among the Greeks; but the Jews, enraged at his
teaching these, stirred up the mob, and not only forced him to leave that
city, but hunted him wherever he tried to stop in Macedon, so that he was
obliged to hurry into the next province, Achaia, and wait at Athens for
the companions whom he had left to go on with his work at Philippi and
Thessalonica.

[Picture: Parthenon and Erectheum]

While at Athens, the multitude of altars and temples, and the devotion
paid to them, stirred his spirit, so that he could not but speak out
plainly, and point to the truth. It seemed a new philosophy to the
talkers and inquirers, who had talked to shreds the old arguments of
Plato and Epicurus, and longed for some fresh light or new interest; and
he was invited to Areopagus to set forth his doctrine. There, in the
face of the Parthenon and the Acropolis, with philosophers and students
from all parts of the empire around, he made one of his greatest and
noblest speeches--"Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are
greatly religious. For as I passed through your city, and beheld how ye
worship, I found an altar with this inscription--'TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.'
Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship; Him declare I unto you."

Then, looking forth on the temples crowded on the rocks, he tried to open
their minds to the truth that the God of all dwells in no temples made
with hands, that all men alike are His children, and that, since living,
breathing, thinking man has sprung from Him, it is lowering His greatness
to represent Him by cold, dead, senseless stone, metal, or ivory. "He
bore with the times of ignorance," said Paul; "but now He called on all
men to turn to Him to prepare for the day when all should be judged, by
the Man whom He had ordained for the purpose, as had been shown by His
rising from the dead."

The Greeks had listened to the proclamation of one great unseen God,
higher than art could represent; but when Paul spoke of rising from the
dead, they burst into mockery. They had believed in spirits living, but
not in bodies rising again, and the philosophers would not listen. Very
few converts were made in Athens, only Dionysius, and a woman named
Damaris, and a few more; and the city of learning long closed her ears
against those who would have taught her what Socrates and Plato had been
feeling after like men in the dark.

At the merchant city of Corinth, Paul had greater success; he staye