The World by Wisdom Knew Not God
“After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth,” etc. Acts xvhi. 1-9.
“A FTER these things Paul departed from Athens.” Alas! XX he had seen little fruit in that city. “The world by wisdom knew not God.”
The apostle seems to have been interrupted by an outburst of contempt, as soon as he reached his main subject, — J esus and the resurrection. They listened respectfully as long as he contended with the Epicureans and the Stoics: they were interested by his discourse on natural religion; perhaps they admired his dialectic against idolatry: but as soon as he began to preach Jesus, they raised a shout of derision and drowned the preacher’s voice.
“They walked according to the course of this world, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.”
The spirit that ruled them permitted them to hear Paul’s philosophy, but raised a tumult to prevent them from listening to Paul’s gospel. The strong man armed kept his goods in peace, as long as the preliminary argument lasted; but at the approach of this testimony to Jesus, he dreaded lest a stronger than he should burst in; accordingly he quickly shut the gates.
It is a melancholy reflection that the gospel in great measure failed in Athens. There is no epistle of Paul to the Athenians, while no less than two letters of his to each of the two great mercantile cities, Thessalonica and Corinth, have come down to us. Athens in the midst sat alone as a queen, representing the philosophy and the art of Greece. There the kingdom of Christ could not obtain a footing. But Thessalonica on the one side, and Corinth on the other, became the scenes of great missionary success, the sites of early and flourishing Christian churches.
The wealth and luxury, and even profligacy of Corinth, did not in point of fact present so hard a wayside for the seed as the earthly wisdom of Athens. Not only licentious Corinth, but barbarous Melita, and warrior Rome, afforded to the living word a better seed-bed than the schools of contending philosophies.
Some have connected this lack of success with the special method adopted by the apostle among the Athenians. They have said, his experience discourages every effort to accommodate the presentation of the gospel to the tastes and attainments of the audience. In short, they imagine that Paul made a blunder in attempting to adapt his discourse to the mental habits of the philosophers; and that the result shows he should have delivered his message in the same form at Athens as at Philippi. But this is a mistaken view. The preaching comparatively failed at Athens, not because of the preacher’s method, but in spite of it. The message was rejected although Paul did much to commend it to the cultivated Greeks; how much more if he had neglected all art and effort in his approaches! This sower went forth to sow, and sowed very skilfully: but the seed did not grow, because the ground on which it fell was dry and hard.
Every minister of the Word should do his utmost to become all things to all men, that he may gain some: but when he has delivered his message, and the message has been neglected, let not men deceive themselves with the reflection that the cause of their carelessness was the unskilfulness of the preacher.
I do not excuse negligence in the preacher. I ask no leniency of judgment in his favour. He is inexcusable if he do not put all his force and skill into his work, for it is an errand of life and death on which he is sent: but I earnestly warn all who hear the gospel that no charge against the preacher’s methods, however well founded, will relieve from condemnation those who are not in Christ.
He came to Corinth, about forty-five miles distant. The province of Achaia then, like the modern kingdom of Greece, consisted of the Morea and a portion of the mainland on the north. There were two Roman provinces — Macedonia on the north, with Thessalonica as the capital; and Achaia on the south, with Corinth as its capital. The city occupied an advantageous position on the neck of the peninsula, with shipping on either side. At several periods attempts had been made to cut a canal across; but they had never been successful. It was often in time of war fortified by a wall. Corinth had been destroyed by a Roman army; but Julius Csesar restored it; and at the time of Paul’s visit it had again become a great city. It enjoyed an extensive commerce.
Here Paul attached himself to a worthy Jewish couple, Aquila and Priscilla, who were tent-makers, and who subsequently at various places gave effective aid to the ministers of the gospel. In their company and in their workshop he laboured with his hands, earning his daily bread, and preaching as he obtained opportunities in the city. A workshop is not a bad place for preaching in. If the heart of one workman is filled with the love of Christ, all the hands will hear of it. Every Sabbath-day the synagogue was open, and Paul plied his opportunity there. He seems in the first instance to have associated almost exclusively with the Jews in Corinth, perhaps because of the bitter disappointment he met at the hands of the Greeks in Athens.
After Silas and Timothy rejoined him, Paul launched out more boldly in his mission at Corinth. But again a storm of persecution arose. The Jews as usual were the bitterest enemies of the gospel. In the midst of his discouragement, however, a great consolation was conferred upon him in the conversion of Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and all his house. Writing afterwards to the Church at Corinth, Paul said that with the temptations that had been allowed to come, the Lord had also opened a way of escape. He spoke from his own experience. Very heavy trials overtook him in that city; but God who sent them did not leave him to sink. He made a way of escape; and that way was a Divine revelation. “The Lord spake to Paul by a vision.” Left to his own sagacity and vigour, the treatment he met at Corinth, coming immediately after his experience at Athens, might have been too much for the missionary. At Athens he addressed himself to the Gentiles, but his efforts failed; in Corinth he returned to the synagogue, but the Jews opposed themselves and blasphemed. “Then spake the Lord:” man’s extremity is God’s oppor-The Church in the Hoitse.
tunity. When all seemed shut around this witness, a door of escape was opened. Help came precisely when it was needed. When Pharaoh is already pressing on the rear of the camp, the Eed Sea divides in front, and the people pass over, the people whom the Lord has redeemed. When Timothy and Silas prove too feeble as comforters, the Master himself sustains his fainting servant in the everlasting arms. “Lo, I am with you always.” It is ever so in the experience of disciples: when I am weak, then am I strong.