Plato laboriously guessed at the Immortality
Of the soul, but my Plato, divinely. IN
spired, declared it as q fact straight from
God. Your Socrates praised virtue, but e1-
oired as a suicide. Your Miltiades was brave
against earthly foes, yet he died from
wound ANONYMOUSLY gotten in after defeat;
But NV Paul challenged all earth and all hell
with this battle shout, "We wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but againt principal.
tiles, against powers, against the rulers OF
the darkness Of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places, and then on the
10Th of June, in the year GO, on the road te
Ostia, after the sword Of the headsman mao
given one keen stroke, took the croWno OF
~martyrdom." ,.r
After a moments silence by both hills
the Acropolis moaned out in the darkness,
"Alasl Alasrn and Mars Hill responded,
"Hosannahl Hosannahr p Then the voices
Of both hills became in%distinct aud as ]
passed on and away in thetwilight I seemed
TO hear only two acknowledgement OF
Pentelicon marble from the architrave OF
the Acropolis dropping down on the ruins OF
q 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 off that. the fragments or
sentences were smaller when dropping from
Mars Hills than were the fragments Of fallen
marble on the Acropolis, and / could only
hear parts of disconnected sentences waited
on the night air-'God who made the
world"-'of one blood all nations"-"ap-
pointed a day in which He will judge the
world"-''ralsed from the dead"
As that night in Athens I put my tired
head on my pillow, and the exciting scenes
Of the day,passed throughtmy mind, thought
on the same subject on which, as a boy, i
uoola wv OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES cna6nh IN N1OlOS
Theatre on graduation day from the New
York University, viz, "The moral effects OF
sculpture and architecture" but further
than I could have thought In boyhood, q!
thought in Athens that night that the moral
effects Of architecture and sculpture depend
on what you do in great buildings after they
are put up, and upon the character OF tne
men whose forms you cut in the marble.
Yea! I thought that night what struggles
the martyrs went through in order that in
oar time the Gospel might have full swing;
and I thought that night what o brainy re-
licion it must be that could absorb a hero
like him whom we have considered to-day, a
man, the superior Of the whole human race,
the infidels but pigmies or homuncuh COM
pared with him; and I thought what a rap
turous consideration it is that through the
same grace that saved Paul, we shall con-
front this great apostle, and shall have the
opportunity, amid the familiarities OF the
skies, Of asking him what was the greatest
occasion of all his life. =,
He may say, 1.-The shipwreck of Melita;"
He may say. 1.-THE riot at E~phesus." He
may say, MY last walk out on the road to
OsEs." But, I think he will say, THE day
stood on Mars Hill addressing the indignant
Areopagites, and looking off upon the tower
ing form OF the goddess Minerva, and the
majesty OF the Parthenon and all the brill
liant divinities of the Acropolis: That account