-spirits of the age. This was the favorite resort of poets and
philosophers. Here the divine spirit of Plato poured forth its sublimest
speculations in streams of matchless eloquence; and here he founded a
school which was destined to exert a powerful and perennial influence on
human minds and hearts in all coming time.

Looking down from the Acropolis upon the Agora, Paul would distinguish a
cloister or colonnade. This is the Stoa Poecile, or "Painted Porch," so
called because its walls were decorated with fresco paintings of the
legendary wars of Greece, and the more glorious struggle at Marathon. It
was here that Zeno first opened that celebrated school which thence
received the name of _Stoic_. The site of the _garden_ where Epicurus
taught is now unknown. It was no doubt within the city walls, and not
far distant from the Agora. It was well known in the time of Cicero, who
visited Athens as a student little more than a century before the
Apostle. It could not have been forgotten in the time of Paul. In this
"tranquil garden," in the society of his friends, Epicurus passed a life
of speculation and of pleasure. His disciples were called, after him,
the Epicureans.[381]

[Footnote 381: See Conybeare and Howson's "Life and Epistles of St.
Paul," vol. i., Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy;" and
Encyclopaedia Britannica, article, "Athens," from whence our materials
for the description of these "places" are mainly derived.]

Here, then, in Athens the Apostle was brought into immediate contact
with all the phases of philosophic thought which had appeared in the
ancient world. "Amongst those who sauntered beneath the cool shadows of
the plane-trees in the Agora, and gathered in knots under the porticoes,
eagerly discussing the questions of the day, were the philosophers, in
the garb of their several sects, ready for any new question on which
they might exercise their subtlety or display their rhetoric." If there
were any in that motley group who cherished the principles and retained
the spirit of the true Platonic school, we may presume they felt an
inward intellectual sympathy with the doctrine enounced by Paul. With
Plato, "philosophy was only another name for _religion_: philosophy is
the love of perfect Wisdom; perfect Wisdom and perfect Goodness are
identical: the perfect Good is God himself; philosophy is the love of
God."[382] He confessed the need of divine assistance to attain "the
good," and of divine