LESSON 32
AT ATHENS AND CORINTH
"Sometimes a noble failure serves the world as faithfully as a distinguished success."
"Life has no blessing like a prudent friend."
Loneliness.
Perhaps few if any of the young folks who read these lessons have ever been alone, even for a short time, in a strange city; but it may be that some of your fathers or brothers have, if so, you may learn by asking just how lonesome one can feel when one is in a large crowd, in a strange city, and out of sympathy with the people around him. To be
"Amid the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam along the world's tired denizen,
With none to bless us, none whom we can bless;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude."
Such must have been Paul's condition after he said goodby to his brethren, and walked through the streets of Athens alone.
This loneliness impressed him so deeply that he afterwards wrote to the Thessalonians that he "was left in Athens alone."[[1]] He had sent a command back to Berea for "Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed;" but until they came, he was the only Christian in the great pagan city.
Statues and Deities.