CHAPTER I.✦

ATHENS, AND THE MEN OF ATHENS.

"Is it not worth while, for the sake of the history of men and nations, to study the surface of the globe in its relation to the inhabitants thereof?"--Goethe.

There is no event recorded in the annals of the early church so replete with interest to the Christian student, or which takes so deep a hold on the imagination, and the sympathies of him who is at all familiar with the history of Ancient Greece, as the one recited above. Here we see the Apostle Paul standing on the Areopagus at Athens, surrounded by the temples, statues, and altars, which Grecian art had consecrated to Pagan worship, and proclaiming to the inquisitive Athenians, "the strangers" who had come to Athens for business or for pleasure, and the philosophers and students of the Lyceum, the Academy, the Stoa, and the Garden, "the unknown God."

Whether we dwell in our imagination on the artistic grandeur and imposing magnificence of the city in which Paul found himself a solitary stranger, or recall the illustrious names which by their achievements in arts and philosophy have shed around the city of Athens an immortal glory,--or whether, fixing our attention on the lonely wanderer amid the porticoes, and groves, and temples of this classic city, we attempt to conceive the emotion which stirred his heart as he beheld it "wholly given to idolatry;" or whether we contrast the sublime, majestic theism proclaimed by Paul with the degrading polytheism and degenerate philosophy which then prevailed in Athens, or consider the prudent and sagacious manner in which the apostle conducts his argument in view of the religious opinions and prejudices of his audience, we can not but feel that this event is fraught with lessons of instruction to the Church in every age.

That the objects which met the eye of Paul on every hand, and the opinions he heard everywhere expressed in Athens, must have exerted a powerful influence upon the current of his thoughts, as well as upon the state of his emotions, is a legitimate and natural presumption. Not only was "his spirit stirred within him"--his heart deeply moved and agitated when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry--but his thoughtful, philosophic mind would be engaged in pondering those deeply interesting questions which underlie the whole system of Grecian polytheism. The circumstances of the hour would, no doubt, in a large degree determine the line of argument, the form of his discourse, and the peculiarities of his phraseology. The more vividly, therefore, we can represent the scenes and realize the surrounding incidents; the more thoroughly we can enter into sympathy with the modes of thought and feeling peculiar to the Athenians; the more perfectly we can comprehend the spirit and tendency of the age; the more immediate our acquaintance with the religious opinions and philosophical ideas then prevalent in Athens, the more perfect will be our comprehension of the apostle's argument, the deeper our interest in his theme. Some preliminary notices of Athens and "the Men of Athens" will therefore be appropriate as introductory to a series of discourses on Paul's sermon on Mars' Hill.

The peculiar connection that subsists between Geography and History, between a people and the country they inhabit, will justify the extension of our survey beyond the mere topography of Athens. The people of the entire province of Attica were called Athenians (Athênaioi) in their relation to the state, and Attics (Attikoi) in regard to their manners, customs, and dialect.[1] The climate and the scenery, the forms of contour and relief, the geographical position and relations of Attica, and, indeed, of the whole peninsula of Greece, must be taken into our account if we would form a comprehensive judgment of the character of the Athenian people.

The soil on which a people dwell, the air they breathe, the mountains and seas by which they are surrounded, the skies that overshadow them,--all these exert a powerful influence on their pursuits, their habits, their institutions, their sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region--its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating the natural history, and, to some extent, the moral history of its population. "History does not stand outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian only grasps a people's character with true precision when he keeps in full view its geographical position, and the influences which its surroundings have wrought upon it."[2]

[Footnote 1: Niebuhr's "Lectures on Ethnography and Geography," p. 91.]

[Footnote 2: Ritter's "Geographical Studies," p. 34.]

It is, however, of the utmost consequence the reader should understand that there are two widely different methods of treating this deeply interesting subject--methods which proceed on fundamentally opposite views of man and of nature. One method is that pursued by Buckle in his "History of Civilization in England." The tendency of his work is the assertion of the supremacy of material conditions over the development of human history, and indeed of every individual mind. Here man is purely passive in the hands of nature. Exterior conditions are the chief, if not the only causes of man's intellectual and social development. So that, such a climate and soil, such aspects of nature and local circumstances being given, such a nation necessarily follows.[3] The other method is that of Carl Ritter, Arnold Guyot, and Cousin.[4] These take account of the freedom of the human will, and the power of man to control and modify the forces of nature. They also take account of the original constitution of man, and the primitive type of nations; and they allow for results arising from the mutual conflict of geographical conditions. And they, especially, recognize the agency of a Divine Providence controlling those forces in nature by which the configuration of the earth's surface is determined, and the distribution of its oceans, continents, and islands is secured; and a providence, also, directing the dispersions and migrations of nations--determining the times of each nation's existence, and fixing the geographical bounds of their habitation, all in view of the moral history and spiritual development of the race,--"that they may feel after, and find the living God." The relation of man and nature is not, in their estimation, a relation of cause and effect. It is a relation of adjustment, of harmony, and of reciprocal action and reaction. "Man is not"--says Cousin--"an effect, and nature the cause, but there is between man and nature a manifest harmony of general laws."... "Man and nature are two great effects which, coming from the same cause, bear the same characteristics; so that the earth, and he who inhabits it, man and nature, are in perfect harmony."[5] God has created both man and the universe, and he has established between them a striking harmony. The earth was made for man; not simply to supply his physical wants, but also to minister to his intellectual and moral development. The earth is not a mere dwelling-place of nations, but a school-house, in which God himself is superintending the education of the race. Hence we must not only study the events of history in their chronological order, but we must study the earth itself as the theatre of history. A knowledge of all the circumstances, both physical and moral, in the midst of which events take place, is absolutely necessary to a right judgment of the events themselves. And we can only elucidate properly the character of the actors by a careful study of all their geographical and ethological conditions.

[Footnote 3: See chap. ii. "History of Civilization."]

[Footnote 4: Ritter's "Geographical Studies;" Guyot's "Earth and Man;" Cousin's "History of Philosophy," lec. vii., viii., ix.]

[Footnote 5: Lectures, vol. i. pp. 162, 169.]

It will be readily perceived that, in attempting to estimate the influence which exterior conditions exert in the determination of national character, we encounter peculiar difficulties. We can not in these studies expect the precision and accuracy which is attained in the mathematical, or the purely physical sciences. We possess no control over the "materiel" of our inquiry; we have no power of placing it in new conditions, and submitting it to the test of new experiments, as in the physical sciences. National character is a complex result--a product of the action and reaction of primary and secondary causes. It is a conjoint effect of the action of the primitive elements and laws originally implanted in humanity by the Creator, of the free causality and self-determining power of man, and of all the conditions, permanent and accidental, within which the national life has been developed. And in cases where physical and moral causes are blended, and reciprocally conditioned and modified in their operation;--where primary results undergo endless modifications from the influence of surrounding circumstances, and the reaction of social and political institutions;--and where each individual of the great aggregate wields a causal power that obeys no specific law, and by his own inherent power sets in motion new trains of causes which can not be reduced to statistics, we grant that we are in possession of no instrument of exact analysis by which the complex phenomena of national character may be reduced to primitive elements. All that we can hope is, to ascertain, by psychological analysis, what are the fundamental ideas and laws of humanity; to grasp the exterior conditions which are, on all hands, recognized as exerting a powerful influence upon national character; to watch, under these lights, the manifestations of human nature on the theatre of history, and then apply the principles of a sound historic criticism to the recorded opinions of contemporaneous historians and their immediate successors. In this manner we may expect, at least, to approximate to a true judgment of history.