gether. It is only when we come down to the days of Solon, Darius, Xerxes, and other contemporaneous celebrities, that we find ourselves reading well-accredited history. If the authority of the Pentateuch were so in doubt we might well tremble. The annals of Greece may be divided into four epochs. Her heroic age, her chivalrous period, her palmy days of philosophy and art, and her present state of revivification and promise. The heroic age is the misty antiquity of Grecian mythologythe time of fabled Hercules, the hero of Hellas, from which the Greeks take their true and ancient name, Hellenes. Then also existed the ideal Theseus, the hero of Attica, and Minos, the King of Crete, and the goddess Athene, the namesake of Athens. In commemoration of these legendary characters the temples were built whose ruins are the chief attraction of the city of Athens to this day.

Another remarkable era in Grecian history is the period of military exploits on sea and land, by which Greece covered herself with glory. These great achievements were three in number: 1. The defeat of the Persians on the plains of Marathon, under Miltiades. 2. The overthrow of the naval forces of the Persians at Salamis, under Themistocles. 3. The famous battle of Thermopyla, where the brave Leonidas fought and fell with all his Spartan compatriots except one, and where they would have won a victory but for treachery in their ranks. In all ages human nature has maintained its identity. Two thousand years ago Greece had its Benedict Arnold in the perfidious person of Ephialtes, who, in hope of a great reward, went over to Xerxes and informed him how, by a circuitous route, he could flank Leonidas. But in spite of this betrayal Leonidas won a moral victory, for such was the valor of the Spartan band of three hundred against ten thousand chosen men that in their defeat and sublime death Greece was raised to the apex of military and national renown. Defeat is sometimes better than victory. It was so in this case; for the prowess thus acquired soon repulsed and warned off the Persians, and kept all barbaric invaders at bay for centuries. As a result, the arts and products of peace and civilization grew up and flourished beyond all precedent for those times. Not that wars are a blessing; intrinsically they are a curse, but in the degeneracy of nations they may be the less of two evils. The rupture of an abscess is betFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.—45

ter than the occult diffusion of disease causing death. It is on this principle alone that our late war can be justified. It involved the nation's life and the weal of coming generations. The same is true of the Hellenic wars; they swept away the malaria of barbarism. At this period began the halcyon days of Greece under the lead and patronage of Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles. Pericles was the great patron of the fine arts." "He sought to make Athens the seat and center of every excellence. His idea was that the nation's capital should be at once a fortress of strength, a city of palaces, an abode of refinement, a school of philosophy, and a temple of the gods." Under the administration of such conceptions, letters and art sprang as by magic into being and celebrity. But it was the illustrious Phidias and his co-artists that placed the crown of surpassing beauty upon the brow of Athens. They constructed of white marble, on the lofty summit of the Acropolis, magnificent temples-the Propylæa, the Parthenon, and the Erechtheum. These are supposed to be the most exquisite specimens of architectural art that the genius of man has ever produced. They are sublime in their ruins.

In this period also appeared the great philosophers, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Zeno, and others whose works have been the basis of classic education and the sources of philosophic study down to the present. time. And it was the rationalism of these writers that prepared the way and necessitated the transition from polytheism to monotheism; and this monotheistic innovation in turn by a similar necessity became the precursor of, and finally created the demand for, the introduction of Christianity. But the norm of human history is, that following every day there is a night-not of necessity in a moral sense, but as a fatality involved in a fallen condition unaided by counteracting grace. In this state we cannot bear prosperity, for with it come luxury and vice; and sin, being a reproach to any people, weakens character and subverts governments. The sun of Greece began to decline with the long civil strifes of the Peloponnesian war, 404 B.C., and ended with the extinction of her liberties, 338 B.C. And yet, such were her vitality and momentum, that, like a dying tree with living roots, she continued to flourish for many centuries. But being finally conquered by the Macedonians under Philip, in spite of the

heroic efforts of Demosthenes to rouse his countrymen to resistance, she remained under that rule with various vicissitudes until 86 B.C., when, under Sulla, the Roman yoke was imposed upon her. But still the artistic magnificence and literary character of Athens continued until after the middle of the first century, when Paul appeared and preached on Mars' Hill, complimenting their learning, and making it a basis of remonstrance against their superstitions and idolatries.

After this came the Goths and Ostrogoths and Turks, who swept the land with devastation, and introduced misrule, which lasted until 1827, the date at which modern Greece begins.

But we must recur to our personal observations. In coming to Athens from Pireus we enter the city on the south side, which is the business part, and looks more European than Oriental. Indeed, there is much taste and appearance of thrift in the stores and shops. As we reach the north side we come to a public square, in the center of which is a beautiful park, green with tropical plants, and smiling with flowers and ripe oranges, though in latitude thirty-eight degrees, and early in the month of March. On the south side of this square are large business houses; on the east and west the principal hotels; and on the north, crowning a gentle ascent, are the palace and grounds of the young King George. All these buildings are substantial and commodious, but not magnificent. To the right and left of square, within the radius of one mile, are to be found the best private and public buildings, and all the chief objects of antiquarian interest. Athens nestles between two high bluffs, the Acropolis, five hundred feet above the level of the sea, and Lycabettus, still higher, and surrounded by the sunny plains of Attica, which may be made as productive and gardenesque as Scotland under the hand of cultivation and art.

the

OBJECTS OF INTEREST.

1. The Stadium, where Grecian games were practiced. This is a level arena a little way out of town, about one hundred feet in length and one hundred and fifty in breadth, lying in the shape of an ox-bow. It is encompassed on three sides by sloping ground, say fifty feet high, just steep enough to form the base of receding seats, bringing the spectators in full view of the arena.

The Stadium looks now like a natural recess into the hill-side; but it is evident that it was originally put in shape by excava tion, because in the curve of the ox-bow there is a subterranean passage which obviously served as a way of ingress and exit. But oh, the vicissitudes of time! the Stadium is now a pasturefield and play-ground. Sheep crop the grass and bleat for their young, and children sport, where once the élite of Athens sat in chairs of Pentelic marble, and fifty thousand people were held entranced over contingent results as the contests went on. But oh, all is reduced to the silence of death and the decay of the grave. Three hundred years before Christ, and eighteen centuries of our Lord's era, have swept over their ashes, and consigned all their memories except a few to eternal oblivion, and their souls to immutable destiny.

2. A second object of interest is the Olympium,' a sumptnous temple built on ground held sacred from the earliest times, and separated from the Stadium by the River Ilissus. Hadrian's arch, which formed the magnificent gate-way into the Olympium, and fifteen of the mighty columns, sixty-four feet in height and over seven feet in diameter, still stand; two lie prone and broken on the ground, victims of the gnawing teeth of time. If Christian civilization is faithful to her interests these relics will be preserved, and, like the Pantheon, at Rome, tell the story of the transition of the people from heathenism to Christianity.

3. A third and principal object is the Acropolis. A perpendicular rock on three sides, facing the city and approached and mounted from the rear by a winding carriage-way of gradual and easy ascent. Its summit is crowned with the ruins of four or five temples, the chief of which is the Parthenon. Nothing but its foundation and pillars remain. These columns are not monoliths, but circular sections of stone placed one upon the other, and so closely jointed that the seams can scarcely be detected. I called the attention of Dr. Constantine to these joints. He said, "I will show you a seam that you cannot find at all." He pointed to a spot in the steps of the Parthenon. No junction was discernible; nothing but a place where a piece had been broken out made it possible to discover the joint after the closest inspection.

Contiguous to the Acropolis, and separated from it by a road

way, is Mars' Hill, where Paul preached to the court and scholars of Athens. Mars' Hill, like the Acropolis, is a precipitous rock, though not nearly so high. Three of its sides overlook the city; one slopes off to the ordinary level. The Areopagus is reached by a flight of steps cut in the solid rock, some of which are broken, others entirely gone. By these Paul and his hearers must have ascended. I stood on the rocky pulpit, and rehearsed the words of Paul. The surroundings inspire just such thoughts as Paul's discourse contains. In front, the city and the Olympium; at the right, the Parthenon; at the left, the temple of Theseus; in the rear, the rostrum of Demosthenes; Plato's Villa in the distance in one direction, the place where Socrates drank the hemlock in the other. In the midst of such associations, Paul, that intrepid man of God, who never was ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, sowed the seed which has proved itself ineradicable unto the present day.

The Parthenon is a double reminder. As a specimen of art, it tells of the highest civilization under heathenism. As a ruin, it reminds us of the utter incompatibility of culture with polytheism and idolatry. Here we have an instance. Culture and genius in the person of Phidias built the temple and gave it to Athens and the worship of the gods. But the same culture that developed the genius of Phidias and Praxiteles also brought out Xenophanes the philosopher, and other monotheistic teachers, who attacked the popular religion, and sapped it to its very foundations. Thus the cause of the splendid temple was also the cure of its false worship. It is a noteworthy fact that knowledge and refinement collide with, antagonize, and finally subvert all false religions.

Not so with the Christian religion: it thrives on the pabulum of education and literature, locks arms with culture, keeps step with science, takes a position in advance of all knowledge, and invites to a higher plane-a plane far above the proud soarings of our vainglorious scientists. The result was that when Paul came declaiming against idolatry and superstition on Mars' Hill he gained an easy victory, because the philosophers had gone before, as John the Baptist, and prepared the way. Ever since Paul spoke on Mars' Hill polytheism and idolatry have been smitten with decay-struck with death. They live, but they