Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1891-11-27
REV. DIR. 4ALMAGB.
The Eminent Brooklyn Divines Sun
day Sermon
Subject: "The Wonders of Athens"

ne SuW inc Guy WHOIy 0tCeH 10 tUOtutTy. -
Acts xvii, 16
II seemed as if morning would never come.
We had arrived after dark in Athens, Greece,
and the night was sleepless with expecta-
tiop. and my watch slowly announced to me
one and two and three and four o'clock; and
at the first ray of dawn called our party to
look out of the window upon that city to
which Paul said he was debtor, and to
which the whole earth is debtor for Greek
architecture Greek sculpture, Greek poetry,
Greek eloquence, Greek proves and Greek
history.
That morning in Athens we sauntered
forth armed with most generous and lovely
letters from the President of the United
States and his Secretary of State, and dur
ing all our stay in that city those letters
caused every door and every gate and every
temple and every palace TO swing open be-
fore us. The mightiest geographical name
on earth to-day is America. The signature
of an American President and Secretary of
State will take man where an army could
not. Those names brought us into the
presence of a most gracious and beautiful
sovereign, the Queen of Greece, and her
cordiality was more like that of sister than
the occupant of a throne room. No formal
bow as when monarchs are approached, but
a cordial shake of the hand and earnest
questions about our personal welfare
and our beloved country far away.
But this morning we pass through where
stood the Agora, the ancient market place,
the locality where philosophers used to meet
their disciples walking while they talked,
and where Paul the Christian logiciaD,
flung many a proud stole and got the laugh
on many an impertinent Epicurean. The
market place was the center of social and
political life, and it was the place where
people went to tell and hear the news.
Booths and bazaars were set up for merchan-
disc of all kinds except meat, but everything
must be sold for cash, and there must be no
lying about the values of commodities, and
the Agoranomi who ruled the place could
inhict severe punishment upon offenders.
The different schools of thinkers had dis
tinct places set apart for convocation. The
PlatGars must meet at the cheese market
the Decelians at the barber shop, the sellers
of perfumes at the frankincense head
quarters.
The market place was a space three hun
dred and fifty yards long aud two hundred
and fifty yards wide, and it was given up to
gossip and merchandise and lounging and
philosophzng. All this you need to know
in order to unders stand the Bible when it
says of Paul, Therefore disputed he in tho
market daily with them that met him D."
You see it was the best place to get an au'
dience. and if a man feels himself called to
preach he wants people to preach TO. But
before we make our chief visits of to-day VIC
must take a turn at the Stadium. 1t is a
little way out, but so we must. The Sta
dunn was the place where the foot races &C.
Cured
Paul had been out there no doubt, for hi
frequently uses the scenes Of that place as
q H. Lot fnn
that is set before US and again, They dc
it to obtain a corruptibe garland, but we al
incorruptible." The marble and the gliding
have been removed. but the high mounds
against which the seats were piled are still
there. The Stadium is six hundred and
eighty feet long, one hundred and thirty feet
wide, and held forty thousand spectators
There is to-day the very tunnel through
which the defeated racer departed from the
Stadium and from the Kisses of the people,
and there are the stairs up which the victol
went to the top of the hill to be crowned witt
the laurel.
In this place contests with wild BEAST
sometimes took place and while Hadrian, the
emperor sat on yOnder height one thousano
beasts were slain in one celebration. But II
was chiefly for foot racing, and so proposes
to my friend that day while we were in the
FciuQlull lIdA We AIl WHICH, VI uo lDAtu W.
the sooner from end to end of this historical
ground and so at the word given by the
lockers on we started side by side, but before
J got through | found out what Paul meant
when he compares the spiritual race with the
race in this very Stadium, as he says, Lay
aside every weight" My heavy overcoat
and my friends freedom from such incum'
brance showed the advantage in any kind OF
4 race of "laying aside every weight
We come now to the Acropolis. 1t is a
rock about two miles in circumference at
the base and thousand feet in circumfeT-
ence at the top and three hundred feet high.
On it has been crowded more elaborate
architecture and sculpture than in any
other place under the whole heavens.
Originally fortress, afterward a con5re-
cation OF temples and statues and pillars,
their ruins an enchantment from which no
observer ever breaks away. No wonder
that Aristdes thought it the centre of all
things-Greece, the centre Of the world.
Attica. the centre of Greece; Athens, the
centre of AttIca and the Acropolis the CEN
tire of Athens. Earthquakes have shaken it,
Nerres plundered it.
Lord Elgin, the English ambassador at
Constantinople, got permission OF the Sui
tan TO remove from the Acropolis fallen
pieces of the building but he took from the
building TO England the finest statues, re-
moving them at an expense of eight hundred
thousand dollars. 4 storm overthrow many
of the statues of the Acropolis Morosini,
the General, attempted to remove from
pediment the sculptured car and horses of
Victory. but the clumsy machinery dropped
it and all was lost.
The Turks turned the building into a
powder magazine where the Venetian guns
-, hn
columns flying in the air and falling cracked
and splntered. But after all that time and
storm and war and iconoclasm have effected,
the Acropolis is the monarch Of all ruins,
and before il bow the learning, the genius
the poetry, the art, the history OF the ages.
| saw it as it was thousands Of years ago.
had read so much about it and dreamed 50
much about it that | needed no nlagicians
wand to restore it.
At one wave of my hand on that clear
morning in 1889 it rose before me in the glory
it had when Pericles ordered it and lctinus
planned it and Phidias chise.ed it and Pro-
togines painted it and Pausanias described
it. It's gates, which were carefully guarded
by the ancients, open to let you in and you
ascend by sixty marble steps the proDyl@
which EpaminondaS wanted to transfer 10
Thebes, but permission am glad 10 say,
COul1 not De BTdDleu lOI Tue IciiONhi VI .hAo
architectural miracle. In the days when
ten cents would do more than dollar now,
the building cost two million three hundred
thousand dollars. See its five ornamental
gates, the keys intrusted to an Off
Ger for only one day, lest the temp
tation TO go in and inisappropriate the
treasures DO too great for him. its ceiling
mingling of blue and scarlet and green, AMI
the walls abloom with pictures utmost In
thought and coloring. Yonder is temple
to a goddess cellel "Victory Without
Wingsr SO many of the triumphs of the
world had been followed by defeat that the
Greeks wished in marble to indicate that
victory for Athens had come, never again to
fly away, and hence this temple to Victory
Without WingS''-a temple of marble, snow
white and glittering. Yonder behold the
pedestal Of Agrippa, twenty-seven feet high
and twelve feet square.
But the overshadowing wonder OF all the
hill is the ParthenoD. In days when money
was ten times more valuable than now itcost
four million six hundred thousand dollars.
1t is Doric grandeur having forty-six
columns. each column thirty-four feet high
and six feet two inches in diameter. Won
drous ter-columniations Painted port-
cos. architraves tinged with ocher, shields of
gold hung up, lines of most delicate curve,
figures of horses aud men and women ano
gods, oxen on the way to sacrifice, statues oil