Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1891-12-11
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIvINE'S sun
DAY SERMON.
Subject: THE Wonders Of Athens"

he saw the city DhoIly giuen to tdolatry."-
Acts xvii, 16.
1t seemed as if morning would never come.
chad arrived after dark in Athens, Greece,
and the night was sleepleSs with expecta-
ton, and my watch slowly announced to me
one and two and three and four O'Clock; and
at the first ray of dawn called 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 proves and Greek
history.
That morning 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 dur
ing all our stay in that city those letters
caused every door and every gate and every
temple and every palace to swing open be-
fore The mightiest geographical name
on earth to-day is America. The signature
OF an American Pre- ,lGant and Secretary Of
State will take man wnere an army could
not. Those names brought US into the
presence of a most gracious and beautiful
sovereign, the Queen of Greece, and her
cordiality was more like that of sister than
the occupant of a throne room. No formal
bow when monarchs are approached, but
a cordial shake of the hand, and earnest
questions about our personal welfare
and our beloved country far away.
But this morning we pass through where
stood the Agora, the ancient market place,
the locality where philosophers used to meet
their disciples, walking while they talked,
and where Paul, the Christian logician,
flung many proud stole and got the laugh
many an impertinent Eplcurean. 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 baZaarS were set up for merchan-
disc of all kinds except meat, but everything
must be sold for cash. and there must be no
ahOnt values q
the Agoranomi who ruled the place could
infiict severe punishment upon offenders.
The different schools of thinkers had dis
tinct places set apart for convocation. The
Platpans must meet at the cheese market,
the DeceIians at the barber shop, the sellers
OF perfumes at the frankincense head
quarters.
The market place was a space three hun
dred and fifty yards long and two hundred
and fifty yards wide, and it was given up to
gossip and merchandise, and lounging and
philOsOphizing. All this you need to know
in order TO understand the Bible when it
says Of Paul, Therefore disputed he il the
market daily with them that met him"
You see it was the best place to get an au-
dience, and if man feels himself called to
preach he wants people to preach to. But
before we make our chief visits of to-day
must take turn at the Stadium. 1t is a
little way out but go we must. The Sta
dunn was the place where the foot races &C.
CURED.
Paul had been out there no doubt, for he
frequently uses the scenes of that place
figures when he tells us, LET us run the race
that is set before u.s." and again, They do
it to obtain a corruptible garland, but we an
incorruptible." The marble and the gliding
have been removed, but the high mounds
against which the seats were piled are still
there. The Stadium is six hundred and
eighty feet long, one hundred and thirty feet
wide, and held forty thousand spectators.
There is to-day the very tunnel through
which the defeated racer departed 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 Hadrian, the
emperor, sat on yOnder height one thousand
beasts were slain in one celebration. But it
was chiefly for foot racing, and so proposed
to my friend that day while we were in the
Stadium that we try Which oil us could run
the sooner from end to end of this historical
ground, and so at the word given by the
lockers on we started side by side, but before
I got through 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" My heavy overcoat
and my friends freedom from such incum-
brance showed the advantage i'll any kind of
a race OF laying aside every weight"
We come COW to the ACrOpolls 1t is a
rock about two miles i'll circumference at
the base and a thousand feet in circumfer-
ence at the top and three hundred feet high.
On it has been crowded more elaborate
architecture and sculpture than in any
ether place under the whole heavens.
Originally fortress, afterward congre-
CATION OF temples and statues and pillars,
their ruins an enchantment from which no
observer ever breaks away. No wonder
that Aristides thought it the centre of all
thlnGs-Greece the centre of the world.
Attica, the centre of Greece; Athens, the
centre of Attlca, and the Acropolis the CEN
ire OF Athens. Earthquakes have shaken it,
Nerres piundered it.
Lord Egin, the English ambassador at
Constantinopie got permission of the Sui
tan TO remove from the AcrOpoliS fallen
pieces of the building, but he took from the
building to England the finest statues re-
moving them at an expense OF eight hundred
thousand dollars. A storm overthrow many
of the statues of the Acropolis Morosini,
the General, attempted to remove from a
pedlment the scuiptured car and horses OF
Victory, but the clumsy machinery dropped
It and all was lost
The Turks turned the building into
powder magazine where the Venetian guns
dropped a fire that by explosion sent the
columns flying in the air and falling cracked
and splntered. But after all that time and
storm and war and iconoclasm have effected
the AcrOpOlls is the monarch OF all ruins
and before it bow the learning, the genius,
the poetry, the art, the history of the ages
| saw 1t as 1t was thousands of years ago.
had read so much about it ana dreamed so
much about it that | needed no magician's
wand to restore it.
AT one wave of my hand on that clear
morning i'll 1889 it rose before me in the glory
it had when Pericles ordered it and Ictinus
plalinei 1t and Phidias chseIed it and Pro-
tOglnes painted it and Pausanias described
IT. It's gates. which were carefully guarded
by the anclents. open to let you in and you