The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-04-02

| and more have helped literature, from
the graduates speech on commence
! ment day to Rufus Choate's eulogium
on Daniel Webster at Dartmouth.
Tragedy and comedy were born in the
festivals of Dionysius at Athens. The
lyric n elegiac n epic poetry OF
| Greece 500 years before Christ has its
| echoes in the Tennysons, Longfellows
and Bryants of 1900 and 1890 years
! after Christ. There is not an effective
| pulpit or editorial chair or professors
room or cultured parlor or intelligent
farm house today in America or Europe
that could not appropriately employ
Paurs ejaculation and say, Il am
debtor to the Greeks"
The fact is this-Paul had got much
Of his Oratorical power Of expression
from the Greeks. That he had studied
their literature was evident when,
standing in the presence Of an audience
Of Greek scholars on Mars hill, which
ovrlooks Athens, he dared to quote
from one Of their own Greek poets,
either Cleanthus or Aratus. declaring.
LAS certain also Of your own poets have
sai1. For we are also his off-spring.'"
And he made accurate quotation, Clean
thus, one of the poets, having written:
For we thine offspring are. All things
that creep
Are but the echo of the voice divine.
And Aratus. one Of their own poets,
had written:
Doth care perplex? Is lowering danger
nigh?
We are his offspring, and to Jove we
fly.
1t was rather a risky thing for Paul
to attempt to quote extemporaneOusly
from a poem in a language foreign to
his and before Greek scholars, but
did 1t without stammering and then &C
knowledged before he most distin-
guished audience on the planet his in
d~ebtedness to the Greeks. crying out
in his grafton, A one Of your own
poets has said"
GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE.
Furthermore, all the civilized world,
like Paul, is indebted to the Greeks for
architecture. The world before the
time Of the Greeks had built monoliths,
obelisks. cromlechs, sphinxes and pyra-
mids, but they were mostly mOnu-
mental to the lead whom they failed
to memorabilia. We are not certain
even of the names Of those in whose
commemoration the pyramids were
built. But Greek architecture did most
for the living. Ignoring Egyptian pre-
CuCil oAlu al al
other nations, Greek architecture carv-
ed it's own columns, set it's own pedi-
ments, adjusted it's own e~ntablatures,
n it's own holdings and carried
out as never before the three qualities
of right building, called by an old au-
thor ''frmitaS, utilitas, venustas'-
namely, firmness, usefulness, beauty.
Although the ParthenOn on the AcrOp-
Oils of Athens is only a wreck of the
storms and earthquakes and lombard
ments of many centuries, and although
Lord Elgin took from one side of that
building, at an expense Of $3.50, 900 two
shiploads of sculpture, one shiplOad
going down in the Mediterranean and
the other shipload now to be found in
the British museum, the ParthenOn.
though in comparative ruins, has been
an inspiration to all architects for cen"
turtles past and will be an inspiration
all the time from now until he world
itself is a temple Of ruin. Oh, that
PartheEOn! One never gets over having
once seen it. But what must it have
been when it stood as it's architects,
IkitnOs and KallikrateS, built it out OF
Pentelican marble, white as Mont
Blanc at MONDAY and as overWhelm-
ing height above height. OVertopp1ng
the august and majestic pile and ris-
ing from it's roof was a statue Of Pail
las Prcmachus in bronz, so tall and
flashing that sailors far out at sea
beheld the plume of her helmet. With
out the aid CT the eternal God it never
could have been planned, and without
the aid of Cod chisels and trowels new
err could have constructed it. There is
not a fine church building in all the
world, or a properly constructed court
house, or a beautiful art gallery, or an
appropriate auditorium, or a tasteful
home, which, because of that Parthe-
non, whether it's style or some other
t,Ia 10 o1nrtoI 10 moi 1irnnt1u or in.
directly a debtor to the Greeks.
But there is another art in my mind
the most fascinating, ~elevating and
inspiring Of all arts and the nearest
to the divine-for which all the world
owes a deb to the Hellenes that will
never be paid. / mean sculpture. At
least $50 years before Christ the Greeks
perpetuated the human face and form
In terra Gotta. and marble. What a
blessing to the human family that
men and womon, nightly useful, who
could live only within a century may
be perpetuated for five or six or ten
centuries! How 1 wish that some
sculptor contemporaneous with Christ
could have put his matchleSs form in
marble! But for every grand and ex-
quisite statute of Martin Luther. of
Ohm Knox, of William Penn, of Thorn
as Chalmers, of Wellington. Of Lafay-
cite, of any Of the great statesmen or
emancipators or conquerers who adorn
your parks or fill the inches Of your
academies. o are debtors to the
Greeks. They covered the Acropolis,
they gloriied the temples, they adorn-
ed the cemeteries with statues. some in
cedar, some in ivory, some in silver,
some in gold. some in size diminutive
and some in size colossal. Thanks to
Phidias, who worked in stone; to
Clearchus. who worked in bronze; to
Dontas. who worked in gold, and to
all ancient chisels Of commemoratiOn.
Do you not realize that for many of
the wonders of sculpture We are debt
ors to the Greeks?
THE ART OF HEALING.
Yea, for the cience Of medicine. the
great are Of healing.w must thank the
Greeks. There is the immortal Greek
doctor. Hippocrates, who first opened
the door for disease to go out n
health to come in. He first set forth
49, -- H. ~~l 11o0~