CHAPTER X.

ST. PAUL'S SECOND APOSTOLIC MISSION AMONG THE GENTILES CONTINUED, AND CONCLUDED AT CORINTH.

THERE is no indication of any permanent or practical effect having resulted from St. Paul's noble specimen of oratory. Some of the audience, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, mocked. To them it was incredible, and they could not bear so much as to hear it mentioned, inasmuch as it was contrary to a principle of their philosophy, according to which life when once lost was irrevocable. They deified their heroes after their death, but they never thought of their being raised from the dead. Therefore, they scorned the doctrine of Christ being raised from the grave. Others neither complied with what St. Paul said, nor opposed it, but were desirous to take time to consider of it. So St. Paul departed from among them. Howbeit, certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, one of the high court which sat in judgment on him in Mars' hill. This judge and senator becomes his convert. It is said that this Dionysius was bred at Athens. He had studied astrology in Egypt, where he noticed the miraculous eclipse at our Saviour's passion; and returning to Athens, he became a senator, disputed with Paul, and was by him converted to Christianity. The woman Damaris is supposed by some to have been the wife of Dionysius; by others, to have been a person of quality; and, by a German writer, the suggestion is made that she might be an hetara, called, like Mary Magdalene, to repentance. But nothing is known

of her, or of St. Paul while at Athens after that affair of Mars' hill, further than that there seems to have been no great harvest gathered in here, in comparison with what it was at some other places. The church planted here seems to have been very long in a weak state. At one time this Christian community is said to have been entirely dispersed, and to have been collected again about A.D. 165. In the time of the Antonines, Paganism was almost as flourishing at Athens as ever. It is remarkable that no Epistle seems to have been written by St. Paul to the Athenians; and after he thus left this celebrated spot, we do not read that he ever returned to Athens. But wherever this Gospel of a once crucified but now highly exalted Redeemer is taught, the speech of St. Paul on Mars' hill will be read and reverenced. We do not find, however, that St. Paul was much persecuted at Athens, neither does he appear to have been driven away by any tumult of the people, or command of the civil authorities. We learn, however, from his First Epistle to the Thessalonians (iii. 1), that he waited for some time at Athens, till Silas and Timotheus should join him; and by some it is believed that Timotheus did join him at Athens before he left for Corinth. Amid these and many other fruitless conjectures, the fact may be safely inferred, that St. Paul found the self-conceited minds of the proud Athenian philosophers had rather hardened like clay, than softened as the wax by the fire of the Holy Spirit he endeavoured to kindle among them. His reception having been cold at Athens, and finding that he had little prospect of doing much good there, he departed for Corinth, leaving the charge of this infant church with Dionysius and others who believed. Thus the Apostle opened up for himself a better field for missionary enterprise; namely, a place which Cicero denominates the light of all Greece, Totius Grecie lumen, and which Florus calls the ornament of Greece, Grecia decus-the populous and trading metropolis of the province of Achaia-a large

and splendid city built on a most commanding and com→ mercial position on an isthmus between two seas, which separates the Peloponnesus from Attica-one of the secondrate cities of the Roman empire, as established by Julius Cæsar, after its destruction at the close of the Republic, and the seat of government for the colony-the connecting link of communication with Rome and Europe on the west, with Antioch and Alexandria in the east, and with Ephesus and the other churches in Asia, and, above all, the chief settlement of the Jews, not only from every corner of Greece, such as Athens, Argos, Boeotia, Euboea, and the province of Achaia, but from all quarters of the world. Moreover, at this period there was an unusual number of Jews collected at Corinth," because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome" (Acts xviii. 2), on account, as Suetonius hints, of the tumults they raised at the instigation of a certain Chrestus; that is, from the Jewish expectations concerning the Messiah, and the events which arose from the death and resurrection of the Christ. In every respect, therefore, St. Paul had urgent reasons for leaving the tame, selfsatisfied, and secluded retreats of a very learned and philosophical, lovely, and little provincial town; and setting himself down in a place from which the Gospel might spread out, like the morning light, over the darkest and most distant regions both of Europe and of Asia. It is abundantly evident from the long period of time St. Paul spent at Corinth, and from the two long Epistles he wrote to the church he planted there, that he was quite aware how much good might be expected to result from his missionary labours at that place.

After these things, therefore, Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth. But we are not told whether he travelled in this journey by the coast road, through Eleusis and Megara, or whether he sailed from the Piræus to Cenchreæ. By sea, with a fair wind he might make the voyage in a few hours; and by land the journey might be