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


when u was covered with a mountain
Of this marble cut into all the exauisit.
shapes that genius could contrive and
striped with silver and afiame witt
gold. The Acropolis In the mornin.
light of those ancients must have shons
as though 1t were an aerolite cast of
from the MONDAY sun. The temple,
must have looked like petrifed foam
The whole Acropolis must have seemed
like the white breakers of the grea,
Dcean of time,
TILL APOSTLE PAUL ON MARS HILL.
But we cannot stop longer here, TO,
there is a hill near by Of more interest
though 1t has not one chip of marble &c
suggest a statue or temple We has
ten down the Acropolis to ascend the
Areopagus, or Mars Hill, as it Is called,
1t took only about three minutes tc
walk the distance. and the two hill
tops are 90 near that what l said in re-
ligious discourse on Mars Hill was heard
distinctly by some English gentlemen
on the Acropolis This Mars Hill is a
rough pile of rock fifty feet high. Il
was famous long before New Tesla.
ment times.
The Persians easily and terribly as.
saulted the Acropolis from this hilltop.
Here assembled the court to try crimi.
nails. 1t was held in the nighttime, SO
that the faces Of the judges could not
be seen, nor the faces of the lawyers
who made the plea, and so, instead OF
trial being one of emotion, it must
have been one of cool justice; but there
was one occasion on this hill memora-
BILE above all Others.
A little man, physically weak, and
his rhetoric described by himself as
contemplate, had by his sermons
rocked Athens with commotion, and he
was summoned either by writ of law or
hearty invitation to come upon that
pulpit of rock and give specimen of
his theology. All the wiseacres of Ath-
ems turned out and turned up to hear
him. The more venerable of them sat
in an amphitheater, 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 fanatic and others
called madcap and others bias
phemer and others styled contemptu-
ously, ''This fellow"
Paul arrived in answer to the writ or
invitation, and confronted them and
gave them the biggest dose that NOR
tails ever took. He was SO built that
nothing could scare him, and as for Ju-
piter and Athena, the god and the
goddess whose images 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 I'M
der his feet. In that audience were the
first orators of the world, and they had
voices like flutes when they were pass
i've and like trumpets when they were
aroused, and l think they laughed in
the sleeves of their gowns as this insig-
nifcant looking man rose to speak.
In that audience were Scholiasts, who
knew everything, or thought they did
and from the end of the longest hair on
the top of their craniums to the end of
the nail on the longest toe they were
stuffed with hypercriticism, and they
leaned back with supercilious look to
listen. As in 1889, I stood on that
rock where Paul stood, and a slab Of
which brought from Athens by con-
sent of the queen, through Mr.. Tri-
coupis, the prime minister, and had
placed in yonder memorial wall, read
the whole story, Bible in hand.
GOD WHO MADE THE WORLD.
What 1 have so far said in this dis
course was necessary in order that you
may understand the boldness, the de-
fiance, the holy recklessnesss the mag
nificence of Pauls speech. The first
he launched at the oppo-
site hill-the Acropolis-that moment
all aglitter with idols and temples. He
cries out, "God, who made the world"
Why, they thought that Prometheus
made it, that Mercury made it. that
Apollo made it, that Poseidon made
it, that Eros made it, that Pandrocus
made it, that Boreas made it, that it
took all the gods of the Parthenon,
yea, all the gods and goddesses
Of the Acropolis, to make it, and
here stands man without any ecclesi-
astical title, neither D. D., nor even a
reverend, declaring that the world was
made by the Lord of heaven and earth,
and hence the inference 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, a falsehood, a sham, a
Look at the faces of the
auditors; they are turning pale, and
then red, and then wrathful. There
had been several earthquakes in that
region, but that was the severest shock
,hese men had ever felt.
The Persians had bombarded the
AcrOpolis from the heights of Mars