is, which thou speakest of?” And Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said:
“Ye men of Athens, passing and seeing your idols, I found an altar[1] on which was written: ‘To the unknown God’. What, therefore, you worship without knowing it, this I preach to you—God who made the world and all things therein. He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is He served with men’s hands, as if He needed anything, seeing it is He who giveth to all life and breath and all things. He hath made of one, all mankind to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, that they should seek God, if happily they may feel after Him and find Him, although He be not far
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Fig. 96. View of Athens.
from every one of us: for in Him we live and move and be: as some also of your own poets said: ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Being, therefore[2], the offspring of God, we must not suppose the divinity to be like gold and silver, or stone, the graving of art and device of man. And God, indeed, having winked at[3] the
- ↑ An altar. This altar had been dedicated to “the unknown God”, because many among the pagans had a suspicion that over and above their own gods there was another God whom they did not know.
- ↑ Being, therefore. The purport of St. Paul’s words is this: Even pagan poets have proclaimed that mankind is sprung of a divine race, being near to God, and like to Him. If man be like unto God, then senseless and lifeless objects made by man cannot be like unto Him, for these are much lower than man himself, and it follows that the “devices of men” made of gold and silver and stone could not be gods, as was taught by the pagans.
- ↑ Winked at. i. e. has tolerated the long continued ignorance of the true God.
