critics and
scholars of modern times. Bengel reads the sentence, "I perceive that ye
are _very religious_"[101] Cudworth translates it thus: "Ye are every
way _more than ordinarily religious."[102]_ Conybeare and Howson read
the text as we have already given it, "All things which I behold bear
witness to your _carefulness in religion_."[103] Lechler reads "very
devout;"[104] Alford, "carrying your _religious reverence very
far_;"[105] and Albert Barnes,[106] "I perceive ye are greatly devoted
to _reverence for religion_."[107] Whoever, therefore, will give
attention to the actual words of the apostle, and search for their real
meaning, must be convinced he opens his address by complimenting the
Athenians on their being more than ordinarily religious.

[Footnote 99: Nitzsch, "System of Christ. Doctrine," p. 33.]

[Footnote 100: Lange's Commentary, _in loco_.]

[Footnote 101: "Gnomon of the New Testament."]

[Footnote 102: "Intellectual System," vol. i. p. 626.]

[Footnote 103: "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. i. p. 378.]

[Footnote 104: Lange's Commentary.]

[Footnote 105: Greek Test.]

[Footnote 106: Notes on Acts.]

[Footnote 107: Also Clarke's Comment., _in loco_.]

Nor are we for a moment to suppose the apostle is here dealing in hollow
compliments, or having recourse to a "pious fraud." Such a course would
have been altogether out of character with Paul, and to suppose him
capable of pursuing such a course is to do him great injustice. If "to
the Jews he became as a Jew," it was because he recognized in Judaism
the same fundamental truths which underlie the Christian system. And if
here he seems to become, in any sense, at one with "heathenism," that he
might gain the heathen to the faith of Christ, it was because he found
in heathenism some elements of truth akin to Christianity, and a state
of feeling favorable to an inquiry into the truths he had to present. He
beheld in Athens an altar reared to the God _he_ worshipped, and it
afforded him some pleasure to find that God was not totally forgotten,
and his worship totally neglected, by the Athenians. The God whom they
knew imperfectly, "_Him_" said he, "I declare unto you;" I now desire to
make him more fully known. The worship of "the Unknown God" was a
recognition of the being of a God whose nature transcends all human
thought, a God who is ineffable; who, as Plato said, "is hard to be
discovered, and having discovered him, to make him known to