“We have heard many times the expression, ‘When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war.’ That day in the Areopagus Paul started a tug of war that shall [pg 303] continue long after we and what we know of the tangible handiwork of man is in dust and ashes; started it because his spirit was troubled at beholding that the world’s greatest city intellectually, was given over to idol worship. His discourse on Mars Hill, or if you prefer in the Athenian Council, started the conflict between pagan philosophies and Christianity; and while Christianity prevailed, the converts from paganism brought into it too much of the metaphysical, the doctrinal, and that simple faith become contaminated by what was borrowed from these philosophies.
“The Epicureans taught that pleasure is the only possible end of rational action. They believed that everything started from an atom. That the gods were not interested in men and that there was no future life.
“The Stoics believed in the school of philosophy founded by Zeno. That man should submit to the inevitable; they were fatalists; did not believe in exhibiting joy or sorrow; lived lives of sternness and austerity and many believed in the immortality of the soul.
“Athens, a city posing as the most enlightened, where polemics and philosophers gathered to discuss metaphysical questions, did not relish being told by a barbarian, a mere Jew, that all they believed in and argued about was false; and that he knew things unknown to them; of a God concerning whom they had never heard. He discoursed of God, Christ, the resurrection, the unity of mankind, the sovereignty of God. He told of God the Father, whose habitation was not made with hands; who had made of one blood all nations and had fixed the bounds of their habitation. A God easily found because always near; and through whom we live and move and have our being. This being true, how foolish to worship gods of our own make. Rather let us worship the God I [pg 304] worship and whom I preach unto you; the God that made YOU. Then he spoke of the love of God for man; how he gave his Son as a vicarious atonement; how that Son living as a man among men, taught that a life of selfish pleasure, Epicureanism, was a sin; and that fatalism, Stoicism, was remorse without faith or hope. Then how that Son, crucified for men that they might live, rose and returned from the land of silence, a messenger to those who loved and trusted him, that they might have a pledge of glory and honor and immortality.
“But the ‘superior persons’ who in that day peopled Athens, were harder to win than the barbarians of Lycaonia, the land of the wolves, because they were men of intellectual sensitiveness and dead hearts; men who, though they do not know it, live in the dark and after death reaching out find nothing to lay hold on. Though as Paul says, God is not far from any one, He is farthest from them. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb and those that hear best and are nearest are those who have fresh and simple hearts like children and heathen; for them the way is made straight and plain.
“That day on Mars Hill, Paul preached but three things: ‘Idolatry is foolish—Given the new light you must repent—On an appointed day you will be judged by Jesus, the righteous judge.’
“The application of the lesson I can put in a simple question: How many of us today are as the Athenians, worshipping false gods and spending our time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing? How many of us seeking new things are willing to trade the old lamp, the faith of our fathers, for a new one; even though the old is infinitely greater than Aladdin’s, when the new will prove a will o’ the wisp, a delusion and a snare.
[pg 305] “Suppose Paul should come to Lexington and spend a day or two looking about; would he say of the people of Lexington as of Athens: ‘Still spending your time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing;’ still seeking false gods. He might strengthen the charge: Still lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; though the price of the Gospels is a farthing and all know of the mission of Christ and its fulfillment.
“What he told to the Athenians was a new story; many mocked, some said we will hear you again—a few believed. But Athens was Athens after Paul left. What Paul told to them is to us an old story. Do we love it? Do we love to tell it? We can hear it and mock and delay. We cannot tell it unless we believe.
“Listen to the word of God: