Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-11-26
THE ACR0POLIS.
Word Picture of the Monarch
of all Ruins.
HOW PAUL TALKED AT ATHENS.
He Had Less Regard for Jupiter and Athena
Than for an Ant.
Orators With Voices Like Flutes When
They Were Passive and Like Trum-
pets When They Were Aroused.
Given Up to Idoiatry.
Special to the Gazette.

Special to the Gazette.
BROOKLYN, n. Y, Nov. 22-The congre-
CATION at the Tabernacle, led by cornet and
organ, sang this morning with great power,
the hymn of Isaac Watts, beginning:
'Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come"
The sermon, which was on the Acropolis,
is the sixth of the series DR.. Talmage is
preaching on the subjects suggested by his
tour in Bible lands. His text was taken
from Acts xvii, 10: while Paul waited
for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred
in him when he saw the city wholly given
to idO.atry."
1t seemed as if morning would never
come. We had arrived after dark in Ath-
ems, Greece, and the night was sleepless
with expectation, ana my watch slowly an
nounced to me l and = and and 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 morn
ing 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 during all our stay
in that city those letters caused every door
palace TO swing open before US. The
mightiest geographical name on earth to-
day is America. The signature of an Amer
lean president and secretary of state Will
take man where an army could not.
Those names brought US into the pres
ence of Il most gracious and beautiful SOW
erei9n, the queen of Greece, and her cor
diality was more like that of sister than
the occupant of throne-room. No formal
bow as when monarchs are approached, but
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 local
ity where philosophers used to meet their
disciples, walking while they talked, and
where Paul the Christian logician flung
many proud Stole, and got the laugh on
many an impertinent epicurean. The mar
ket-place was the center of social and po
litical life and it was the place where peo
pie went to tell and hear the news.
BOOTHS AND BAZAARs
were set up for merchandise of all kinds,
except meat, but everything must be sold
for cash, and there must be no lying about
the value OF commodities, and the Agor-
anomi who ruled the place could lntilct Sc
we're punishment upon offenders. The diff
ferent schools OF thinkers had distinct
places set apart for convocation. The
Platnans must meet at the cheese market,
the Decelians at the barber shop, the sellers
of perfumes at the frankincense headquar-
tiers. The market place was space $50
yards long and $50 wide, and it was given
up to gossip and merchandise, and loung-
ing and philosophizing. All this you need
TO know in order to understand the Bible
wien it says of Paul, Therefore disputed
he in the market daily with them that met
him. You see it was the best place TO get
an audience, 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 we must take q turn at the Stadium.
II is little way out, but go we must. The
stadium was the place where the foot races
occurred.
Paul had been out there no doubt for he
frequently uses the scenes of that place as
figures when he tells US: Let US run the
race that is set before u.s. and again,
They do it to obtain corruptible gar
land, but We are 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 $50 feet long, 1870 feet wide and
held 40, 600 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 victor went to the top
of the Hill to be crowned with the laurel
In this place contests
WITH WILD BEASTS
sometimes took place, and while Hadrian,
the emperor, sat on yonder height, one
thousand beasts We're slain in one celebra-
tior. But it Was chiefly foot racing, and so
proposed to my friend that day while we
were in the Stadium that we try which of US
could run the sooner from end to end of this
historical ground and SO at the word given
by the loo6ers-on we started side by side,
but before got through ] found out what
Pail 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 encumbrance showed the advant-
age in any kind of a 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 a thousand feet in circumfer-
ence at the top anJ three hundred feet high
On it has been crowded more elaborate ar
chitecture and sculpture than in any other
place under the whole heavens. Originally
a fortress, afterward congregation of tenn
pies and statues and pillars, their ruins an
euchantment from which no observer ever
breaks away No wonder that Aristides
thought it the center of all things-Greece,
the center of the world; Attica, the center
of Greece; Athens, the center of Attica,
and the Acropolis the center of Athens.
Earthquakes have shaken it; Verres plum
dered 1t.
Lord Elgin, the English ambassador at
Constsntinople, got permission of the sultan
to remove from the Acropolis fallen pieces
of the building, but he took from the build
ing to England the finest statues, removing
them at an expense of $500, 600 A 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
powder magazine, where the Venetian guns
dropped a fire that by explosion sent the
columns flying in the air and falling
cracked and splintered. But after all that
time and storm and war and iconoclasm have
effected, the Acropolis is the monarch of all
ruins, and before it 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
so much about it. that | needed no magi-
clans wand to restore it. At one wave of
my hand on that clear morning in 1850. it
rose before me in the glory il had when
Pericles ordered it, and Ictinus planned it,
and Phidias chiselled it and Protogines
painted it and Pausanias described it. Its
gates, which were carefully guarded by the
ancients. open to let you in, and you ascend |
by sixty marble steps the propylaa, which |
Epaminondas wanted to transfer to Thebes, |
but permission, am glad to say, could not |
be granted for the removal of this architec-
tural miracle. In the days when 10 cents |
would do more than dollar now, the build |
nc fob