There is, perhaps, no other episode in the adventurous journeyings and heroic life of the Apostle Paul so full of interest as his visit to Athens. To all those whose acquaintance with Grecian history enables them to take in the peculiar surroundings and associations of that visit it certainly affords the most fascinating incident in connection with the progress of the Christian faith; and it has always been regarded as the most interesting event in the heroic age of Christianity. For what other event presents such striking antithesis?—the newly-established religion of Jesus of Nazareth face to face with the intellect and cultivation of Greece, the disciple of a crucified Galilean come to dethrone the disciples of Plato, a semi-barbarian Jew come to teach the mighty Athenians, who had taught the world.
The historical outline of the subject is thus given in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles:
“And they that conducted Paul, brought him as far as Athens, and receiving a commandment from him to Silas and Timothy, that they should come to him with all speed, they departed. Now whilst Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him, seeing the city wholly given to idolatry. He disputed therefore in the synagogue with the Jews, and with them that served God, and in the market-place, every day with them that were there. And certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics disputed with him, and some said: What is it that this word-sower would say? But others: He seemeth to be a setter-forth of new gods: because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. And taking him they brought him to Areopagus, saying: May we know what this new doctrine is which thou speakest of? For thou bringest in certain new things to our ears. We would know therefore what these things mean. (Now all the Athenians, and strangers that were there, employed themselves in nothing else but either in telling or in hearing some new thing.) But Paul standing in the midst of Areopagus, said: Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For passing by and seeing your idols, I found an altar also on which was written: ‘To the unknown God.’ What therefore you worship, without knowing it, that I preach to you. God, who made the world and all things therein, seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Neither is he served with men’s hands as though he needed anything, seeing it is he who giveth to all life, and breath, and all things: and hath made of one, all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times, and the limits of their habitation. That they should seek God, if haply they may feel after him or find him, although he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live and move and are: as some also of your own poets said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ Being therefore the offspring of God we must not suppose the divinity to be like unto gold or silver, or stone, the graving of art and device of man. And God indeed having winked at the times of this ignorance, now declareth unto men, that all should everywhere do penance. Because he hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in equity, by the man whom he hath appointed, giving faith to all, by raising him up from the dead. And when they had heard of the resurrection of the dead some indeed mocked, but others said: We will hear thee again concerning this matter. So Paul went out from among them. But certain men adhering to him, did believe: among whom was also Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.”
St. Paul went to Athens direct from Berœa in Macedonia; he had had a most successful apostolate among the Berœans, and had no intention of quitting the place so soon, were it not that his old enemies, the Jews of Thessalonica, came down upon him and compelled him to flee for his life. It was only seventeen miles to the coast, and some of his Berœan converts conducted the persecuted apostle as speedily as possible to the sea. From where they embarked it was a sail of three or four days in a small boat to the Piræus. If the great apostle of the Gentiles had an eye for the beautiful in nature, if scenes consecrated by historic association had any charm for him, he must have revelled in this quiet sail on the Interior Sea. As soon as he cleared the headlands of the Macedonian shore he saw Mount Olympus towering close above him; and as he drew near the Thessalian Archipelago Mount Athos and the picturesque coast-line of Attica began to be visible. For a distance of ninety miles on his voyage the long island of Eubœa forms the outer boundary of the narrow sea, and every spot on either shore is classic ground, hallowed by some association of the past. On the northern shore of Eubœa itself is the pass of Thermopylæ; opposite the southern extremity, on the coast of Attica, are the plains of Marathon; and when the little vessel rounded the cape of Sunium, Ægina, Salamis, and the beautiful isles of Greece were in full view. But although one can scarcely imagine St. Paul to have been wholly insensible to the surpassing beauty of such scenes, the historic associations which they recalled gave him but little concern, for he was going to Athens to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, and this was his all-absorbing thought.
How little did the fishermen who tended their nets on the Ægean Sea think what destiny the white sail that passed them bore to Attica; and how little did the people who came down to the beach to see the strange vessel come in imagine what a conqueror they had received on their shores! After landing at the Piræus St. Paul at once sent back to Berœa for Silas and Timothy. And it might appear from the account given in the Acts as if he were afraid to begin work in Athens alone; but if he had any such hesitation his natural courage and burning zeal soon overcame it, and he lost no time in entering upon his labors.
Over the ruins of the long walls which in the days of Pericles were the bulwark of Greece, Paul of Tarsus passed on to Athens. As he entered the gates of the city a sight met his eye which “stirred up his spirit within him,” and inflamed the passionate ardor of his zeal for the knowledge of the one true God. Evidences of the grossest idolatry everywhere met his view. Turn which way he would, statues of Minerva, Jupiter, Apollo, Bacchus, and the Muses were before him; on every street-corner, in every portico, he saw altars raised to the false gods of Greece.
It was the custom of St. Paul, as, indeed, it was of all the apostles whenever they entered a strange city, to seek out the Jews—who were even then scattered all over the civilized world—and to begin his public teaching in the synagogue. And it may have been with this object in view that he went to the Agora, or market-place, for he well knew where the trading proclivities of his countrymen would make them apt to congregate. But the Agora of Athens was a place of pleasure rather than of business; ideas were the chief commodities exchanged there, and it was far more the resort of philosophers and sophists than of merchants and money-changers. It was, in fact, a sort of City Hall park filled with statues and fountains and plane-trees, and, as a matter of course, with loungers; and in those degenerate days nearly all the men of Athens were loungers, and did little else than loll around the Agora, inquiring after news and discussing the events of the time.
Such was the market-place of Athens, where St. Paul disputed every day for we know not how many days.
Let us picture to ourselves the great apostle of the nations, clad in the toga of a philosopher visiting the Agora from day to day to break the Gospel tidings to all who would listen to him. At one moment we can fancy him seated under a plane-tree in earnest conversation with a venerable Israelite, who nervously strokes his beard as the apostle insists that Christ was the true Messias, and in him was the fulfilment of the prophecies and the only hope of Israel. At another moment he is in the midst of a group of scoffing sophists, hotly disputing with them the unity of the Godhead and the immortality of the soul. And again we can picture him walking alone through the market-place, absorbed in his thoughts, and with an expression of sadness on his countenance as he contemplates the gross errors that surround him in the “city wholly given to idolatry.”
The monuments of Athenian glory, the masterpieces of Athenian art, the works of Phidias, of Praxiteles, in the midst of which he moved, had no charm for Paul of Tarsus; they but “stirred up his spirit within him.” He longed to sweep them all away and plant in their stead the rude cross of Jesus Crucified. Renan, in his life of St. Paul, works himself up into a rhetorical frenzy over the feelings awakened in the apostle by the beautiful statues of Greece. He makes an apostrophe to them and warns them of their danger. “Ah! beautiful and chaste images,” he writes, “true gods and true goddesses, tremble. Here is one who will raise the hammer against you. The fatal word has been pronounced—ye are idols. The error of this ugly little Jew will prove your death-warrant.”[[161]]