Audubon County Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Audubon Co., Iowa) 1885-1894, 1891-11-26

| rose. 10 speak. In tnat auu1enc
were Scholiasts, who knew every thing
or thought they did, and from the en-
of the longest hair on the top of thei
cranIums to the end of the nail on tn
longest toe, they were stuffed wit
hypercrlticism and they leaned bacl
with supercilious look to listen. A
in 1889, stood on that rock wher
Paul stood, and slab of which
brought from Athens by consent of tn
Queen, through Mr.. Tricoupis, to,
prime minister, and had placed il
yonder memorial wall, / read thu
whole story, bible in hand.
What have so far said in thi
discourse was necessary in orde
that you may understand the holiness
the defiance, the holy recklessness, the
magnIfceuce of Pauls speech. The
first thunderbolt he launched at the
opposite hill--the Arcopolis-tha
moment all aglitter with idols ant
temples He cries out, "God who
made the world" Why, they thought
that Promethus made it, that Mercury
made it, that Apollo made it, that
Posedion made it, that Eros
made it, that Pandrocus made
1t, that Boreas made it, that
it took all the gods of the
Parthenon, yea, al the gods and god
desses of the Acropolis to make it, and
here stands a man without any eccle-
siastical title, neither ID. D., MOI
even a reverend, declaring that the
world was made by the Lord of heaven
and earth, and hence the inferen G
that all the splendid covering of the
| Acropolis, so near that the people
standing on the steps of the Parthenon
could hear it, was a deceit, false
hood, a sham, blasphemy. Look al
the faces of his auditors; they are
turning pale, and then red, and
then wrathfuL There had been
several earthquakes in that re.
gion; but that was the severest
shock these men had ever felt. The
Persians had ombarded the Acropolls
from the heights of Mars Hill, but this
Pauline bombardment was greater
and more terrific. What" said his
| hearers, "have we been hauling with
many yokes of oxen for centuries
these blocks from the quarries. OF
| Mount Pentelicum. and have we had
our architects putting up these struc-
lures of unparalleled splendor, and
have we had the greatest of all sculp-
tors, Phidias, with his men, chiseling
away at those wondrous pediments,
and cutting away at these friezes, and
have we taxed the nations resources
| to the almost, now to be told that
| those statues see nothing, hear
nothing, know nothing?" oh, Paul,
stop for u moment and give
these startled and overwhelmed
auditors time to catch their
breath! Make rhetorical pause!
Take a look around you at the inter
esting landscape, and give your hear
ers time to recover! No, he does not
make even period, or so much as a
colon, but launches the Sc ond thun-
derbolt right after the first, and in
the same breath goes on to say: God
''dwelleth 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 of Zeus Olymp-
ius 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. No morer responds Paul,
He dwelleth not in temples made
with hands"
In the same breath he launches the
third thunderbolt, which, to them, is
more fiery, more terrible, more demol-
ishing than the others, as he cries out
hath made of one blood all nations. "
Oh, Paul! you forget you are speaking
to the proudest and most exclusive
audience in the world Dor say .'of
one blood. You cannot mean that.
Had Socrates, and Plato, and Demos
themes and Scion, and Lycurgus, and
DraCo and Sophocles, and EuripedeS,
and Hschylus, and Pericles, and PHI
dias, and Miltiades blood just like the
Persians, like the Turks, like the
Egyptians, like the common herd, of
humanity? Yes says Paul, of one
D God, all nations"
Surely that must be the closing para
graph of the sermon. His auditors
must be let up from the nervous strain.
Paul has smashed the Acropolis and
smashed the national pride of the
Greeks, and what more can he say?
Those Grecian orators, standing on
that place, always closed their adj
dresses with something sublime and
climacteric. a peroration, and Paul is
going to give them a peroratIon which
will eclipse in rover and ma ;esty all
that he has yet said. Heretofore he
has hurled one thunderbolt at a time:
now. he will close by hurting two at
once. The little old man, under the
power of his speech, has Strengthened
himself up, and the stoop has gone out
of his shoulders, and he looks about
three ieet taller than when he began,
and his eyes, which were quiet, be-
came 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 to-
gether with a cord of :nconsuma BILE
courage and hurls them at the crowd
now standing or sitting agast-,he
two thunderbolts of Resurrection and
Last Judgment His closing words
were: because He hath appointed a
day, in which he will Judge the world
i righteousness 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 shonld
have to get up ont of their cemeteries
W sunni ItlOtC anu IutlT
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 Eschines in his
| speeches against Timarchus and Ctesi-
phon, 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 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 of It's orchestra
still therel seen enacted the tragedies
of Fschylus 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 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 / suppose IL means that