Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1891-11-27

| Oh cool 1uSJlcc. buJ tnorc was one Oc-
casion on this hill memorable above
all others. A little man, physically
| weak, and his rhertoric described by
himself as contemplate, had by N
sermons rocked Athens with commo-
ton, ano ne was summoned either by
writ of law or hearty invitation to
come upon that pulpit of rock and give
q specimen of his theology. All the
wiseacres of Athens turned out and
turned up to hear him. The more iivener-
able of them sat in an amphitheatre,t the
granite seats OF which are still visible,
but the other people swarmed on all
sides of the hill and at the base of it to
hear this man, whom some called a
fanatic, and others called mad
cap, and others blasphemer,
and others styled contemptuously "this
fellow" Paul arrived in answer to the
writ or invitation and confronted them
and gave them the biggest dose that
morta S ever took. He was SO built that
nothing could scare him, and as for
Jupiter and Atheuia, the god and the
goddess, whose imagines were in full
sight on the adjoining hill, he had not
so much regard for them as he had for
the ant that was crawling in the sand
under his feet. In that audience were
the first orators of the world, and they
had voices like flutes when they were
passive and like trumpets when they
| were aroused, and l think they
laughed in the sleeves of their gowns
as this insignificant looking maE
rose to speak In that audience
were Scholiasts, who knee everything,
or thought they did, and from the end
of the longest hair on the top of their
cranlums TO the end of the nail on the
longest toe, they were stuffed with
hypercriticism and they leaned back
with a supercilious look to listen. AS
in 1889, stood on that rock where
s'aul stood, and slab of which
brought from Athens by consent of the
Queen, through Mr. Tricoupis, the
prime minister, and had placed in
yonder memorial wall, / read the
whole story. bible in hand.
| What l have so far said in this
discourse was necessary in order
that you may understand the boldness,
the defiance, the holy recklessness, the
magnIticence of Pauls spec IN. The
first thunderbolt he launched at the
opposite hill-the Arcopolis-that
moment all aglitter with idols and
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 IL, 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 man without any eccle-
siasticnl title, neither d. D., nor
even a reverend, declaring that the
world was made by the Lord of heaven
and earth, and hence the inferen e
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 at
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 bombarded the Acropolls
from the heights of Mars Hill, but this
Pauline bonn bardment 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 greate.t of all sculp-
tors, rhidias, 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 moment and give
these startled and overwhelmed
auditors time to catch their
BREATH Make a rhetorical pause.
Take a look around you ut the inter
esting landscape, and give your hear
ers time to recover! No, he does not
make even a 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 mo e
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 morep' 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 Done 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
Pertains, like the Turks, like the
Egyy tians, like the common herd of
humAalty? YES" says Paul, ''of one
blood, 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 car he saw?
Those Grecian orators, standing on
that place, always closed their nd