The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1891-12-04

Rev. 7. Dewitt Talmage in his sixth
sermon on Bible lands, recently
preached at Brooklyn, took his text
from Acts, xvii, 16: "While Paul waited
for them at Athens his spirit was stirred
in him when he saw the city wholly
given up to idolatry." DIR. Talmage
said:
1t seemed as if morning would never
come. We had arrived after dark in
Athens, Greece, and the night was
sleepless with expectation, and at the
first ray of dawn, l called TO our party
TO look out of the window upon that
city to which Paul said he was a debtor,
and to which the whole earth is debtor
for Greek architecture, Greek sculpture,
Greek poetry, Greek eloquence, Greek
rowess 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 and every
gate and every temple and every palace
to swing open before us. The might
lest geographical name on earth to-day
is America The signature of an Amer
lean president and secretary of state
will take a man where an army could
not Those names brought us into the
presence of a most gracious and beauti-
full sovereign, the queen of Greece, and
her cordiality was more like that of a
sister than the occupant of throne
room.
But this morning we pass through h
market place, the locality where phil
osophers used to meet their disciples,
walking while they talked. and where
Paul, the Christian logician, flung
many a proud Stole, and got the laugh
on many an impertinent epicurean.
The market place was the center of
social and political life, and it was the
place where people went to tell and
hear the news Booths and bazars
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 COM
modities. and the Agoranomi who
ruled the place could inflict severe
punishment upon offenders. The diff
ferent schools of thinkers had distinct
places set apart for convocation. The
market place was a 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 when it says of Paul, There
fore disputed he in the market daily
with them who met him" You see it
was the best place to get an audience,
and If man feels himself called to
preach he wants people to preach to.
The marble and gliding have been re-
moved, but the high mounds against
which the seats were piled are still
there. The Stadium is $50 feet long,
130 feet wide and held 40, 600 spectators.
There is to-day the very tunnel
through which the defeated racer de-
parted 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
y
height, 1000 beasts were slain in one
celebration. But it was chiefly for
foot racing, so 1 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 histori-
cal ground, and so at the
word given by the lookerson
we started side by side, but before 1
got through 1 found out what Paul
meant when he compares the spiritual
race with the race in this very Stadium,
as he says: Lay aside every weight"
Ny heavy overcoat and my friends
freedom from such incumbrance
showed the advantage 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 circumfer-
ence at the base and 1,000 feet in cir
conference at the top nd 800 feet high.
On it has been crowded more elaborate
architecture and sculpture than in any
other place under the whole heavens.
Originally fortress, afterward a con-
gregation of temples and statues and
pillars, their ruins an enchantment
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 CEN
ter of Attica, and the Acropolis, the
center of Athens
Earthquakes have shaken it; Verres
plundered it. Lord Elgin, the English
ambassador at Constantinople, got per-
mission of the sultan to remove from
the Acropolis fallen pieces of the build
ing, and he took from the building to
England the finest statues, removing
them at an expense of $500. 600. A
storm overthrew many of the statues
of the Acropolis. Morosini, the general,
attempted to remove from pediment
the sculptured car and horses of Vic
tory, but the clumsy machinery
dropped aud all was lost The Turks
turned the building into a powder
magazine where the Venetian guns
dropped fire that by explosion sent
the columns flying IN the air and fall
ing cracked and splintered. But after
all that time and storm and war and
iconoclasm have effected, the Acropolis
is the monarch of ali 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 abo1t it that
] needed no magician's wand to restore
it In the days when ten cents would
do more than dollar now, the build
ing cost 3, 800. 600 See its five orna-
mented gates, the keys entrusted to an
officer for only one day lest the tempt
alton to go in and misappropriate the