CHRISTIANITY
AND
GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.
ATHENS, AND THE MEN OF ATHENS.
"Is it not worth while, for the sake of the history of men and nations, to study the surface of the globe in its relation to the inhabitants thereof?"—Goethe.
There is no event recorded in the annals of the early church so replete with interest to the Christian student, or which takes so deep a hold on the imagination, and the sympathies of him who is at all familiar with the history of Ancient Greece, as the one recited above. Here we see the Apostle Paul standing on the Areopagus at Athens, surrounded by the temples, statues, and altars, which Grecian art had consecrated to Pagan worship, and proclaiming to the inquisitive Athenians, "the strangers" who had come to Athens for business or for pleasure, and the philosophers and students of the Lyceum, the Academy, the Stoa, and the Garden, "the unknown God."
Whether we dwell in our imagination on the artistic grandeur and imposing magnificence of the city in which Paul found himself a solitary stranger, or recall the illustrious names which by their achievements in arts and philosophy have shed around the city of Athens an immortal glory,—or whether, fixing our attention on the lonely wanderer amid the porticoes, and groves, and temples of this classic city, we at-
