A Baptist Abroad: Travels and Adventures of Europe and all Bible LandsWhittle, Walter Andrew
Religion
A Baptist Abroad: Travels and Adventures of Europe and all Bible Lands
Whittle, Walter Andrew
Europe -- Description and travel; Middle East -- Description and travel
Southwest of the Acropolis, is the rock-hewn prison of Socrates where
the grand old philosopher drank the fatal hemlock. Directly west, is
the platform with a stone pulpit from which the destinies of Athens
were swayed by the matchless eloquence of Demosthenes. Between this
pulpit and the Acropolis is the Areopagus, or Mar’s Hill. When Paul was
in Athens, “they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying,
‘May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?’ Then
Paul stood in the midst of Mar’s Hill and said, ‘Ye men of Athens, I
perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For, as I passed
by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription:
‘To the Unknown God.’ Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him
declare I unto you.’” (Acts xvii: 15-32.) I stood “in the midst of
Mar’s Hill,” and read Paul’s speech in Greek to some “men of Athens,”
who, in all probability, had never heard it before.
I have now been in this classic land many days, during which I have
lost no time. I have seen much of the people. On Tuesday and Saturday
afternoons of each week, the royal band discourses music from a grand
stand occupying the centre of one of the public squares. During these
concert hours, from five to ten thousand Greeks assemble in this open
square. Here they meet and mix and commingle and commune in the freest
and easiest manner imaginable. They sit, stand, promenade, or dance,
as they like, but all of them are all the time laughing and talking. I
never saw a better-natured crowd. I miss no opportunity like this to
study Greek life and character. One cannot be thrown among this crowd
for an hour without observing among the women the same traits of female
beauty that we have been studying all our lives in models of art and
sculpture. The men, I take it, have degenerated more than the women. A
modern Diogenes might walk the streets of Athens for a week, _without
finding a man_ like those of olden times. I am glad to add, however,
that the present king is doing much to elevate his subjects.
I have wandered through and around these majestic ruins all day, and
then gone back at night and viewed them by the pale moonlight. As I sit
in the quiet stillness of this midnight hour and think of the past,
“Memory approaches,
Holding up her magic glass,
Pointing to familiar pictures,
Which across the surface pass.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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