Paul stands in Athens, amidst the master-pieces of Greek art and the memorials of Greek wisdom. It is not admiration or aesthetic delight which is awakened in him, but moral indignation. Christianity is not opposed to art; but Christianity does not approve the worship of sensuous or ideal beauty apart from moral earnestness. In the true relation, religion absorbs art into itself; when art is substituted for religion, there is moral decay. Nor is Christianity hostile to philosophy. On the contrary, there was in Greek philosophy a preparation for Christ. There were germs of truth in the Epicurean and the Stoic schools which Christianity incorporated, while it corrected the one-sidedness of these philosophies. The Epicurean built his practical system on human weakness, the Stoic his on pride. The gospel will not excuse sin on the ground of weakness; nor found a righteousness of man's own on pride (see the noted discussion of these schools, and the relation of the gospel to them, in Pascal's 'Pensees'). Between these extremes, as between those of Sadducecism and Phariseeism, the gospel ever makes its way. These academicians of Athens might well be anxious to know what the "ugly little Jew" had to say. Long had the mighty logos or dialectic of Plato and Aristotle and their successors and rivals ruled the world. What could the fanatical Jew have to say? An immortal discourse is the reply to these questions of curiosity.

I. GOD UNKNOWN, YET KNOWABLE. The speaker recognizes the reverence of the Athenians. The heathen were prepared for the gospel, all the more from the weariness and failure of their age-long "groping after God." In the inscription on the altar was the witness of the desire to worship all forms of divinity, whether to them known or unknown. Both Greeks and Romans recognized, above and beyond the definite gods and goddesses of the Pantheon, the indefinable in Deity, the mystery of that Essence, to us and to all, as to them, incomprehensible. So far we are all on a level with the Athenians. But there are special senses in which God is unknown to the worshipper.

1. To the sensual and sin-loving heart. Many there are whose heart is like the Agora of Athens or a Pantheon; one idol stands beside another. Wrath, pride, lust, avarice, treachery, ambition, - these are their gods. And again, science, art, money, the husband, the wife, the goods of this world. And in a neglected corner stands the altar with the inscription, "To the unknown God!"

2. To the wise in their own conceit. "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God;" "He resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the lowly."

3. To the formalists and externalists in religion. For the drama of an external ritual is rather a screen between the soul and God, if the soul be not bent on finding him.

4. To all who seek him otherwise than with the pure and lowly heart, coming by the Way, the Truth, and the Life to the Father. Though in one sense" God is great; I know him not," must be the confession of all hearts, from the lowliest to the wisest, in another the good news of the gospel proclaims - God may be known, is known; and every name by which he is known resolves itself into love. He is concealed, yet revealed; unknown, yet known; defined, yet indefinable. 'Tis a great yet a small part of his ways that we can understand.

II. GOD REVEALED IN THE CREATION. He has made the world and all things therein. Animate and inanimate nature, body and spirit, all have the stamp of omnipotence and of omniscience in the unity of a Mind. Every step in science makes more clear this unity; and in the last resort this unity is not conceivable as "law or force" merely, but only as the living and the loving God. In his infinite majesty, heaven is his throne, earth his footstool. He is in himself both Temple and Inhabitant. The voice of God bursts asunder the system of idolatry and superstition. The latter denies that God can be found only in fixed places, by means of fixed rites and mediations. The true temple is everywhere; "The walls of the world are that." In the Church, where the gospel of his Son is heard, and above all in the heart, where he indwells in the power of his Spirit, is the temple of the living God.

III. GOD REVEALED IN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD, As love. Needing nothing from men's hands; they incessantly feel the need of him. Life itself is sweet, and in that sweetness we have an instance of his love. There is a joy in breathing, moving about, looking, learning, experiencing manifold experiences in this "fair world of God." And each and every pleasure, lower and higher, leads up to God and his love. The tie that binds us to our kind is an expression of the same love. Sympathy is possible, is actual, between men of every color and clime. The mechanism of thought and feeling is alike in all. All men suffer and rejoice from the same causes. The unity of the human race reflects the unity of God's mind in wisdom and in love. Men form one people, one race: this is the great thought the gospel throws upon the world, and teaches us to say, in deeper senses than the heathen knew, "I am a man; nothing human is foreign to me." He has set bounds to man's habitations. All the effects of climate, of physical configuration of the earth, distribution of land and water, so interesting to the student of man and his dwelling-place, are conditions fixed by the same wise and loving hand. God is in history. His thoughts alone are living. Athens was not for ever, nor Rome; but the Divine thought, whence proceeded the culture of Greece, the law and order of Rome, lives on, and is revealed in changing forms from age to age. And towards the "far-off goal" of an infinite love, we doubt not, the whole of creation and of history moves. The end of all is the union of man with God. Though in one sense he "needeth not anything," in another he needs all - the whole love of his whole rational universe. The process of thought in the world is a process of "groping after" and of finding God. God wills that we should find him, but only as the result of our seeking. Therefore he "half reveals" and" half conceals" himself. He is far off, yet near; in each and all the spheres of our knowledge. Our being rests on his; ours are borrowed lives (Isaiah 54:6; 1 Corinthians 8:6). "In the Father," says Cyprian, "we are, from him all life comes; in the Son, who lives, we have life; in the Spirit, who is the Breath of all flesh, we have our being." His offspring we are - by creation in his image, by redemption through his Son. This truth we know from Scripture, from the human heart, from life; and the effect of this knowledge may well be to produce holy humility, mixed with confidence and joy.

IV. TRUE THEOLOGY AND WORSHIP.

1. The heathen draw a wrong inference freer, the true saying on men being the offspring of God. If we are of Divine origin, they seemed to argue, then the gods are of human kind, and images of them may be made. On the contrary, Paul argues, those who are of Divine origin despise themselves if they render worship to any but the supreme Head and Lord. When we say that God is in affinity with man, we do not affirm that man can represent him in thought, much less in images of plastic art. The philosopher Xenophanes had said that if the animals had gods, they would imagine them in their own likeness - the god of the horse would be a horse, etc. The truth is that only our ideal or higher nature is the mirror of God.

2. In conscience we find his clearest reflex. And ignorance of him in this nearest sphere of knowledge is not excusable, as St. Paul teaches in Romans 1. Men did not like to retain God in their knowledge. At the same time, the conscience needs light from without. There are dark ages of the world, when men have comparatively little light, and which may be viewed as ages of God's forbearance, wherein he "overlooks" much that men do, "not knowing what they do."

3. But Christ is a Turning-point of history. Before him, the period of "ignorance;" with him and after him, the true light. Before him, forbearance; henceforward, the just judgment of the world. The description of the person and functions of Christ. He is Man; a member of humanity, a partaker of human flesh and blood, subject to death. As High Priest, he is one "touched with a feeling of our infirmities." And as Judge, he is qualified on the same grounds. It is a common feeling which requires that a man should be judged by his peers. Knowledge and pity, severity and compassion, are united in Christ.

4. The call to repentance. It is an urgent call. The more indifferent and light-hearted the listeners, the more urgently it must sound. It is an absolute call, admitting of no exceptions. No ignorance and no philosophy, no dignity or rank, can exempt men from the immediate command of God to repent. Amidst the depths of sin and the heights of virtue, in paganism and in Christendom, the new heart and the new life are indispensable.

V. THE RECEPTION OF THE GOSPEL AT ATHENS. (Ver. 32.)

1. Some scoffed, some procrastinated. These are ever the two main classes of those who turn a deaf ear to the Divine Word. Some make light of the truth, some put off attention to it until the "more convenient season." "Faith in to-morrow, instead of Christ, is Satan's nurse for man's perdition." Paul departed from among them, and came not back; the "tender grace" of the day of salvation vanished, not again to be found.

2. But some believed. Of whom Dionysius among men alone is mentioned; and of the women, Damaris, with some others. We need, however, to remind ourselves that great numbers are no sign of the true Church. There are many more of common stones than of jewels in its structure, according to the ordinary valuation; but God's measures are not ours. According to ancient testimonies, a bright light went forth from the Church at Athens. The splendid intellectual culture of Athens remains the heritage of the few; the gospel pours its common blessing on mankind. The relation of the Christian to the art and science of the world.

(1) He is not to despise them. The master-works of genius are gifts of God; and in their way they bear testimony to the universal striving of the human spirit after the reconciliation of sense and spirit, the human with the Divine. The aberrations of great spirits are more instructive than the meaningless commonplaces of ordinary minds.

(2) At the same time, he is to apply to them the Christian scale of judgment. Christianity cannot countenance immoral art or godless science. If tile heart of the artist and scientific man be sanctified, their works and studies will tend to the glory of God. - J.

I. THE PARTIES WITH WHOM PAUL REASONED. These may be looked on in two aspects: —

1. Theologically.(1) The "Jews" were monotheists. They believed in the one true and living God, and in Moses as His great minister.(2) The "Epicureans" were atheists. They ascribed the creation of the world to chance; they had no faith in the one infinite Creator of heaven and earth.(3) The Stoics were pantheists. They confounded the universe with God, or regarded it rather as God. Paul had to deal, therefore, with these three great intellectual systems. Each would require a very different line of argument.

2. Ethically. These three represented three great cardinal moral evils —

(1)Self-righteousness in the Jew.

(2)Carnality in the Epicurean.

(3)Indifferentism in the Stoics.

II. THE SUBJECTS ON WHICH HE DISCOURSED — "Jesus and the resurrection."

1. The greatest person in the history of the race.

2. The greatest fact in the history of this person.

III. THE EFFECTS OF THE DISCUSSION.

1. Contempt. "What will this babbler say?" Paul was probably no orator in their sense, nor was he of commanding presence.

2. Misconception. They thoroughly misunderstood him. "He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods."

3. Curiosity (ver. 19). This was so far the most favourable result. The apostle's teaching succeeded up to this point in generating in them the desire to know something more about the new doctrine.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

1. St. Paul seems to have had so little thought of his own dignity, and we find his most efficient work was accomplished when he turned his back upon the synagogue, and went down into the market place. Yes, hither, rather than to the court or the palace. He did not wait for the people to come to him — he went to them. In the history of the new religion it was always so. The Scribes and Pharisees of John the Baptist's day sought him, but he never sought them. Herod sent for John, but John never hung about the court, and when he was summoned to the royal presence, uttered unpleasant truths with great plainness. Nay, Christ Himself discloses a singular indifference to the reformation of either the religious or secular rulers of the time. And, when we follow the history of St. Paul, we find Agrippa, Felix, and Festus send for the apostle. So that there was no want of opportunity to make an impression in high places — and yet, the new religion resolutely sought the low ones.

2. It has been supposed that this was because the new religion aimed to testify to its sympathy with the masses. It was not aristocratic, it was democratic. Its Founder was not one of the "privileged classes," He was a mechanic. And so it turned away from courts, and went where sorrow and need were most surely to be found. All which is true enough, but by no means the whole truth. The new religion turned its footsteps to the marketplace, because it discerned that in the transformation of the passions, hopes, and interests of the market place was to be found the redemption of humanity. Plato had said that "no relief would ever reach the ills of men until either statesmen became philosophers, or philosophers assumed the government of states." To him the only hope of the commonwealth was in a perfect system of government, perfectly administered. It is what many of us are thinking today. But the hope of a nation really lies in the elevation and redemption of individual character among its people; and according to the New Testament, without waiting to reconstruct governments, we must begin by striving for the new creation of individual character.

3. And, in just so far as it has won any substantial victories, it is thus that the religion of Christ has worked from the beginning. Meantime we cannot overlook the fact that there have gone forward the triumphs of civilisation. When the Church points to what the faith of the Crucified has done for the individual life, the apostles of learning and science point to what these have done for society and the state, And who of us can see this without admiration.? But who of us can see it without seeing something more? With the growth of wealth there has come the growth of poverty; with the multiplication of the arts, the multiplication of evil uses to which those arts may be turned; with the birth of new sciences, there has confronted us the birth of new and hateful vices. Who of us is not awed as he sees the splendours of London or Paris or Vienna? And yet within a stone's throw of some tall palace or some stately museum, what festering courts; what wretchedness and degradation! Is this the product of the highest civilisation, and if it is, how is it better than that barbarism on which, so complacently, it professes to look down? To such questions as these there can be but one answer. There is not a reform, a science, an art, a single step in the purification of our forms of government, that is not a step in the right direction. But the millennium will never come by that road. You may make government as just as was Aristides. You may make the streams of official patronage and power as pure and as wholesome as the sparkling waters of a mountain spring. But you cannot cure a cancer with spring water. You cannot restore the lost reason by means of a wholesome diet and a padded cell. "There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding." To that spirit, personally, something must speak as with a message from God.

4. And so we find the apostle as the messenger of that spirit, pleading and arguing in the market place. How hopeless it must have seemed at first! With what a light laugh they must have listened to this "babbler." How useless, his fellow Israelites kept assuring him, doubtless, was any attempt to get a hearing there! It is the same cry now. What are you going to do about the ever-increasing mass of people who are growing up in as genuine heathenism as any that is to be found in Dahomey? How vain to attempt to gain an entrance or to make an impression there! Thank God that the apostle was wiser, and knew better than this. He knew that in the market place then, as in the tenement now, there beat the same human hearts and ached the same unanswered wants that were throbbing anywhere else. He knew that there was no one so degraded, so hardened but that somewhere in him there was the small crevice through which the truth could find its way. Above all, he knew that the more hopeless was the darkness the more urgent was the need and call for light. And so he begins at the bottom — in the market place — with the individual soul.

5. This message of the apostle, a personal message to the personal soul, is mine to you today. This religion of ours, is it a pastime for Sundays, or is it a message and a mandate for Sundays and week days alike? Will you hearken to it only here, or will you own its authority in the house and in the market place as well? If the world is to become better, it must become better because we have consented to become better. In urging such reform it is my business to hold up before you here a high ideal, and to bid you at whatever cost, to strive to realise it. Not unfrequently, I am told, "What is the use of setting up an impossible mark of attainment only to daunt one by the dismal discrepancy of his own endeavours." And yet, who of us would be genuinely contented with any other? When, from those loftier levels, the Master's truth comes trembling down to our souls, there is something in us that answers to it. Even so, I think, at Athens, there were some who were carrying heavy and unshared burdens. With what unspeakable thankfulness, when at last they heard of Him who had come to lift off those burdens, must they have turned to Him and gladly laid them at His feet!

(Bp. H. C. Potter, D. D.)

The Agora, in all Greek cities the centre and focus of life, must not be confounded with an ordinary "market." It was one to a certain extent. In one portion there were booths containing common articles of consumption, as well as bazaars for those of luxury. Other parts would be more suggestive of our own Covent Garden; shops for flowers and fruit; vegetables and oranges from the surrounding gardens; oil from the olive groves on the slopes of Lycabettus; honey from Hymettus; even fish from the shores of Salamis and Euboea. Mingling somewhat incongruously with these, we have the mention of stalls for books and parchments; a clothes booth; a depot for stolen goods; and the slave market called "Cyclus." It was in this respect, a convenient trading centre for the surrounding city. But its main features and use were very different. Architecturally it must have been impressive. It is described by a writer as a "natural amphitheatre." There was the Altar of the Twelve Gods, from which emanated, in varied directions, the streets of the city and the roads of Attica. Here, in one place, was the "Stoa Basileios," "the Royal Porch" dedicated to Aurora; here, in another, is a Stoa dedicated to Zeus, with paintings of various deities by the artist Euphranor. These and similar ornamental buildings rose at all events on two sides, one of which was confronted with the Statues of the Ten Heroes. Xenophon tells us that, at certain festivals, it was customary for the knights to make the circuit of the Agora on horseback, beginning at the statue of Hermes, and paying homage to the statues and temples around. That garrulous throng whom Paul met here was composed of philosophers, artists, poets, historians, supplemented by a still livelier contingent of gossip mongers and idlers of every kind which gathered under alcove and colonnade to converse on "burning questions." Moreover, anterior to the art of printing, and when journalistic literature was a future revelation, it formed the only means and opportunity of discussing the politics of the hour. Even the varied colour, blending and contrasted in this babel of confusion, must have been striking and picturesque, if the dress of the modern Greek is a survival of classic ages. Then the Agora opened its gates, not to natives only, but to "strangers" (ver. 21). We can think therefore of "excursionists" and merchants, either in pursuit of pleasure or of gain, or both combined, from other towns and capitals near and distant. Noisy traffickers from Corinth and Thessalonica, Ephesus and Smyrna, Antioch and Damascus; sailors and voyagers from the Alexandrian vessel or Roman galley at anchor in the Piraeus. Here and there a Jew with sandalled feet, his long robe girdled round the waist and fringed with blue ribbon. Here and there some soldiers from the barracks — now on foot, now mounted — the flash of their helmets mingling with the red and yellow mantles of the market women, or with the still rarer keffeih and fillets of the swarthy children of the Arabian or Syrian deserts. What a rare "symposium"; what a singular whirlpool of thought in this "tumultuous Agora!"

(J. R. Macduff, D. D.)

It is a moment of perpetual and universal human interest, this moment of our text, when philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered Paul, the Christian, with his preaching of Jesus and of the Resurrection. For it was the moment when the gospel met the two sides of human life together, and spoke to them together, and contrasted its oneness with their dividedness, its wholeness with their partialness, and showed its mission of reconciliation. Who does not know what I mean when we talk of the two sides of life? Who is so young that he has not had life come up to him in the form of a question with something to be said on both sides? Who is so old as to have outgrown such questions? What day but presents one of them? Does not the great earth itself give you a perpetual parable of your single life, and each single life upon it? How it turns between day and night! I cannot think it is wrong to illustrate in this way Christ's coming to the two sides of life, each true in itself, but partial; both truths, but half truths; each to the other inconceivable, except through the coming of Christ, the higher Light and the Reconciler. Epicureans and Stoics — these two classes of men represented the two opposite points of the sphere of life. Both represented facts, but separated ones. One was a class of men and minds who had started from the very high truth that good was sure to be the highest happiness, and had degenerated quickly into the mere pursuit of happiness and pleasure, as if they were good and would bring good of themselves. These were Epicureans. And their opposites were Stoics, a class of men and minds who had started from the noble truth that the highest good involves and is hardship and bravery, and had as quickly degenerated into mere proud endurance — pride in their own strength as the only good, and scorn of any gentleness or pleasure. One said, "It is a bright world, let us just enjoy it"; another, "It is a hard world, let us just endure it." One would become selfish in luxury, the other selfish in strength and denial; the one was caught in sweetness, the other in bitterness; the one blinded by excess of light, the other by excess of darkness. They were the reverse sides of the globe of life. And yet could anything have been truer or nobler than the facts upon which they each rested? Is not virtue happiness? Is not virtue hardship and endurance? But half truths must degenerate into error. One side of human life by itself must deteriorate and become bad and selfish, and sink just as one side of a scale without a corresponding weight upon the other side must fall. So the happiness of virtue, and the hardness of virtue, had become on either side mere self-enjoyment and self-confidence. So human life must fall into error, however high it begins, unless it encounters some higher life and light. It never has anything except its own one human tendency to rely upon, which runs away with it if not corrected, and the half truth becomes a whole error. The best of lives at its best is one-sided, and alone, without Christ, will degenerate. Its noble tendencies will narrow upon self. It will surely end in meanness and error. Paul, then, meets these degenerate representatives of noble reverse rides of life, Epicureans and Stoics; and they are together as they encounter Paul. In their degenerate form they have a common union — not union in a higher life, but in a lower life, in a common selfishness. Is it a strange alliance? And yet your own single life may show the same thing — the armour under the silk. How much you may endure for pleasure's sake; how you toil selfishly in order to enjoy selfishly; and yet the toil and enjoyment are perfectly out of sympathy with each other. There is nothing in common between them but the thought of self. That hollow union is the best the earthly life can make between the two sides, which say, "I ought to be happy and I ought to endure." The two ideas of enjoyment and endurance go on seemingly as hopelessly separate as ever, whether in one life or two lives. Unless Christ meet them, and their union be in what Paul preached, Jesus and the Resurrection. What happens then? First, this, and it is the great thing which the gospel was meant to do, and I beg your closest attention to it. The gospel is bent on giving the two Divine motives, a Divine Person and a Divine future, Jesus and the Resurrection. It does not announce duties; it brings warm, stimulating motives. It preaches Jesus, who is the deep love of God for you, Him whose love and strength has come from the high heaven for you, come to the deep sin for you, come across the breadth of the world to you, come through the long years to you. Return His love, and you are in the happiness of virtue at once. The happiness of His companionship is the happiness of virtue. In His company you reach that fulness of joy. And now see, it is a happiness which also includes endurance. It does not depend on circumstances. It comes from the love of a Person, of Jesus the Lord. Am I bound to Him? Then I am happy; notwithstanding how self is put down, or how circumstances change. Happiness is not a mere luxury, not a quietness, not a favourable arrangement of circumstances. But it is my friendship with Jesus, which any man can have, and with which any man can endure, and be at once both as good an Epicurean as Epicurus, and as good a Stoic as Zeno. Now turn it over and begin with the other side; not how men think of happiness, but how they think of endurance. Suppose that a man says, "It is hard for me to do my duty, to be dutiful and faithful. I suppose I must just nerve myself to it and go to it as a necessity." He and you are apt to think he is very brave, and is acting just in the right spirit. You let him go off in that way, and even give him your encouragement. But the gospel never left a man in that way. It never told a man to go and do a thing because he had to do it, and had better make the best of it and go with a good grace. But it preaches Jesus as Paul preached Him to the Stoics as well as Epicureans. "Do it, bear it, with Jesus and for Jesus. Go to it out of no necessity, but for the love of the Lord, who sets and leads the toil or suffering, and has borne so much for you. Can you not deny self for Him and His commands?" As the gospel gives no effeminate happiness, so now it gives no bitter bravery, no dreary courage, but a joyful endurance that is happier than any earthly delight in selfish pleasures; and the two sides of life are one in that preaching of Jesus which Paul brought to Stoics and Epicureans. But Paul gave them another teaching — "the Resurrection"; another motive, not only a Divine Person to love, but a Divine future to reach. Enjoyment and endurance had become simply different ways of getting through the present world, and they knew nothing else. The Epicurean said, "This is all there is; let us try to enjoy it as we can." The Stoic said, "This is all I know of; let us try to bear it as we must." But enjoyment and endurance are two very different things when the Resurrection is announced to them, and the Epicureans and the Stoics both encounter Paul. A present opening into a future changes both of them. See what it does for happiness. It makes it no longer the happiness of present possession, but of anticipation and preparation. It makes it active and brave. It is no longer the happiness of a man who sits in the midst of his gathered harvest and eats of his fruits luxuriantly. It is the happiness of one who is enduring the care and toil of preparation and exposure in view of a future harvest. And see on the other side how Paul's truth of a resurrection changed endurance. It is no longer a bit of stern, proud resolution not to give up, to laugh bitterly and bear it hopelessly, but it is a bravery that is happy also in the great hope of result, a crown laid up, a prize at the end of the race. That alone sends cheerful sunlight through the workshop of life, the knowledge that it is a preparation for a Divine future. Do you not believe that Peter went to his preaching, after he learnt that Christ had risen, much more happily than he went to his fishing when he thought Christ was dead, and that he had just to go back and win his daily bread in the old dreary way? One was endurance with a rich future of results, the other was endurance under a mere present load of necessity. The one was happiness, also, the other was bitterness. So the glad light of a resurrection makes the Christian Stoic as light-hearted as the happiest of Epicureans. So life's two sides help each other, and it is both sweet and strong.

(Frederick Brooks.)

Athenians, Damaris, Dionysius, Jason, Paul, Silas, Thessalonians, Timotheus, TimothyAmphipolis, Apollonia, Areopagus, Athens, Berea, ThessalonicaArgued, Chanced, Daily, Devout, Discussions, Disputed, Fearing, Gentiles, God-fearing, Greeks, Indeed, Jews, Market, Marketplace, Market-place, Meet, Met, Persons, Present, Reasoned, Reasoning, Synagogue, Worshipped, Worshippers, Worshipping1. Paul preaches at Thessalonica, where some believe,
5. and others persecute him.
10. He is sent to Berea, and preaches there.
13. Being persecuted by Jews from Thessalonica,
16. he comes to Athens, and disputes and preaches the living God, to them unknown;
32. whereby, though some mock, many are converted unto Christ.

Acts 17:17

     5050   reason
     8336   reverence, and obedience
     8427   evangelism, kinds of
     8497   witnessing, approaches

Acts 17:16-17

     5402   market
     8438   giving, of time

Acts 17:16-23

     5441   philosophy
     8831   syncretism

Acts 17:16-32

     7757   preaching, effects

Acts 17:17-18

     8817   ridicule, objects of

Acts 17:17-34

     7535   Greeks

April 24 Evening
The eyes of all wait upon thee.--PSA. 145:15. He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.--The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.--Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. The same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.--Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

February 17 Evening
God created man in his own image.--GEN. 1:27. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.--For whom he did foreknow, he also …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

April 7. "In Him we Live and Move" (Acts xvii. 28).
"In Him we live and move" (Acts xvii. 28). The hand of Gehazi, and even the staff of Elisha could not heal the lifeless boy. It needed the living touch of the prophet's own divinely quickened flesh to infuse vitality into the cold clay. Lip to lip, hand to hand, heart to heart, he must touch the child ere life could thrill his pulseless veins. We must come into personal contact with the risen Saviour, and have His very life quicken our mortal flesh before we can know the fulness and reality of His …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

The Man who is Judge
...He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.'--ACTS xvii. 31. I. The Resurrection of Jesus gives assurance of judgment. (a) Christ's Resurrection is the pledge of ours. The belief in a future life, as entertained by Paul's hearers on Mars Hill, was shadowy and dashed with much unbelief. Disembodied spirits wandered ghostlike and spectral in a shadowy underworld. The belief …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts

Thessalonica and Berea
'Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: 2. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath- days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, 3. Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. 4. And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts

Paul at Athens
'Then Paul stood In the midst of Mars-hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. 23. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24. God, that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25. Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts

The General Resurrection
Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. A n object, great in itself, and which we know to be so, will appear small to us, if we view it from a distance. The stars, for example, in our view, are but as little specks …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

The World Turned Upside Down
We believe that what these Jews said of the Apostles, was just a downright wilful lie. They knew better. The Apostles were not the disturbers of states. It is true, they preached that which would disturb the sinful constitution of a kingdom and which would disturb the evil practices of false priests, but they never meant to set men in an uproar. They did come to set men at arms with sin; they did draw the sword against iniquity; but against men as men, against kings as kings, they had no battle; …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 4: 1858

Colossians 4:14 "Luke, the Beloved Physician. "
[2] THERE are two things in the title of this paper which I shall take for granted, and not dwell on them. One is, that Luke here mentioned is the same Luke who wrote the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, and was the friend and companion of St. Paul. The other is, that Luke really was a physician of the body. On both these points the consent of learned men, who have a right to command our attention, is almost universal. I shall rigidly confine myself to two remarks which appear to grow out …
John Charles Ryle—The Upper Room: Being a Few Truths for the Times

Acts 17:16-17. Athens.
[9] "Now, while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry." Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him." --Acts 17:16-17. PERHAPS the reader of this paper lives in a town or city, and sees more of bricks and mortar than of green fields. Perhaps you have some relative or friend living in a town, about whom you naturally feel a deep interest. …
John Charles Ryle—The Upper Room: Being a Few Truths for the Times

He is Lovely in his Offices
Secondly, He is altogether lovely in his offices: let us consider for a moment the suitability, fullness, and comforting nature of them. First, The suitability of the offices of Christ to the miseries of men. We cannot but adore the infinite wisdom of his receiving them. We are, by nature, blind and ignorant, at best but groping in the dim light of nature after God, Acts 17:27. Jesus Christ is a light to lighten the Gentiles, Isa. 49:6. When this great prophet came into the world, then did the day-spring …
John Flavel—Christ Altogether Lovely

Immortality of the Soul, and a Future State.
--Inter silvas academi quærere verum. Hor. lib. II. epist. 2. v. 45. To search out truth in academic groves. THE course of my last speculation [3] led me insensibly into a subject upon which I always meditate with great delight, I mean the immortali …
Joseph Addison—The Evidences of the Christian Religion, with Additional Discourses

Repentance and Restitution.
"God commandeth all men everywhere to repent."--Acts xvii. 30. Repentance is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Bible. Yet I believe it is one of those truths that many people little understand at the present day. There are more people to-day in the mist and darkness about Repentance, Regeneration, the Atonement, and such-like fundamental truths, than perhaps on any other doctrines. Yet from our earliest years we have heard about them. If I were to ask for a definition of Repentance, a great …
Dwight L. Moody—The Way to God and How to Find It

Original Righteousness.
"For in Him we live and move, and have our being: as certain also of your own poets have said. For we are also His offspring." --Acts xvii. 28. It is the peculiar characteristic of the Reformed Confession that more than any other it humbles the sinner and exalts the sinless man. To disparage man is unscriptural. Being a sinner, fallen and no longer a real man, he must be humbled, rebuked, and inwardly broken. But the divinely created man, realizing the divine purpose or restored by omnipotent grace …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

Period iii. The Dissolution of the Imperial State Church and the Transition to the Middle Ages: from the Beginning of the Sixth Century to the Latter Part of the Eighth
The third period of the ancient Church under the Christian Empire begins with the accession of Justin I (518-527), and the end of the first schism between Rome and Constantinople (519). The termination of the period is not so clearly marked. By the middle and latter part of the eighth century, however, the imperial Church has ceased to exist in its original conception. The Church in the East has become, in great part, a group of national schismatic churches under Moslem rulers, and only the largest …
Joseph Cullen Ayer Jr., Ph.D.—A Source Book for Ancient Church History

St. Justin Martyr (Ad 166)
Although Trajan was no friend to the Gospel, and put St. Ignatius to death, he made a law which must have been a great relief to the Christians. Until then they were liable to be sought out, and any one might inform against them; but Trajan ordered that they should not be sought out, although, if they were discovered, and refused to give up their faith, they were to be punished. The next emperor, too, whose name was Hadrian (AD 117-138) did something to make their condition better; but it was still …
J. C. Roberston—Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation

Whether Idolatry is Rightly Reckoned a Species of Superstition?
Objection 1: It would seem that idolatry is not rightly reckoned a species of superstition. Just as heretics are unbelievers, so are idolaters. But heresy is a species of unbelief, as stated above ([3101]Q[11], A[1]). Therefore idolatry is also a species of unbelief and not of superstition. Objection 2: Further, latria pertains to the virtue of religion to which superstition is opposed. But latria, apparently, is univocally applied to idolatry and to that which belongs to the true religion. For just …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether Sufficient Reason Can be Assigned for the Ceremonies Pertaining to Holy Things?
Objection 1: It would seem that no sufficient reason can be assigned for the ceremonies of the Old Law that pertain to holy things. For Paul said (Acts 17:24): "God Who made the world and all things therein; He being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made by hands." It was therefore unfitting that in the Old Law a tabernacle or temple should be set up for the worship of God. Objection 2: Further, the state of the Old Law was not changed except by Christ. But the tabernacle denoted …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether Woman Should have Been Made from Man?
Objection 1: It would seem that woman should not have been made from man. For sex belongs both to man and animals. But in the other animals the female was not made from the male. Therefore neither should it have been so with man. Objection 2: Further, things of the same species are of the same matter. But male and female are of the same species. Therefore, as man was made of the slime of the earth, so woman should have been made of the same, and not from man. Objection 3: Further, woman was made …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether all Things are Life in God?
Objection 1: It seems that not all things are life in God. For it is said (Acts 17:28), "In Him we live, and move, and be." But not all things in God are movement. Therefore not all things are life in Him. Objection 2: Further, all things are in God as their first model. But things modelled ought to conform to the model. Since, then, not all things have life in themselves, it seems that not all things are life in God. Objection 3: Further, as Augustine says (De Vera Relig. 29), a living substance …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether Souls are Conveyed to Heaven or Hell Immediately after Death?
Objection 1: It would seem that no souls are conveyed to heaven or hell immediately after death. For a gloss on Ps. 36:10, "Yet a little while and the wicked shall not be," says that "the saints are delivered at the end of life; yet after this life they will not yet be where the saints will be when it is said to them: Come ye blessed of My Father." Now those saints will be in heaven. Therefore after this life the saints do not go immediately up to heaven. Objection 2: Further, Augustine says (Enchiridion …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

The World, Created by God, Still Cherished and Protected by Him. Each and all of Its Parts Governed by his Providence.
1. Even the wicked, under the guidance of carnal sense, acknowledge that God is the Creator. The godly acknowledge not this only, but that he is a most wise and powerful governor and preserver of all created objects. In so doing, they lean on the Word of God, some passages from which are produced. 2. Refutation of the Epicureans, who oppose fortune and fortuitous causes to Divine Providence, as taught in Scripture. The sun, a bright manifestation of Divine Providence. 3. Figment of the Sophists as …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion

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