The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-01-14

tho text for which is taken rom Acts xvii. 30, "And the times of this ignorance God winl1ed at"
 What a tremor of excitement must have stirred the minds and the hearts of his men when Horatio Nelson, the celebrated English admiral, gave the order to clear the gun deck for action at Trafalgar An yes. we can truly say the one-armed naval hero whose body now sleeps in St. Paul's cathedral by the side of the Waterloo ehleftaln was no novice in the art of war. Way back in the uprising of the American colonies he fought as a young captain of 21 under Lord Howe. He was in the midst of the British struggles off Cape Vincent in 17s9. He was the com mander who destroyed the French heet in the harbor of Aboukir when Napoleon was making his Egyptian conquests. He was part of the naval history of England from ITO up to the time of his tragic death, but all his previous engagements were mere preparations for his great bat tie of Trafalgar. Then he gripped Na- poleon's admiral-Villeneuve by name and grimly said ."rhou shalt not make 1t possible for the conquerors or Prussla and Spain and Austria and Italy ana Holland and Westphalia to cross the channel and fight under the shadow or Westminster abbey and Windsor castle. Truly that Trafalgar order, England ex- pects every man to do his duty" must have aroused the heroic in every brit- ish heart. for Trafalgar was the supreme battle of Horatio Nelson's life
 What the quarter deck of the British line of battleship Victory was to Nelson at Trafalgar Mars hill was to the great gospel warrior, Paul. Like Nelson Paul was no novice. He had fought In many a conflict for Christ. He was scared veteran of many gospel campaigns. In Damascus. at Jerusalem. over In Corinth in Ephesus we can follow his martial footsteps But though he had fought many battles for Christ the supreme battle or Paurs life was witnessed at Mars hiil No moment in the annals of the church, wrote the historian, 'fhas larger signin- canoe than that in which the gospel or the living Christ came in It's first contact at Athens with the worn faiths of pagan ism, its philosophy and it's science" Here 1t was that Paul not only had to grapple with Plato's philosophy and with the teachings of the Stoics and the Epicu- reans. but here also he had to preach of Christ in the home of the drama and preach Jesus from the rostrum made memorable by the orations of the greatest orators of the past, whose silver tongues had created armies and made laws and started forth Greece on its conquest or the world.
 When Paul looked up and waved his hand above him he saw the famous Acrop- oils crowned with it's many temples. There is the Parthenon with its beautiful statue of Pallas, the guardian goddess Of Ath- ems, which city was the home of Demos themes and Lysias and Lycurgus and Aeschlnes, tho orators. and of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the dramatists, and of Thucydides and Xenophon, the historians, and of Solon, the lawyer. and of Socrates, the teacher, and of Pericles, the poet, and of Phidias the Michael Angelo of the Greeks. To the right of this famous tenn pie was the marvellous colossal statue of Almanac Promachus. And there Is a beau tiful poem in marble called. "The Temple of Wingless Victory" Every column, every shrine, every intricate covering of that citadel of ancient Athens was chisel- ed by the hand of a master. John Keats once wrote:
 Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
 If that is true, then truth was every
  topping Mars hill, For beauty In her most exquisite proportions was there in im- perishable marble.
 Not Preaching to Savages.
 When Paul ceased to look up and as a student of the beautiful looked down his eyes in amazement wandered over the massive proportions of the great temple of Jupiter Olympus. which was one of the seven wonders of the world. The few huge columns of this mighty temple still standing inspire more awe in the minds of the modern students than do even the gigantic stones of the pyramids or the ruined foundations of the ancient statue of the God Helios once bestriding the har- bors of Rhodes. There was also the beau tiful temple of the Theseium, perhaps the most perfectly preserved temple of all tho ancients. And there before him was the gigantic temple of Mars, the god of war. Paul was not preaching Christ among a set of ignorant savages He was preach Ing Christ to the greatest students of architecture, of sculpture, of poetry and of oratory the world has ever seen. Wherever Paufs eyes turned he could set the beautiful statues and shrines erected not only to scores but to hundreds and thousands of Grecian gods and goddesses. The city was literally full of beautiful idols of all sorts. Tt was easier to find there god than 1t was a man." Petronius once quaintly said. Yet 1t was on Mars hill that Paul dared to defy all the faiths and the intellectualities of organism.
 How did he do it7 After presenting Christ as only Paul could preach Jesus he lifted up his hands and waved them toward the countless shrines and wicked deities of Athens. Then he uttered the memorable words of my text, And the times of this ignorance God winked at but now Commandeth all men every where to repent" As God bore with the ignorance of the Greeks of old God has been bearing with our ignorance. but now our eyes are opened as were those of the Athenians. Now 1t Is time for us to repent of our past sins and surrender our hearts to Jesus Christ Could we have better time to do this than on this first Lords day of the new yearl As the year 1905 has slipped into the year 1906 we seem to be in almost as dramatic a position as were the Athenians when listening to the preaching of the mighty Paul
 God in the first place has borne with our ignorance theological He has been deaf- ing with our 9reeds a great deal as he has been dealing with the shrines of the Athe- nian worshipers. To use homely figure he has been shutting his eyes to our superstitions as a mother sometimes pre- tends not to see the wrongdoings of her little child, because she does not think 1t best to correct the boy now. Man in the past has been holding the Baptist creed and the Methodist creed and the Presbyterian creed and the Episcopal creed and the Lutheran creed and the Catholic creed sometimes with as little in telllgence as did the Athenians worshipins at the altars of u Mercury. an Apollo. a .xl...I l....