Acts 17:22

22. Midst of Mars’ hill Led by the gentle pressure of the Athenian crowd, the apostle ascends, by a flight of limestone steps, a steep of sixty feet height, and finds upon the summit a broad plateau. This, like all the other places of public assembly in the pure air of Athens, was roofless under the open sky. Hewn in rock are the elevated seats of the venerable Areopagite judges. Around him below is a city of temples, altars, theatres, and statuaries, the works of the greatest human masters of art. He has the bold summit of the Acropolis fronting him, crowned with the Parthenon, and the Parthenon surmounted, above all, by the colossal Athene, goddess alike of wisdom and of war, protecting the philosophy, art, and religion of Athens from the innovator, as well as her power from the invader. In the diminutive but lithe apostolic figure that now stands before her, the goddess faces a foe who pronounces the death-sentence of her own divinity.

Said In arguing with Jews St. Paul could use all the antecedents of Israel; her history, her sacrifices, her prophecies, and all her hopes, as premises from which to deduce Jesus the Messiah. But in here addressing the centre of intellectual Gentilism, to what antecedents or premises could he appeal? In his own celebrated city of Tarsus, however, he had already doubtless encountered philosophers. and hence his present masterpiece of oratory was not wholly impromptu. He appeals to whatever intuition of the true God he can discover even in their idolatries, (22, 23;) to the proofs of God furnished by the creation, (24-29;) to the sentiment of retribution in the human soul as the basis of an expectation of a judgment day, (30, 31.)