The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 2 — Section 78

o.nd not flo.ttoring, but faithful to reprove and to teach, as well as to stimulate and uplift by promises. Such readiness e.s this is noble and ennobling. It saves souls pinin;:(. It saves wasted energies, It obviates vagrant pursuits. And for all such it substitutes o genuine education. II, DETERMINATION TO BE COMPETENT TO "GIVE A REASON 01!' THE HOPE" WHICH THEl\l!l HAD DEEN "READINESS TO RECEIVE." 1. The very attLtude of the inquirer has something of the noble in it, when compared with the custom of the decrier. 2. 'l'he mastery of prejudice is in itself a sign of nobility, while the reign of prejudice means an obstructiveness which infers to none greater loss than to the subject of it. 3. The searcher into truth does in the very act ingratiate himself with truth. "Happy is the man" who seeks for it as for silver, and searches for it as for bid treasure (Prov, ii. 2-5). 4. Openness to evidence comes inevitably of inquiring honestly, as surely as prejuclice makes a shut heart and undiscerning mind. Many persons do not see because they never set themselves to look. They scarcely think it is given them to use their own natural powers. 5. laquirmgness has it in it to infer advantage (1) to individual happiness; (2) to social kindliness; (3) to public and general progress. 6. Inquiring- ness when it is turned to things of higher and deeper significance, to things invisible and 'spiritual, to the great themes of the soul and its need of a Saviour, to the grand themes of God and his pitying love to man-this inquiringness carries its own praise in it. It is bound to enrich him who practises it and extorts conviction from the unwillin" while the spontaneous tribute of commendation is laid at its feet by the just and good.' That kind of moral certainty that lies in strong conviction i~ the price won by all those who will take the trouble, in matters of Divine import, to "search" whether and how they agree and hold together.-B. Vers. 23-32.-The gospei's kindly encounter with novel foes, The opportunity now presented to Paul he must at once have recoguized to be one of the grandest and most critical of his career. He was for a while separated from his two loved companions, and was permitted to face his work alone in the long-time metropolis of the world's ]earning, grace, and art. We are perhaps to understand that Paul somewhat sensitively felt his position to be one of a special kind of responsibility. It was certainly none the less one of so much the more honour. He does not delay his work. He appearn in the synagogue (ver. 17) with the Jews and the "devout." In the market-place also he is found ready to debate with those who may be willing. The citizens of Athens, and the character which now obtained to so remarkable a degree among them, promised ground upon which rapid and easy impression, at all events, might be made, whether lasting or not. This, however, was held in check to a considerable degree by the presence of not a few who not only were naturally likely to fight hard for their pet philosophies, but whose very philosophy it was in some cases to attempt to "prove all things," at least in their own idea of proving. Paul is not long in being brought into the place of chief notoriety. 'l'ho kind of treatment showed to him by that ancient centre of refinement and of intellectual inquiry is vastly different from the treatment to which he had become only too accustomed at the bands of the Jews; and the kindly method and tone of the address of Paul seem to be some reflection of it. Still tbe gospel is to grapple, and in Athens it had its work before it. 'l'he incisiveness of Paul's style does not fall behind its courtesy. Let us notice what Paul has to say when now 'brought fairly in contact with all most typical of a heathen world. l. 'l'IIE TRUE APOSTLE OF CHIIISTLI.NITY PURPORTS TO "DEOLABE" WHAT THE WORLD BAYS Is "UNKNOWN," i.e. Go». He "declares:" 1. A. personal Creator-God, against Epicureans and all various others who either held the world to have been ever or to have come of chance. Neither Jesus him.self nor Scripture records generally from beginning to end presuppose a.theism, nor apply themselves to prove the existence of a personal Deity. But when nature, with all her ten thousand voices, has nevertheless let down mer. to a degraded unbelief, or when men have thus let down nature, these do pronounce and "declare" in no faltering tone this one starting-point of all upward progress, all knowledge, and all goodness (ver. 24). 2. A Creator-God, the opposite of ~epen~ing for anything on man, inasmuch as all men depend for all things on him, mcludmg the initial breath of life, and thereupon every breath they drnw. 3. A Creator-God who, so far as this world is concerned, knows one fomi1y alone, but that  THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, [cu. XVII, 1....34,