This altar, he began, like all things else he had seen in their city, proved their carefulness in religion[1002], their earnest desire to worship, and at the same time their ignorance in worshipping. “The unknown God,” whose power, by their own confession, they acknowledged, he would declare unto them. The Lord of heaven and earth, who had made the world and all things therein, dwelt not in temples made with hands[1003]. He was subject to no exigencies, which made him need anything from his worshippers, seeing that He gave to all life, and breath, and all things. For all the nations of mankind, originally made by Him of one blood[1004], He had assigned the seasons of their existence and the bounds of their habitation, to the end that they should feel after Him, if haply they might find Him, though in truth He was not far from any of them, as one of their own poets had said, _For we are also His offspring_[1005]. As the offspring, therefore, of God, and endowed with the faculty of knowing Him, they ought not to have imagined that the Godhead was like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by the art and device of man. Such imaginations they might have indulged in times past of ignorance. But these God had overlooked[1006], and now commanded all men everywhere to repent, for He had appointed a day, wherein He would judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He had ordained, and of this He had given to all a pledge and an assurance, in that He had raised Him from the dead (Acts xvii. 30, 31). At this point the Apostle’s address was suddenly interrupted. Some who heard him broke out into laughter, regarding the idea of the resurrection as ridiculous. Others, in the spirit of Felix afterwards (Acts xxiv. 22, 25), said they would hear him again on the subject; and thus amidst mingled indifference and division, the hearers of the Apostle dispersed, and he _departed from among them_. The word spoken, however, did not fall utterly to the ground. Dionysius, a member of the Court of Areopagus, a woman named Damaris[1007], and some others, professed themselves believers in that Redeemer and Judge of all mankind, whom he had preached to them. CHAPTER IV. _ARRIVAL AND STAY OF ST PAUL AT CORINTH._ A.D. 52, 53.