arrogance, with very few real inquirers after truth, such as marked the times of Socrates and Plato.  Paul, like Luther, cared nothing for art; and the thousands of statues which ornamented every part of the city seemed to him to be nothing but idols.  Still, he was not mistaken in the intense paganism of the city, the absence of all earnestness of character and true religious life.  He was disappointed, as afterward Augustine was when he went to Rome.  He expected to find intellectual life at least, but the pretenders to superior knowledge in that degenerate university town merely traded on the achievements of their ancestors, repeating with dead lips the echo of the old philosophies.  They were marked only by levity, mockery, sneers, and contemptuous arrogance; idlers were they, in quest of some new amusement.

The utter absence of sympathy among all classes given over to frivolities made Paul exceedingly lonely in Athens, and he wrote to Timothy and Silas to join him with all haste.  He wandered about the streets distressed and miserable.  There was no field for his labors.  Who would listen to him?  What ear could he reach?  He was as forlorn and unheeded as a temperance lecturer would be on the boulevards of Paris.  His work among the Jews was next to nothing, for where trade did not flourish there were but few Jews.  Still, amid all this discouragement, it would seem that Paul attracted sufficient notice, from his conversation with the idlers and chatterers of the Agora, to be invited to address the Athenians at the Areopagus.  They listened with courtesy so long as they thought he was praising their religious habits, or was making a philosophical argument against the doctrines of rival sects; but when he began to tell them of that Cross which was to them foolishness, and of that Resurrection from the dead which was alien to all their various beliefs, they were filled with scorn or relapsed into indifference.  Paul’s masterly discourse on Mars Hill was an obvious failure, so far as any immediate impression was concerned.  The Pagans did not persecute him,—­they let him alone; they killed him with indifference.  He could stand opposition, but to be laughed at as a fanatic and neglected by bright and intellectual people was more than even Paul could stand.  He left Athens a lonely man, without founding a church.  It was the last city in the world to receive his doctrines,—­that city of grammarians, of pedants, of gymnasts, of fencing masters, of play-goers, and babblers about words.  “As well might a humanitarian socialist declaim against English prejudices to the proud and exclusive fellows of Oxford and Cambridge.”

Paul, disappointed and disgusted, without waiting for Timothy, then set out for Corinth,—­a much wickeder and more luxurious city than Athens, but not puffed up with intellectual pride.  Here there were sailors and artisans, and slaves bearing heavy burdens, who would gladly hear the tidings of a salvation preached to the poor and miserable.  Not yet was the alliance to be formed between Philosophy and Christianity.  Not to the intellect was the apostolic appeal to be made, but to the conscience and the heart of those who knew and owned that they were sinners in need of forgiveness.