Looking down from the Acropolis upon the Agora, Paul would distinguish a cloister or colonnade. This is the Stoa Pœcile, or "Painted Porch," so called because its walls were decorated with fresco paintings of the legendary wars of Greece, and the more glorious struggle at Marathon. It was here that Zeno first opened that celebrated school which thence received the name of _Stoic_. The site of the _garden_ where Epicurus taught is now unknown. It was no doubt within the city walls, and not far distant from the Agora. It was well known in the time of Cicero, who visited Athens as a student little more than a century before the Apostle. It could not have been forgotten in the time of Paul. In this "tranquil garden," in the society of his friends, Epicurus passed a life of speculation and of pleasure. His disciples were called, after him, the Epicureans.[381] [Footnote 381: See Conybeare and Howson's "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. i., Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy;" and Encyclopædia Britannica, article, "Athens," from whence our materials for the description of these "places" are mainly derived.] Here, then, in Athens the Apostle was brought into immediate contact with all the phases of philosophic thought which had appeared in the ancient world. "Amongst those who sauntered beneath the cool shadows of the plane-trees in the Agora, and gathered in knots under the porticoes, eagerly discussing the questions of the day, were the philosophers, in the garb of their several sects, ready for any new question on which they might exercise their subtlety or display their rhetoric." If there were any in that motley group who cherished the principles and retained the spirit of the true Platonic school, we may presume they felt an inward intellectual sympathy with the doctrine enounced by Paul. With Plato, "philosophy was only another name for _religion_: philosophy is the love of perfect Wisdom; perfect Wisdom and perfect Goodness are identical: the perfect Good is God himself; philosophy is the love of God."[382] He confessed the need of divine assistance to attain "the good," and of divine interposition to deliver men from moral ruin.[383] Like Socrates, he longed for a supernatural--a divine light to guide him, and he acknowledged his need thereof continually.[384] He was one of those who, in heathen lands, waited for "the desire of nations;" and, had he lived in Christian times, no doubt his "spirit of faith" would have joyfully "embraced the Saviour in all the completeness of his revelation and advent."[385] And in so far as the spirit of Plato survived among his disciples, we may be sure they were not among the number who "mocked," and ridiculed, and opposed the "new doctrine" proclaimed by Paul. It was "the philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics who _encountered_ Paul." The leading tenets of both these sects were diametrically opposed to the doctrines of Christianity. The