The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-07-24
livered His Message to Arouse The Interest of the Jodical
 Othemians.
BY WILLIAM n. ELLTs.

BY WILLIAM IT. ELLIS. No phrase better describes the life of the western world today than the familiar sentence of Dr. Luke: "Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spend their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing" That Is pre- sentday society. That is our modern city life. That is the genius of the village woman's club. That is the twentieth century newspaper. Our times are madly bent upon discovering the latest senation in earth or heaven or on Mars. or in the mysterious ether that envelopes us.
 Let 1t be frankly confessed that a large part of the world today is en- gagged in a desperate endeavor to ward off inevitable jadedness. Our search for novelty is but an attempt to escape from ourselves. Dilettanteism is a hall-mark of our age. Enthusiasm is accounted bad form. Conviction does not comport with culture. A self-sat- isfied sitting apart and a cynical sur vey of the passing show Is the favorite attitude of the modern man and wo- man.
 The Ancient Center of Culture.
 All this was even more true of Athens than it Is of today, when Paul found himself in this one of the three great metropolises of the world. Athens had glory and pride. It was still a great city and had been a greater. 'Tn it's prime 1t sent forth more great men in one hunred years than all the rest of the world could show in five hundred" There were Socrates. Plato. Aristatle. Demosthenes, Aeschyius. Sophocies. 9Aristides The mistocles, Jhidias,, , Xena. Epicurus, Thucydides. xenophon and Pericles. Cultured Paul the university man, must have felt his nerves jingle as he moved amid the sculptures and archi- lecture so closely associated with these great names.
 His present problem was how to arrest and arouse this effervescing life of Athens upon a greater theme than ever before had come to its attention. He saw this visit to Athens as one of the great opportunities of his life. He proved himself worthy to stand with the best of the Athens teachers by his eloquent speech. He was not merely a missionary of the new faith: 1: he was a great cosmopolitan and philosopher. His address was adroit, adaptable and skillful--an application of his own principle of being all | things to all men that he might by all means save some" For to Paul there must have come the vision of an | Athens converted to Crist with all it's art and skill suffused by a new vitality and a new purpose. He dreamed of the tremendous abilities of this queen l city placed at the services of his Master. Small wonder that he covet- ed this jewel for his King.
 l A Great Souls Indignation. l A people that consistently gives it. self to pleasure seeking as its chief aim Is bound to atrophy its capacity
 for all intense motions. The plea sure-seeker gradually becomes able to
 look unmoved upon, the most terrible
 spectacles. Moral degeneration in-
 evitably follows in the wake of putting pleasure first.
 Into every such community a great soul enters, as Paul entered Athens, and finds himself deeply stirred with indignation. It Is no crdit to a Chris tain that he cannot get angry. Christ was tremendously moved by the ini- quitous spectacles which he beheld, and his greatest apostle had a similar capacity for abhorrence. He found i Athens-beautiful. cultured, graceful, artistic Athens-crowded full of idols. A Roman poet had declared that it was | easier to find gods than men in Athens These shrines and figures of divini- | ties which lined all the highways re- presented not mtrely error but, what was worse, they stood for indifference When people have many gods they cannot be rolay to any one God. This multitude of deities spoke eloquently of the light-mindness of the Athenians. They, like some modern successors, | were not particular as to what men hnlN
 often said today. One religion Is as reveals vitiated power of thought. i The so-called tolerance, which possesses no convictions. is merely a state of mental debiltation. Every great man believes something tre- mendously. A fair indictment of much modern education is that 1t only goes | far enough to cut the nerve of con- viction.
 | Tn contrast with the Athenian way | we can hear Paul as he preached in the synagogue. How his eloquence must have blistered the Jews who had become inured to the sights of Athens. With what terrific words did he recall them to the standards of Moses and their own pure faith. The very pre- sence of such an intense and vital character as Paul in a community Is tonic.
 4 Street Preacher.
 The man who believes something which he feels belongs to the whole world, and believes 1t with deeper earnestness than his regard for the proprieties or for life itself. cannot be kept bottled up within the forms of conventional procedure. No syago-
 que could hold Paul in the presence of l Rns
 Ing. noon and night to the public
 square to debate upon these profound
 truths of which he knew himself to be
 the custodian. Even the Stoics and
 Epicurians who resorted thither were
 stirred to some fresh interest at the