The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1891-11-27

the sword, and judges who wiz never
again utter a doom, and orators who
will never again make plea. But my
influence Is to be more in the future
than 1t ever was In the past. The
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-
ton Of Resurrection and Last Judgment
with which the Tarsian orator closed
his sermon that day amid the hooking
crowd, shall yet revolutionize the planet.
o Acropolisl 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 lghtnings.
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. I"
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 a suicide. Your
Miltiades was brave against earthly
foes, yet died from a wound ignonlini-,
ously 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 66, on the road to Ostia,
after the sword of the headsman had
given one keen stroke, took the crown
of martyrdom.'"
ALAsl AND HosANNAH!
After a moments silence by both
hills the Acropolis moaned out in the
darkness, "Alasl Alasw and Mars Hill
responded, "Hosannah! Hosannahw
Then the voices of both hills became
indistinct, and as 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 a
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 I could only
hear parts of disconnected sentences
waited on the night air-"God who
made the world"-''of one blood ali
ations'--"appointed day in which
2e will judge the world"- raised him
rom the dead"
As that night in Athens l put my
;ired head on my pillow, and the ex-
'iting scenes of the day passed through
ny mind, thought on the same SUBJ
ect on which as a boy I made my CON-
nencement speech in Niblo's theatre
IN graduation day from the New York
viz, "The Moral Effects of
Sculpture and Architecture, but fur
her than could have thought in boy
lood l thought in Athens that night |
hat the moral effects of architecture
nd sculpture depend on what you do
n great buildings after they are put |
lp, and upon the character of the men
whose forms you cut in the marble
Yea! I thought that night what
truggles the martyrs went through in
rider that in our time the Gospel might
ave full swing; and I thought that
light what brainy religion it must be
hat could absorb hero like him whom
re have considered today, man the
uperior of the whole human race, the
lfidels but pygmies or homunculi COM
AIRED with him; and I thought what a
apturous consideration it is that
trough the same grace that saved
'aul, we shall confront this great
postle and shall have the opportunity,
mid the familiarities of the skies, of
skiing him what was the greatest occa-
on of all his life.
He may say, ''The shipwreck of
[elita." He may say, 'The riot at
phesus." He may say, ''My last walk
ut on the road to Ostia" But l
link he will say; 1.-THE day 1 stood