The Penn's Grove record., 1897-04-02
REV. DIR. TAI4MAGE
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE by THE
NOTED DIVINE.
Subject, "our Debt to tho creeks"

and to the barbarians.' SRoma1s l., IA.
At this time, when that bshemoth Of
denominations, MohammedAnism, hfter, hay5
Ing gorged itself on tho cArcasses OF 100 900
Armenians, Is trying to put IT'S paws upon
one Of the fairest Of all Nations. that OF the
creeks, l preach this sermon OF sympathy
and protest, Tor every intelligent person on
this side, like Paul, who wrote the text, is
debtor to the Greeks. The present crisis Is
emphasized by the runs oil the Allied Powers
Of Europe, ready to be unllmbefed against
the dellenes, and l am asked to speak Out
Paul, with n master intellect of the ages,
sat In brilliant Corinth, the great Aero
Corinthus fortress frowning from the height
OF 1885 feet, and In the house of Gaius,
where he was a guest, a big pile OF money
neat him, which he was taking to Jerusalem
for tho poor.
In this letter to the Romans, which Chry-
sostorn admired 80 much that he lat 1t read
to him twice a week, Pau practically says:
VI, the apostle, am bankrupt. I owe what ]
cannot pay, but | will pay as large a percent-
age as / can, 1t is an obligation fcf What
Greek literature and Crock sculpture and
Greek architecture and Greek pfowess have
done for me. l will pay all I can Id INSTALL
ments o. evangelism. l am insotvent to the
Hellas, as the inhabitants call tor ureece,
us we cali 1t, Is Insignificant in size. about a
third az largo rs the State OF New York, but
what II hicks in breadth 1t makes up in
height, With its mountains ,Oylene and
Eta AMI Taygetus and Tymphrestus,
each over 7000 feet in elevation, and
Its Parnassus, over 5000. Just the
country for mighty men to be born In, FOR Id
oil 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
/ mahp Ito tvnnroro ~ nAa 4ka xyAr1A a. ~ IN.
nation, and L to-day holds q first mortgage
OF obligation upon all Civilized people.
| While we must leave TO statesnianship and
diplomacy the settlement OF the intricate
questions which now Involve all Europe and
Indirectly all nations, 1t is time for all the
churches, nj schools, all universities, all
arts. all llteratures, TO sound out Id the
most emphatic way the declaration, n am
debtor to the Greeks" 3
In the FIRST place, we owe to thor language
our New Testament. Ali OF 1t was first writ
ten in Greek, exceptthe book Of Matthew.
and that, written Ii. the AramBan language,
WAS soon put into Greek by our Savlour's
brother James. To the Greek language we
owe the best sermon ever preached, the best
letters ever written. tho best visions ever
klndled. All the parallels In Greek. All the
miracles in Greek. The sermon on the
mount in Greek. The story 81 Bethlehem,
and Golgotha. and 0liSeh and Jordan banks,
and Ga!ilean beaches, AMI Pauline embarka-
tion, and Pentecostal tongues. n seven
trumpeta that sounded over Patmos, have
como 10 the world in liquid, symmetric,
picturesque, philosophic, unrivaled Greek,
Instead OF the gibberish language In which
many OF the nations of tho earth at
1t, and who can exaggerate its thrill
ling Importance. that Christ and heaven
were introduced to US In tho language
OF the Greeks, tho language In which Homer
bad sung, and sophoeles dramatized,
and Plato dialoSuej. and Socrates dIscoursed,
and Lycurgus legis,ated, and pemosthenes
Numbered his Grafton on "rhe Crown"
Everlasting thanks to God that the waters Of
life were not handed TO the world in the I'M
washed CUP of corrupt languages from which
nations had been drinking, but Ia the clean.
bright, golden lippeI, emerald handled
chal!ee OF the Heliones. Learned Curtius
yrote q whole volume about the Greek verb.
Philelogists century after century have boon
measuring the symmetry Of that language,
laden with elegy and philippe drama and
comedy, Odyssey" and "lliad." but the
grandest thing that Greek language ever ac-
complished was to give to the world the
benediction, the comfort, tho irradlation,
the salvation, OF the gospel OF the Son OF
God. For that we are debtors to the Greeks
From the Greeks the world learned how to
make history. Had there been ne Hefodetas
and Thucydides there would havo been no
Macaulay or Bancroft. Had there been no
Sophocles In tragedy there would have been
no Shakespeare. Hal there been 10 Homer,
there o have been no Milton. The mod
ern wits, who are now or have been put on
the divine mission OF making ths,world
laugh at the right time, can be traced hfrk
to Aristophanes, the A~thenian, Rpd many Of
the jocosities that are now taken as new had
their suggestions $500 years ago In the fifty
four comedies Of that master of merriment.
Grecian mythology has been the richest
mine from which orators and cssayists
have drawn their illustrations and paint
ers the themes for their canvas, and, al
though now an exhausted mine, Grecian
mythology has done a work that moth
ing else could have accomplished. b.
reas, representing the north wind; Sissy
plus. rolling the stone up the hill, only
to have tho same thing to do over again;
Tantalus, with fruits above him that he
could not reach; Achilles, with his arrows;
Icarus, with his waxen wings, flying too
near the suns; the Oentaurs, Mailman and
half-beast; Orpheus, with his Tyre; Atlns,
with the world on his back-all these and
more have helped literature, from the grad
yates speech on commencement day TO Ru-
fus Choate's eulogium on Daniel Webster at
Dartmouth. Tragedy and comedy were
born in the festivals OF Dionysius at Athens.
The lyric and elegiac and epic poetry OIL
Greece 500 years before Christ has Its echoes
in the Tennysons, Longfellows and Bryants o.
1850 and 1900 years after Christ. There Is
not an effective pulpit or editorial chair Of
professors room or cultured parlor or intel
Iigent farmhouse to-day in America OF
Europe that could not appropriately employ
Paul's ejaculation and say, If am debtor tt
the Greeks" n
The TACT Is this--Paul had got much OF hi.
oratorlcal power OF expression from the
Greeks. That he had studied their llteratur,
was evident when, standing in the presence
OF an audience OF Greek scholars IN Mars
hill, which overlooks Athens, he dared L
quote from one Of their own Greek poets
either Cleanthus or Aratus, declaring, IA!
certain also OF your own poets have said
For we are also his offspring" And h
made accurate quotation, Cleanthus, one o
the poets, having written:
For We thine offspring are. All things tina
creep
Are but the echo OF the voice divine.
And Aratus, one OF their own poets, ha,
written:
Doth care perplez' Is lowering DANCE
We are his offspring, and to Jove we fly.
1t was rather a risky thing for Paul to ut
tempt to quote extemporaneously from
poem in a language foreign TO his and be
fore Greek scholars, but Paul did 1t withon
stammering and then acknowledged beior
the most distinguished audience on tn
, planet his Indebtedness to the Greeks, cry
Ing out in his Grafton, "As one OF your owI
poets has said"
Furthermore, all the civilized world, Xix
Paul, is indebted to the Gresks for architec
ture. The world before the time OF tn
Greeks had built monoliths, o~belisks, cronl
lschs, sphinxes and pyramids, but they wer
mostly monumental, to the dead whom the.
failed to memorialize. We are not certain
even, ofthe names of those in whose CON
memoration tho pyramids were built. Blu
Greek architecture did most for the living
, Ignoring Egyptian prece !ents and borrow
Ing nothing from other nations, Greek archi
lecture carved Its own columns. set its owI
! pediments, adjusted Its own entablatureS
rounded its wi holdings and carried on
} as never before the three qualities OF RICH
building, cal ed by an old author ''nrmitas
~utilitas, venustas'-namelY, tirmness, use
, ~tulness, beauty.
a But there is another art In my mInd-th
most fascinating, elevating and inspiring o
NIL arts n the nearest to the divlne-to