Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-11-26


| ing Yonder behold the pedestal of
| Agrippa, twenty-seven feet high and twelve
| feet square. But the overshadowing
| wonder of all the hills is the Parthenon.
| In days when money was ten times more
| valuable than now it cost s., 900, 900. 1t is a
| Doric grandeur, having forty-six columns,
! each column thirty-four feet high and six
| feet two inches in diameter. Wondrous
| intercolumuiations Painted porticos,
| architraves tinged with ochre, shields of
| gold hung up lines of most delicate curve,
| figures of horses and
MEN AND WOMEN
| and gods, oxen on the way to sacrifice,
statues of the deities Dionysius. Prone
| theus Hermes, Demeter. ZeuS, Hera, Po-
seldom; in one frieze twelve divinities, GEN.
| taurs in battle; weaponry from Marathon:
| chariot of night; chariot of the morning;
horses of the sun, the fates, the furies;
statue of Jupiter holding in his right hand
| the thunderbolt; silyer-footed chair in
| which Xerxes watched the battle of Salamis
| only few miles away. Here is the colos
sal statue of Minerva in full armor, eyes OF
| gray-colored stone: figure of a Sphinx, on
her head, grifins by her side (Which are
lions with eagles beak), spear in one hand,
statue of Liberty in the other, shield
| carved with battle scenes, and even the
slippers sculptured and tied on with thongs
of gold. Far out at sea the sailors saw this
temples, giittering in the sun. Here are
statues of eqnestrians, statue Of a lioneSs,
and there are the Graces. and wonder
horse in bronze.
There is statue saidssin the time of Au-
gustus to have of its own accord turned
around from east to west and spit blood;
statues made out of shields conquered in
battle; statue of Apollo, the eXpeller of To-
Gusts; statue of Anacreon. drunk and sing
ing; statue of Olympodorus, a Greek, mem
orable for the fact that he was cheerful
when others were cast down, trait worthy
of sculpture. But, walk on and around the
Acropolis, and yonder you see 4 statue of
Hygeia, and the statue of Theseus fighting
the Minotaur and the statue of Hercules
staying the serpents. No wonder that
Petronius said it was easier to find god
than to find man in Athens. Oh, the Ac-
ropolis! The most of its temples and
statues made from the marble Guarries of
Mount Pentelicum, a little way from the
city. have here on my table block of
the Parthenon made out OF this marble, and
on it is the sculpture of Phidias. | brought
it from the Acropolis. This specimen has
on it the dust of ages, and the marks of eX
ploslon and battle, but you can get from it
some idea of the delicate luStre of the Aero
polls when 1t was covered with mountain of
this marble cut into all the eXQuisit shapes
that genius could contriye and striped with
silver, and
AFLAME WITH GOLD.
The Acropolis in the morning light of those
ancients,must have shown as though it were
an aerolite cast off from the monday sun.
The temples must have looked like petritied
foam. The whole Acropoiis must have
seemed like the white breakers of the great
ocean of time.
But we cannot stop longer here, for there
is a hill near by of more interest, though it
oh nf IN a
statue or temple. We hasten down the
Acropolis to ascend the Areopagus. or Mars
Fill, as it is called. 1t took only about
three minutes to walk tine distance, and the
two hill tops are so near that what said IN
religious 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 1t was famous
long before New Testament times.
The PerSianS easily and terribly assaulted
the Acropolis from this hill top. Here as
sembled the court to try criminals. 1t was
held in the night time, 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, phySic-
ally weak. and his rhetoric described by
himself as contemplate, had by his SER
mons 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 a specimen of his theology.
All the wiseacres of Athens 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 a fanatic, and others
called madcap, and others a blasphemer,
and others styled contemptuously this
fellow
Paul arrived in answer to the writ or in
vitation and confronted them and gave them
the biggest dose that mortalS ever took. He
was so built that nothing could scare him,
and as for Jupiter 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 under his
feet. In that audience were the first ora
tors 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 nsignificant-ooking 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
hcIe WIN HS pCltilIlClSiH hliO bileJ
leaned back with supercilious look to lis
ten. As in 1889, 1 stood on that rock where
Paul stood, and a slab of which l brought
from Athens by consent of the queen,
through MIR. Tricoupis, the prime minister,
and had placed in yonder Memorial wall,
read the whole story, Bible in hard
What have so far said in this discourse
was necessary. in order that you may IN
derstand the holiness, the defiance, the
holy reckeSSneSS, the maGnificence of
Pauls speech. The first thunderbolt he
launched at the opposite hill-the Acropolis
that moment all agitter with idols and
temples. He cries out, 'God, who made
the worldr' Why, they thought that Pro-
metheus made it, that Mercury made it,
that Apollo made it, that Poseidon made it,
that Eros made it, that Pondrocus 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 a d. D., nor even
reverend, declaring that the world was
made by tine 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 Parthe-
non could hear it. was deceit, falsehood,
a sham, blasphemy. Look at the faces of
his auditors; they are turning pale, and
then red, and then wrathful. There mad
been several earthquakes in that region.
but that was the severest shock that these
men had ever felt The Persians had
BOMBARDED THE ACROPoLIS
from the heights of Mars hill, but the Paul
inc bombardment was greater and more
terrific. What said his hearers, s'naye