The gospel's kindly encounter with novel foes.
The opportunity now presented to Paul he must at once have recognized to be one of the grandest and most critical of his career. He was for a while separated from his two loved companions, and was permitted to face his work alone in the long-time metropolis of the world's learning, grace, and art. We are perhaps to understand that Paul somewhat sensitively felt his position to be one of a special kind of responsibility. It was certainly none the less one of so much the more honor. He does not delay his work. He appears in the synagogue (Acts 17:17) with the Jews and the "devout." In the market-place also he is found ready to debate with those who may be willing. The citizens of Athens, and the character which now obtained to so remarkable a degree among them, promised ground upon which rapid and easy impression, at all events, might be made, whether lasting or not. This, however, was held in check to a considerable degree by the presence of not a few who not only were naturally likely to fight hard for their pet philosophies, but whose very philosophy it was in some cases to attempt to "prove all things" at least in their own idea or proving. Paul is not long in being brought into the place of chief notoriety. The kind of treatment showed to him by that ancient center of refinement and of intellectual inquiry is vastly different from the treatment to which he had become only too accustomed at the hands of the Jews; and the kindly method and tone of the address of Paul seem to be some reflection of it. Still the gospel is to grapple, and in Athens it had its work before it. The incisiveness of Paul's style does not fall behind its courtesy. Let us notice what Paul has to say when now brought fairly in contact with all most typical of a heathen world.
I. THE TRUE APOSTLE OF CHRISTIANITY PURPORTS TO "DECLARE" WHAT THE WORLD SAYS IS "UNKNOWN," i.e. GOD. He "declares:"
1. A personal Creator-God, against Epicureans and all various others who either held the world to have been ever or to have come of chance. Neither Jesus himself nor Scripture records generally from beginning to end presuppose atheism, nor apply themselves to prove the existence of a personal Deity. But when nature, with all her ten thousand voices, has nevertheless let down men to a degraded unbelief, or when men have thus let down nature, these do pronounce and "declare" in no faltering tone this one starting-point of all upward progress, all knowledge, and all goodness (Acts 17:24).
2. A Creator-God, the opposite of depending for anything on man, inasmuch as all men depend for all things on him, including the initial breath of life, and thereupon every breath they draw.
3. A Creator-God who, so far as this world is concerned, knows one family alone, but that family the universal one.
4. A Creator-God who does not forsake men to their own inventions, but is the present and ruling Providence among them. There is such a reality as an administration of the wide empire on earth, and that administration in each part, each greater or less distribution, is Divine, is that of God, the sovereign God.
5. A Creator-God who admits of no proxy whatsoever of idol fashion.
II. THE TRUE APOSTLE OF CHRISTIANITY UNDERTAKES TO MAKE AN UNFALTERING AFFIRMATION OF THE THINGS MOST DISTINCTIVE OF CHRISTIANITY. These shall be facts or truths, not grown of reason, not even surmised of reason; very likely not, in all their bearings and all the questions they suggest, such as can be accounted for by reason. They occupy by intention a unique place. They come of the pronouncement of One who brings all-sufficient credentials, and whom to disbelieve rationally is a greater difficulty for reason by far than to believe. This grand, surpassing voice of Heaven is here given as threefold.
1. It bids repentance on the part of man.
2. It declares judgment to come by Jesus Christ.
3. It declares hereunto the resurrection of Jesus Christ; and certainly, if the resurrection of Jesus Christ is here instanced as speaking volumes for his likely judgeship, it will carry all that is necessary for showing men present at his solemn judgment-bar. Evidently nothing so much arrested men, when the world's clock was then striking, as this announcement of resurrection from the dead for Judge and judged.
III. THE TRUE APOSTLE OF CHRISTIANITY DOES NOT HIDE AWAY THE ELEMENT OF HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY AND THE NECESSITY OF HUMAN CO-OPERATION WITH DIVINE WORK. This is but one among many ways of asserting that man is himself a creation of reason and of heart and of conscience; in brief, of just so much as to constitute him justly responsible to his Creator. Beyond a doubt, we cannot draw the line that says where the exertion of man's will and the interposition of God's providence end or begin, nor, in all probability, could we see the line if it were drawn. It is none the less certain that both of these are facts in human life. Paul goes so far as to say that Divine arrangements (Acts 17:27) lead to Divine inquirings on the part of men, and are directly adapted to suggest "seeking the Lord." Notice, therefore:
1. That it lies with men, part of their simplest, first, happiest duty, to "seek the Lord," in distinction from the vain theory or degrading wish that the belief in the reality of the existence of God should be an absolutely necessary outcome of our life or natural income of our conviction. It is a remarkable fact that in all highest senses it is both one and the other of these things, but that in lower and literal sense, if it were so, it would bereave human knowledge of God of its noblest aspects, noblest tokens, and noblest uses.
2. That there is so much uncertainty about finding him we seek, as might well give zest and energy and trembling vigor to endeavor.
3. That the uncertainty lies much in some moral direction of our nature. To "find God" is not the quest of the intellect merely or chiefly. It will lie nearer the heart, at all events, and it will be greatly dependent on, say, the conscience, what it is in any man and how he heeds it. To "find God" will depend on "feeling after" him. The absence of a certain kind and amount of sensibility will in many a case decide, and "that right early," our not finding some one or some thing. Some truth and some people are coy. And very indisputable it is that sometimes it is of the highest truth and the highest style of human character that this is most chiefly true.
4. That to win the crown of "finding" finding really, finding blessedly, finding for ever—is quite among the possibilities; ay, it is among the sure promises exceeding precious to the true seeker.
5. That the grand object "sought," "felt after," and "found" is all the time "not far from" any one, i.e. really near to every one. He is so near us in our breathing life itself. He is so near us in all those qualities which are derived from his parentage. He is so near as in bountiful goodness and in pitying, strong love.—B.