in loco_.]

[Footnote 98: "Os before deisid.--so imports. I recognize you as
such."--Lange's Commentary.]

The assertion that the Athenians were "a religious people" will, to many
of our readers, appear a strange and startling utterance, which has in
it more of novelty than truth. Nay, some will be shocked to hear the
Apostle Paul described as complimenting these Athenians--these pagan
worshippers--on their "carefulness in religion." We have been so long
accustomed to use the word "heathen" as an opprobrious
epithet--expressing, indeed, the utmost extremes of ignorance, and
barbarism, and cruelty, that it has become difficult for us to believe
that in a heathen there can be any good.

From our childhood we have read in our English Bibles, Ye men of Athens,
I perceive in all things ye are _too superstitious_ and we can scarcely
tolerate another version, even if it can be shown that it approaches
nearer to the actual language employed by Paul. We must, therefore, ask
the patience and candor of the reader, while we endeavor to show, on the
authority of Paul's words, that the Athenians were a "religious people,"
and that all our notions to the contrary are founded on prejudice and
misapprehension.

First, then, let us commence even with our English version: "Ye men of
Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are _too superstitious_." And
what now is the meaning of the word "superstition?" It is true, we now
use it only in an evil sense, to express a belief in the agency of
invisible, capricious, malignant powers, which fills the mind with fear
and terror, and sees in every unexplained phenomenon of nature an omen,
or prognostic, of some future evil. But this is not its proper and
original meaning. Superstition is from the Latin _superstitio_, which
means a superabundance of religion,[99] an extreme exactitude in
religious observance. And this is precisely the sense in which the
corresponding Greek term is used by the Apostle Paul. Deisidaimonia
properly means "reverence for the gods." "It is used," says Barnes, "in
the classic writers, in a good sense, to denote piety towards the gods,
or suitable fear and reverence for them." "The word," says Lechler, "is,
without doubt, to be understood here in a good sense; although it seems
to have been intentionally chosen, in order to indicate the conception
of _fear_(deido), which predominated in the religion of the apostle's
hearers."[100] This reading is sustained by the ablest