forget, that the indispensable qualifications for him who would exactly weigh the claims of revelation, or spiritually comprehend its doctrines, are a pure heart, and a right mind; a sincere desire to learn the will of God, and a determination to obey it, cost him what it may. But to those, who love darkness better than light, because their deeds are evil,* who are afraid lest the Gospel should be true, because if it be, it is their recorded sentence of condemnation; and to those, who desire to know no more of it than is consistent with their own opinions and pursuits--to both these classes the Scriptures are a sealed book. They may hear them read, as the Jews did in their synagogues, Sabbath after Sabbath; but the vail remaineth untaken away upon their heart and unless it be rent asunder by some force like that of an earthquake, how shall they turn to the Lord?

Lord, we beseech thee open our hearts to the things which thou hast spoken unto us by thy Spirit. Whether by the gentle breathings of thy grace, or, if needs be, by the awakening voice of thine anger, dispose us to listen to thy commands, to fear thy warnings, to love thy

* John iii. 19.

+ 2 Cor. iii. 14, 15.

promises, to assure ourselves of thy forgiveness, to continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and not to be moved away from the hope of the Gospel, which we have heard.*

LECTURE X.

ACTS XVII. 32.

And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.

To those persons, whose studies have made them conversant with the literature, and manners, and opinions of classical antiquity, few portions of the history, which is now under consideration, are more interesting than that, which relates the circumstances of St. Paul's visit to Athens. It was right that the Apostle of the Gentiles should preach the Gospel, in person, to a city, which, as to philosophy, and art, and science, had long been the metropolis, and was even then the school of the heathen world. Athens, the inventress of all learning; Athens, the source from which humanity, science, religion, agriculture, jurisprudence,

*Cic. de Orat. I. 4.

and laws were made known to all lands; .* these were the panegyrical expressions, not of that self-commendation, in which a vain-glorious people indulged; but of the great orator of antiquity, who had himself imbibed the principles of a false philosophy, and the rules of a true eloquence, in the porticoes and groves of the intellectual city.

It was here that the Apostle was to encounter the demon of pagan superstition in his most formidable strong-hold; the ancient mythology of a refined and subtle people, illustrated by the genius of their most admired poets; endeared to them by the traditional recollections of their national vanity; embellished and adorned with the noblest monuments of art; and the more pertinaciously adhered to, and reverenced by the people, in proportion as they were debarred from the exercise of political rights, and deprived of that freedom which was of old their boast and their bane.

But this description is literally applicable only to the populace of Athens. The educated class of the community, who were all ranged under the banners of some philosophical sect, although for the sake of preserving as much as possible

* Cic. pro Flacco, c. 26.

the ancient characteristics of their city, they insisted upon the maintenance of the old religion, and resisted innovation, were, in point of fact, freethinkers, sceptics, or atheists; with whom the externals of religion were a matter of derision and contempt, its essential doctrines a subject of speculation and wordy disputing.

Gifted as the Athenians were by nature with a quick perception, and a subtle understanding; professing to have discovered all that human reason could discover, of the nature and attributes of the Deity, it might reasonably be expected, that they would have emancipated themselves from the thraldom of ancient superstition, and that they would entertain such just and rational notions upon those principles of religion, which God, as the Apostle says, has showed unto all men, as would have prepared them for the ready reception of the pure and simple revelations of the Gospel. The eternal power and godhead of the Creator were so far manifested to the understandings of mankind by the things that are made,+ that an honest inquiry after truth would have led them, not only to a speculative disbelief, but to an absolute rejection of idolatry.

*

So that they were without excuse; because when + Rom. i. 20.

* Rom. i. 19.