54 I perceive that M. Renan, who alone of skeptical critics is persuaded, possibly by the striking picturesqueness of the scene, to accept it as historical, considers it not impossible that S. Paul may have been actually brought before the court. He notices that in later days it assumed a general direction not only of literature, but of morals, and that any new teacher might fairly have been summoned before it to expound his views. This does not seem to me to agree with the ironical and trivial character of the whole audience, as intimated by the historian. The author of the work called _Supernatural Religion_, when analyzing, in his third volume, the Acts of the Apostles, is actually silent on this speech, though he discusses at great length the speeches of S. Paul which he thinks composed as parallels to those of S. Peter. Most German critics look on the passage as introduced by the author, like the speeches in Thucydides or Tacitus, as a literary ornament, as well as an exposition of the Apostolic preaching of the early Church. They also note its many contrasts to the teaching of such documents as the Epistle to the Romans. I have assumed, as even M. Renan seems to do, that the Apostle told Timothy, or Luke, or some other follower, the main purport of this memorable visit, and also the headings of the speech, which is too unlike his received writings to be a probable forgery. 55 The fact that the title of Menander’s famous play was _Δεισιδαίμων_ has escaped the commentators. S. Paul must have meant “rather superstitious,” as the A. V. has it. 56 Though _ἄγνωστος_ may surely have this meaning, I do not find it suggested in any of the commentaries on the passage. They all suppose some superstitious precaution, or else some case of the real inscription being effaced by time, and supplied in this way. The expression in Pausanias—the gods called unknown, _τοῖς ὀνομαζομένοις ἀγνώστοις_—seems to suggest it as a regular title, and we know that there were deities whose name was secret, and might not be pronounced. But in the face of so many better critics I will not insist upon this interpretation. 57 This depends on no mere accident, but on the essential features of the spiritual side of Greek character, on which I will quote an admirable passage from Renan’s _S. Paul_: