Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1891-11-28

/ 30 witness that your gods are no
gods at ali. 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
harvest. Your goddess of wisdom, Min
! erva, never knew the Greek alphabet. Your
| Jupiter could not handle the lghtnings.
But the God whom proclaimed on the day
when Paul preached before the astouniei
assemblage on my rough heights is the Col
Of music, the God OF wisdom, the God OF
| power, the God Of mercy. the Col of love,
the God of storms, the God of sunshine thu
| God of the land and the God of the ssa, the
| God over all, blessed forever"
Then the Acropolis spake and said. as
| though in self de ensa 'Ay Plato argued
| for the immortality of the soul, and my
Socrates praisel virtue, and nv Miltiades
| at Marathon drove back the Persian op-
pressors." ''Yezn said Mars Hill. your
Plato laboriously guessed at the Immortality
Of the soul, but my Plato. divineiy in
spired, declared it as fact straight from
| God. Your Socrates praised virtue, out ex-
pired as suicide. Your Miltiades WAS br We
against earthly foes, yet he died from a
wound ANONYMOUSLY gotten in after defeat.
| But my Paul challenger all earth and all hell
with this battle shout, "We wrestle not
against flesh and blood. but agaInt principal
tiles. against powers, against tne ru ers OF
| Tue udTkUE5S OIL ILLS NOTlU, against SDlrlIu1l
wickedness in high places. and then on the
10Th 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 muaned ont in the DARKNESS
"Alasi Alasp and Mars Hill responded
"Hosanuah Hosannah!' Taen the voices
OF both hills became indistincz, and as |
passed on and away in thetwihght seemsd
to hear only two sonuds-fragment of
Penuelicon marble from TIE architraye of
the Acropolis dropping down on the ruins of
q shattered idol, an / the other sound seemed
to come from the rocs on Mars hill, from
which we had just descended. But we were
by this time so lar of that the fragments of
sentences were smaller when dropping from
Mars Hills than vera tue fragments of fallen
marble on the Acropolis, and | could only
hear parts of disconnected sentences watei
on the night air-"God who made the
world"-'of one blood all nation" zap
pointed day in which He will judge the
world" raised from the dead"
As that night in Athens put my tired
head on my pillow, and the exciting scenes
of the dayspassed through,ny mind, thought
on the same subject on which, as boy. L
made my commencement speech in EloLos
Theatre on graduation day from the New
York University, viz, The moral effects of
sculpture ana drcnltecbufS, DuG luGtuer
than could have thought in boyhood,
thought in Athens that night that the moral
effects of architecture am sculpture depend
on what you do in great buildings ter they
are put u, and upon the character OF the
men whose forms you cut in the marble.
Veal thought that night what struggles
the martyrs went through in order that III
or time the Gospel might have full swing;
and thought that night what bralny re-
ligion it must be that could absorb hero
like him whom we have considered to-day, a
man. the superior of the whole human race,
the intidels but pigmies or homunculi com
pared with him. and thought what rap
furious 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, "The shipwreck OF Melita."
He may say. 'The riot at Ephesus" He
may say, my last walk cut on the road to
Ostiap But, 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
iantdivinities of the Acropolis. That account
in the Bible was true. Ny spirit was stirred
within me when / saw the city wholly given
up to idolatryr