It is probable that this part of it was prematurely ended by the mockery of some and the impatience of others, who had had enough of Paul and his talk, and who, when they said, We will hear thee again,' meant, We will not hear you now.' But, even in the compass permitted him, he gives much of his message.
We can but briefly note the course of thought. He comes back to his former word ignorance,' bitter pill as it was for the Athenian cultured class to swallow. He has shown them how their religion ignores or contradicts the true conceptions of God and man. But he no sooner brings the charge than he proclaims God's forbearance. And he no sooner proclaims God's forbearance than he rises to the full height of his mission as God's ambassador, and speaks in authoritative tones, as bearing His commands.'
Now the hint in the previous part is made more plain. The demand for repentance implies sin. Then the ignorance' was not inevitable or innocent. There was an element of guilt in men's not feeling after God, and sin is universal, for all men everywhere' are summoned to repent. Philosophers and artists, and cultivated triflers, and sincere worshippers of Pallas and Zeus, and all barbarian' people, are Mike here. That would grate on Athenian pride, as it grates now on ours. The reason for repentance would be as strange to the hearers as the command was--a universal judgment, of which the principle was to be rigid righteousness, and the Judge, not Minos or Rhadamanthus, but a Man' ordained for that function.
What raving nonsense that would appear to men who had largely lost the belief in a life beyond the gravel The universal Judge a man! No wonder that the quick Athenian sense of the ridiculous began to rise against this Jew fanatic, bringing his dreams among cultured people like them! And the proof which he alleged as evidence to all men that it is so, would sound even more ridiculous than the assertion meant to be proved. A man has been raised from the dead; and this anonymous Man, whom nobody ever heard of before, and who is no doubt one of the speaker's countrymen, is to judge us, Stoics, Epicureans, polished people, and we are to be herded to His bar in company with Boeotians and barbarians! The man is mad.'
So the assembly broke up in inextinguishable laughter, and Paul silently departed from among them,' having never named the name of Jesus to them. He never more earnestly tried to adapt his teaching to his audience; he never was more unsuccessful in his attempt by all means to gain some. Was it a remembrance of that scene in Athens that made him write to the Corinthians that his message was to the Greeks foolishness'?
