Berea and Athens
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God who created the universe. Yet there were some who were longing
for greater light. They were reaching out toward the Infinite.
With hand outstretched toward the temple crowded with idols, Paul
poured out the burden of his soul, and exposed the fallacies of the
religion of the Athenians. The wisest of his hearers were astonished
as they listened to his reasoning. He showed himself familiar with
their works of art, their literature, and their religion. Pointing to their
statuary and idols, he declared that God could not be likened to forms
of man’s devising. These graven images could not, in the faintest sense,
represent the glory of Jehovah. He reminded them that these images
had no life, but were controlled by human power, moving only when
the hands of men moved them; and therefore those who worshiped
them were in every way superior to that which they worshiped.
Paul drew the minds of his idolatrous hearers beyond the limits of
their false religion to a true view of the Deity, whom they had styled
the “Unknown God.” This Being, whom he now declared unto them,
was independent of man, needing nothing from human hands to add to
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His power and glory.
The people were carried away with admiration for Paul’s earnest
and logical presentation of the attributes of the true God—of His
creative power and the existence of His overruling providence. With
earnest and fervid eloquence the apostle declared, “God that made the
world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth,
dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshiped with
men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all
life, and breath, and all things.” The heavens were not large enough to
contain God, how much less were the temples made by human hands!
In that age of caste, when the rights of men were often unrecog-
nized, Paul set forth the great truth of human brotherhood, declaring
that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on
all the face of the earth.” In the sight of God all are on an equality, and
to the Creator every human being owes supreme allegiance. Then the
apostle showed how, through all God’s dealings with man, His purpose
of grace and mercy runs like a thread of gold. He “hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that
they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find
Him, though He be not far from every one of us.”