The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1897-04-02

Oh sympathy ana protest, 1or every III
telligent person on this side of the sea,
as well as the other side, like Paul, who
wrote the text, is debtor to the Greeks.
The present crisis is emphasized by
the guns of the allied powers OF Eu-
rope, ready to be numbered against
the Hellenes, and / am asked to speak
out. Paul, with a master intellect OF the
ages, sat in brilliant Corinth, the great
Acro-Corinthus fortress frowning from
the height of sixteen hundred and eigh-
ty-slx feet, and in the house of Gaius.
where he was a guest, big pile of
money near him, which he was taking
TO Jerusalem for the poor. In this let
ter to the Romans, which Chrysostom
ADMIRED so much that he had IL read
TO him twice week, Paul practically
says: Il, the Apostle, am bankrupt. l
owe what l cannot pay, but will pay
as large percentage as l can. 1t is
an obligation for what Greek literature
and Greek sculpture and Greek archi-
lecture and Greek prowess have done
Tor me. | will pay all l can in INSTALL
ments of evangelism. / am insolveut
to the Greeks" Hellas, as the inhabi-
tants call it. or Greece, as we call it.
Is Insignificant in size, about q third
as large as the state of New York, but
what 1t lacks in breadth is makes up
In height, with its mountains Cylene,
and Eta. and Taygetus, and Tymphres-
tus, each over seven thousand feet in
elevation, and its Parnassus, over eight
thousand. Just the country for mighty
men to be born in. for in all lands the
most OF the intellectual and moral
giants were not born on the plain, but
had for cradle the valley between two
mountains. That country, no part of
which Is more than forty miles from
the sea, has made its impress upon the
world as no other nation, and it today
holds a first mortgage OF obligation
upon all civilized people. While we
must leave to craftsmanship and di-
plomacy the settlement of the intri-
cate questions which now involve all
Europe, and indirectly all nations, IL
is time for all churches, all schools, all
universities. all arts, all literature to
sound out in the most emphatic way
the declaration, II am debtor to the
Greeks"
In the first place, we owe TO their
language our New Testament. All OF
1t was first written in Greek, except the
Book of Matthew, and that, written in
the Aramean language, was soon put
into Greek by our Savior's brother
James. To the Greek language we owe
the best sermon ever preached. the
best letters ever written, the best Wis
ions ever kindled. All the parallels in
Greek. All the miracles in Greek. The
sermon on the mount in Greek. The
story of Bethlehem and Golgotha and
Olivet and Jordan banks and Galilean
beaches and Pauline embarkatlon and
Pentecostal tongues and seven trumpets
that sounded over Patmos, have come
to the world in liquid, symmetric, pic
turesque, philosophic, unrivaled Greek.
instead of the gibberish language in
which many of the nations of the earth
at that time jabbered. Who can forget
it and who can exaggerate it's thrilling
Importance, that Christ and heaven
were introduced to us in the language
of the Greeks? the language in which
Homer had sung and Sophocles drama
tized and Pluto dialogued and Socrates
discoursed and Lycurgus legislated and
Demosthenes thundered his grafton on
"The Crown?" Everlasting thanks to
God that the waters of life were not
handed to the world in the unwashed
cup of corrupt languages from which
nations had been drinking, but in the
clean, bright, golden Tipped, emerald
handled chalice of the Hellenes.
Learned Curtius wrote a whole volume
about the Greek verb. Philologists
century after century have been meas
uring the symmetry of that language,
laden with elegy and philippe, drama
and comedy, Odyssey and Iliad; but
the grandest thing that Greek language
ever accomplished was to give to the
world the benedlction, the comfort, the
irraditation, the salvation of the Cos
pel of the Son of God. For that we are
debtors to the Greeks.
And while speaking of our philologi-
cal obligation, let me call your atten-
ton to the fact that many Of the in
tellectual and moral and theological
leaders Of the ages got much OF their
| discipline and effectiveness from Greek
| literature. 1t is popular to scoff at the
dead languages, but 80 per cent of the
worlds intellectually would have been
taken off IL, through learned institu-
tions our young men had not. under
competent professors, been drilled In
Greek masterpieces. Hesiod's Weeks
and Days" or the eulogium by Simon
ides OF the slain In war, or Pindar's
''Odes of Victory" or THE Recollec-
tions of Socrates" or THE Art oi
Words" by Corax, or Xenophon's Ana
basis.
From the Greeks the world learned
how to make history. Had there been
no Herodotus and Thucydides. there
would have been no Macaulay or Ban.
croft. Had there been no Sophocles ir
l tragedy, there would have been nc
Shakespeare. Had there been no Ho.