he capital of Greece, was a large city. It was noted as the
chief seat of Grecian learning, refinement of taste, cultivation of
genius, and skill in the production of almost everything belonging to
the fine arts. It had its philosophers, statesmen, orators, lawyers,
priests, poets and painters. It had its high and low orders in
society. But when Paul beheld the city his spirit was moved in him,
for he saw that it was wholly given to idolatry. Some of the Epicurean
and Stoic philosophers encountered him and said: "He seemeth to be a
setterforth of strange gods." They said this among themselves, because
he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. But they did not
seem inclined to do him injury as the Jews had done in some other
places, but gave him a chance to speak in the Areopagus, a large
building in the city called the Hill of Mars, or Mars' Hill. In this
building Paul preached a wonderful sermon, the whole of which you may
read in Acts seventeenth chapter.

But to-night I wish to speak on just one thing that Paul said in that
sermon, and these are the words: "God commandeth all men everywhere to
repent." When we are commanded to do something, we like to know what
it is we are commanded to do. Now I will tell you. It is to repent.
But you may say, "I do not exactly know what that means." I will now
tell you about all I know of the meaning of the words repent and
repentance. The Lord Jesus knew exactly what these words mean, and I
will give you his definition. He said to the Jews: "The men of Nineveh
repented at the preaching of Jonah." Now let us turn to the book of
Jonah in the Old Testament and see what the men of Nineveh did at the
preaching of Jonah, and we will then understand what the Lord meant
when he said they _repented_. You must know what Jonah's sermon was.
It was so plain that all could understand it, and so short that all
could remember it, This is the sermon: "Yet forty days and Nineveh
shall be destroyed." The city had more than a hundred and twenty
thousand people in it; and it took Jonah three days to go from one end
to the other with his message of destruction; but at the end of the
first day "the people of Nineveh believed God; and when the word came
unto the king of Nineveh he arose from his throne, and laid his robe
from him, and put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes and said: Let man and
beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yea, let
them turn, every one from his evil way.