all that we said to them about the Christ that had suffered and been raised from the dead.  Some believed, and others assaulted the house of Jason, in which we were living, and the Romans were perplexed to know how to keep order, for wherever we went there were stirs and quarrels among the Jews, the fault being with them and not with us.  In Corinth too the Jews pleaded against us before the Roman magistrates and——­

CHAP.  XXXV.

A sudden dryness in Paul’s throat prevented him from finishing his sentence, and he asked for a cup of water, and having drained it he put down the cup and said, looking round, I was speaking to you about Corinth.  The moment seemed a favourable one to Mathias to ask a question.  How was it, he said, that you passed on to Corinth without stopping at Athens?  I made stay at Athens, Paul answered, and I thank you, Mathias, for having reminded me of Athens, for the current of my discourse had borne me past that city, so eager was I to tell of the persecutions of the Jews.  We are all Jews here!  I speak only of the Hierosolymites who understand only that the law has been revealed, and we have only to follow it; though, indeed, some of them cannot tell us why we should follow any law, since they do not believe in any life except the sad life we lead on the surface of this earth.

But you asked me, Mathias, about Athens.  A city of graven images and statues and altars to gods.  On raising my eyes I always saw their marble deities—­effigies, they said, of all the spirits of the earth and sea and the clouds above the earth and the heavens beyond the clouds.  Whereupon I answered that these statues that they had carved with their hands could in no wise resemble any gods even if the gods had existence outside of their images, for none sees God.  Moses heard God on Mount Sinai, but he saw only the hinderparts; which is an allegory, for there are two covenants, and I come to reveal——­ Whereat they were much amused and said:  if Moses saw the hinderparts why should we not see the faces, for our eyes see beauty, whereas the Hebrews see but the backside?  At which I showed no anger, for they were not Jews, but strove, as it is my custom, to be all things to all men.  The Jews require a miracle, the Greeks demand reason, and therefore I asked them why they set up altars to the unknowable God.  And they said:  Paul, thou readest our language as badly as thou speakest it; we have inscriptions “to unknown gods” but not to the unknowable God.  Didst go to school at Tarsus, yet canst not tell the plural from the singular?  To which I answered:  then you are so religious-minded that you would not offend any god whose name you might not have heard, and so favour him by the inscription to an unknown God?  But some of your philosophers, Athenians, call God unknowable.  I knew this before I learnt how superstitious ye are.  Ye are all alike ignorant since God left you to your sins for your idolatry;