Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-11-23

influence is to be more in the future
/ than it ever was in the past. Tho
/ 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,
and 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 knocking
crowd, shall yet revolutionize the planet.
| O Acropolis! | 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 | 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.
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 n suicide. Your
Miltiades was brave against earthly
foes, yet died from a wound ignoniini-
ousIy 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
municipalities, against powers, against
the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high
places, and then on the Goth of June,
in the year Sc, on the road to Ostia,
after the sword of the headsman had
given one keen stroke, took the crown
of martyrdom.
ALAS AND HOSANNAH!
After a moments silence by both
hills the Acropolis moaned out in the
darkness, "Alas AIas!'' and Mars Hill
responded, "Hosannah Hosannahp
Then the voices of both hills became
indistinct, and as l passed on and away
in the twilight | seemed to hear only
two sounds-a fragment of Pentelicon
marble from the architrave of the Acrop-
oils dropping down on the ruins of
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 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 world"-''Of one blood ali
nations appointed a day in which
he will Judge the world"-" raised him
from the dead.
As that night in Athens l put my
tired head on my pillow, and the ex-
citing scenes of the day passed through
my mind, thought on the same sub
ject on which as a boy l made my com
mencement speech in Niblo's theatre
on graduation day from the New York
university, viz, THE Moral Effects of
Sculpture and Architecture, but fur
ther than | could have thought in boy
hood l 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 the men
whose forms you cut in the marble.
Yea l thought that night what
struggles the martyrs went through in
order that in our time the Gospel might
have full swing; and 1 thought that
night what brainy religion it must be
that could absorb hero like him whom
we have considered today, a man the
superior of the whole human race, the
infidels but pygmies or homunculi COM
pared with him; and thought what a
through the same grace that saved
Paul, we shall confront this great
apostle and shall have the opportunity,
amid the familiarities of the skies, of
asking him what was the greatest occa-
sion of all his life
He may say, 1.-The shipwreck of
Melita." He may say, 1.-THE riot at
EphaSTS He nav COW tsNTv laSt xUa1Lr
out on the road to Ostia." But 1
think he will say; THE day 1 stood
on Mars Hill addressing the indignant
Areopagites and looking off upon the
towering form of the goddess Minerva,
and the majesty of the Parthenon, and
all the brilliant divinities of the Acrop-
oils. That account in the Bible was
true. My spirit was stirred within me
when l saw the city wholly given up to
idolatrvl"