Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. Christianity aggressive. Insufficiency of all forms of religion apart from true knowledge. The true philanthropy of the missionary spirit.

I. THE WORLD'S IGNORANCE OF GOD INCONSISTENT WITH ACCEPTABLE WORSHIP OF HIM.

1. Athens the representation of the moral helplessness of men without revelation. Knowledge which is ignorance.

2. The practical view of the Divine character. Indifference to righteousness, vain trust in benevolence, mere sentiment of dependence.

II. THE FAITH OF THE CHRISTIAN THE TRUE BASIS OF RELIGION.

1. As a simple acceptance of Divine teaching.

2. As a growth of knowledge through experience and practical endeavor. "If any man will do his will," etc.

3. The actual fellowship of the spiritual life. Influence of the higher mind and larger soul upon the lower. Effect of loving self-sacrifice in opening the mind to larger views of the Divine character.

4. The opportunities of the world rightly used. Nature leading to God, not enslaving the soul. Culture lilting up the intellect and desires. "All things are ours." - R.

1. This is not the gospel, but it is the foundation on which the gospel builds — that humanity is one; that race distinctions are superficial, and not radical; that there is a universal brotherhood, originating in the universal Fatherhood of God. This is familiar enough to us, for our common speech is stocked with phrases and expressions which recognise it. But then no man believed in it. Jew and Greek, and Roman and barbarian were alike in this. They had their separate deities and their separate origin. Every people was proud of its own birthright, and deemed itself the elect of its own god, and regarded it as a natural law that they should despise or hate all others. Into this condition of things the inspired message of the apostles came, flinging its living cords over the wide gaps, and binding human society with a new and Divine bond.

2. And the greater our knowledge of men, the more irresistibly is this truth forced upon us. Everywhere there are substantially the same emotions, longings, regrets, some sort of conscience, hope; everywhere man is susceptible to the touch of love, moved by persuasions of kindness, thrilled by the voice of pity. Everywhere man confesses that he cannot live by bread alone, and is everywhere a praying creature. And everywhere there is in man a capacity for growth unlimited. Even among the lowest races, where science has sought, and will for ever seek in vain, for the missing link between the animal and man, proofs innumerable have been given that one or two generations are enough to work a transformation more than magical. Truly God hath made of our blood all nations of men, and the Christ who can redeem any one man is proved by that very fact to be the possible Redeemer of all.

3. How beautifully, and with what profound wisdom, does Paul here acknowledge that universal religious instinct in man which makes humanity one. They have all sought after God, if haply they might find Him, and He has not been far from any one of them. In every religion there has been something true. They have touched His feet if they have not seen His face. Their shrines have been vestibules to His Temple, if they had not been the Temple itself. Today, in all our mission work we are coming back to the generous thought of the apostle. The heathen world is becoming better known, its religions better understood, its gross errors and undying truths and aspirations more carefully and lovingly distinguished, and, therefore, the scope and nature of our work more clearly and hopefully defined. To understand the souls with which we deal is the first essential of evangelistic work. And verily there is hardly a truth of the Christian revelation which is not, at least, foreshadowed in the religious conceptions of the great Eastern races. We know, alas! too well, that all these things have been buried out of sight under successive layers of corruption. Yet, if we have patience to dig beneath the mass, we are always stumbling upon decayed forms of truth, and it is no little advantage to the missionary to be able to say, "I came not to destroy but to restore and fulfil." Moreover, we are learning to respect those people and not simply to despise them. We are finding out not only that they are lost, but that they are really worth saving. India was the greatest of all empires before the names of Rome and Greece were known. Its people belong to the same Aryan stock as ourselves. All these races have proved themselves capable of all that we have attained, and they have fallen from all that because, as Paul says, though they once knew God, they became vain in their imagination, etc. It is the picture of Eden with a particular rendering. But whenever there is a paradise lost Christ speaks of a paradise regained. Our missionaries go to their work burning and inspired with an infinite hope, because they go where there are memories of a golden past. What has been may yet be again. They are a people to whom we can confidently say, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."

(J. G. Greenhough, M. A.)

I. THE FACT. The truth of the declaration will appear, if we consider —

1. The great similarity which is visible among the various nations of the earth. They all have the same —

(1)Exterior form.

(2)Mode of moving. They all walk erect.

(3)Use of speech, or power of articulation. None of the lower species have this.

(4)Intellectual faculties. The most uncultivated nations appear to possess the same native powers of the mind as the most civilised.

(5)Moral dispositions, "they have all gone out of the way, there is none that doeth good, no, not one."

(6)Birth, growth, decay, and dissolution.

2. The ignorance in which they have generally been involved for many ages past, and the slow progress they have made in knowledge, learning, and civilisation.

3. The farther back we trace their origin, the more they become blended together and mixed into one. There is no nation but the Jews that appears unmixed. If different nations have originated from different sources, it is very strange that not one of them has been able to retain the knowledge of their distinct origin. But if they are all of one blood this is not strange.

II. OBJECTIONS.

1. Some have said it was impossible for one family to spread over all the world. To this I reply —(1) That it was easy for one family to scatter into any inhabitable parts of the earth where they could travel by land.(2) As to those nations who have inhabited Iceland and America, we can conceive of various ways by which they came to these places. It has been conjectured that many islands were once connected to the main land; and that this was the case in respect to the continents. If this be true, then the difficulty is entirely removed. But if this be not true, it is easy to suppose, that those on the continent could devise means to get to the nearest islands. And as navigation was early discovered by this means, they could get to remote islands and continents.

2. Some nations presume to carry their antiquity several thousand years higher than others, such as the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese. But —(1) They have no history or monuments to prove their great antiquity.(2) The most ancient and faithful historians bear full testimony to the contrary.

3. It is farther objected that the great diversity in the customs, manners and complexions of different nations, is inconsistent with the supposition of their common origin. It is easy to answer that all these things may be accounted for by the different circumstances and climates in which they have lived.

III. INFERENCES. If it be the truth that all nations are of one blood, then —

1. We may justly conclude that the Bible is the Word of God. It confirms the account which the Bible gives of —(1) The Creation, which tells us that mankind sprang from the same two parents.(2) The Fall. Though men have sought out many inventions to account for the universal depravity of mankind; yet the Bible gives the only rational account of it, that by one man's disobedience all were made sinners.(3) The Deluge. The heathen have some dark traditions concerning this awful catastrophe, but they could never give any rational account of it. It cannot be credibly accounted for but on the supposition that all nations are of one blood, universally depraved, and universally deserve destruction.

2. That notion of patriotism which is generally imbibed and admired, is false and unscriptural. One nation has no more right to seek its own interests exclusively, or in opposition to the interests of other nations, than one member of the same family has to seek his interest in opposition to the interest of the rest of the family. All nations are morally bound to seek each other's interests, and to refrain from doing anything which they deem to be injurious.

3. They have no right to enslave one another. All men have natural and inalienable rights, which never ought to be taken from them by force and violence.

4. God has manifested peculiar care, wisdom, and kindness in fixing the various places of their residence, in the best manner, according to their relations to and connections with each other. And as He fixed the bounds of their habitations, so He fixed their times. That is, the time when every nation should rise or fall, or become mixed with any other nation. It requires great care, wisdom, and kindness in a parent to dispose of his numerous family in the wisest and best manner; it requires more in a prince; but it required far greater in God.

5. God has exercised His absolute sovereignty in a very striking manner. He has made great and innumerable distinctions among the nations and inhabitants of the earth. How differently did He treat the three branches of Noah's family, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau! He has placed one nation in a warm and another in a cold country, one in a rich, and another in a poor. And it is impossible for any one of the human family to be happy in this world, or the next, without seeing and loving His sovereignty.

6. We have ground to think that the world will stand many centuries longer. The earth is far from being fully inhabited.

7. The whole family of Adam will be immensely numerous. If the seed of Abraham will be as the stars of heaven for multitude, what will be the seed of Adam? Their numbers will be beyond human calculation, if not beyond human conception. This immense family are to have one universal and solemn meeting at the Day of Judgment.

(N. Emmons, D. D.)

I. THERE IS PRECISELY THE SAME PLAN IN ALL THE RACES — Of bone, nerve, artery, structure, etc. The great functions and organs are the same. If the African had his heart in his liver it would be a tough argument; but what difference does it make that his hair is kinked? The surgeon, the nurse, the dietician will treat him and you exactly alike. Yet you hear men say, "Look at his flat nose. Do you suppose that he is one with the man who has a Grecian nose? "But is not the sense of smell the same in both? The variation of superficial form does not touch the question of unity of function and structure. In fact the differences between one part of the human family and another is no greater than that which exists in a single household where one child is a genius and another practical, one poetic and another prosaic.

II. ALL THE RACES OF MEN ARE EDUCABLE. It is not so with the lower animals. You can carry them a very little way in education, and all the rest is trick. But the moment you strike humanity at its very lowest you find capacity of culture. If you take the greatest savages and put them in better relations and conditions they show that they belong to the universal race of man.

III. ALL HAVE THE SENSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL. There is no proof that this exists to any considerable degree in the animal kingdom. But sometimes, as among the Indians, you find this sense highly developed in the most uncultured.

IV. ALL HAVE THE PERCEPTION OF WIT AND HUMOUR. Man is the only laughing animal in the world.

V. MORAL SENSE IS COMMON TO ALL. Where men believe in killing their fathers and mothers they think it right, though their understanding is darkened, and they are misguided, just as a mariner makes his way towards a false light believing it to be true, and thus wrecks his vessel.

VI. THE WHOLE WORLD IS SUSCEPTIBLE OF SYMPATHETIC UNDERSTANDING, COOPERATION, AND LIKE SOCIAL CONDITIONS. It would be impossible to herd together the different races of animals unless you pare their nails, extract their teeth, or stupefy them. But men of all nations can associate. Conclusion:

1. These thoughts are made emphatic by the undesigned tendency to unity which the growth of the world's affairs is producing. The economic and scientific developments of the age are working alike for all the nations. Great mechanical and commercial improvements are bringing the whole world together. The Turk is borrowing civilisation from the European; and the European is bringing more threads of knowledge from Chinamen and Japanese. Mountains and oceans no longer divide. We tunnel the one and throw a nerve through the other.

2. The Church proposes, as it long has done, to move out on this tide. It has made a great many mistakes, but there never has been a time when it did not set its face towards human unity, and teach that God belonged to all men alike.

(H. W. Beecher.)

I. THE NATURAL UNITY OF THE RACE. This is —

1. Taught in the Bible.

2. Corroborated by tradition.

3. Confirmed by science.(1) A chemist can prove the difference between the human and animal blood, but finds no difference between the blood of different races.(2) Philology has reduced languages into a few orderly classes, and these again into a common tongue.This doctrine offers the only solution to the problem of the origin of —

(1)Universal depravity with its universal consciousness of guilt.

(2)Sacrificial worship which men have always and everywhere practised.

II. THE COMMON INTEREST OF OUR RACE IN THE PROVISIONS OF REDEMPTION. The doctrine implies —

1. Our common need of redemption as well as a common capacity for enjoying its benefits. "By one man sin entered into the world," etc.

2. That salvation for Adam and his fallen posterity must have been provided for all men. The race existed potentially in "the first man Adam"; when, therefore, redemption was extended to him it was intended to benefit his offspring. He who has "made of one blood all nations" has made our Redeemer a "Ransom for all."

III. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH IN RELATION TO THE RACE.

1. This springs out of the conscious brotherhood of man. If we fully believe that we share in the common evils of the Fall, and in the love of Christ, how can any who experience the great salvation avoid all sense of obligation to save others?

2. This is set forth authoritatively by Christ. "Go ye into all the world."

3. The successive openings for missions, and the growing resources of Christian nations are intended to quicken this.

(W. Hansford.)

This doctrine has three parts —

I. THE UNITY OF THE CREATOR.

1. Each nation in the dim past had its own gods, and the belief that they were superior to those of their neighbours.

2. But opposed to this is the revelation of one God, Creator, Universal Governor who is over all, and all in all.

II. THE UNITY OF MANKIND.

1. God created man — male and female.

2. This was one act, not divided or repeated at intervals in different places.

3. From this one pair the world has been peopled, through the laws of generation and dispersion. This contradicts the superstition of the heathen in reference to their origin, e.g., the Athenian belief that they were autochthons, springing from the soil.

III. THE UNITY OF DESTINY.

1. Man has a common nature, a mind that thinks, a heart that feels, a will that chooses, a soul that never dies.

2. Each nation has the same problems of society, government, and religion, to discover and apply.

3. Each nation is subject to the same diseases, physical and moral, and runs a like career of ruin or prosperity.

IV. RESULTS.

1. The purple tide of related blood from one spring writes a common declaration of rights which no Christian is at liberty to disregard. Simply to be a man or woman is to have claims upon the whole race.

2. Nations are so bound together in progress and privileges, material, moral and spiritual, that whatever helps or injures man in one quarter of the globe is ultimately a help or an injury to all.

3. It is the common duty of Christian nations to labour for the general diffusion of religion and civilization, so that peace, art, and science may universally prevail, and every human faculty find unhindered liberty to develop itself to the glory of God, individual wellbeing, and the good of mankind.

(Preacher's Monthly.)

I. GOD, AS THE FATHER OF ALL, HAS, IN A SOVEREIGN MANNER, DISPOSED OF THE DIFFERENT NATIONS OF MEN. As a father disposes of his estate to his sons, and as his simple will determines the allotment of each, so has God "appointed men to dwell," etc. (Genesis 1:28). And if it be asked, Why is this nation here or that nation there? the answer is, Not by accident, but because God so determined it. And if it be still further asked, To what is to be ascribed the mutations of nations, the dying out of some peoples, or their absorption into others? the answer is, The will of God hath determined the times as well as the bounds of the habitation of each. This representation of the apostle —

1. Supplies to us a deeper and juster view of the philosophy of human history than is usually suggested. Whilst, on the one hand, we repudiate the doctrine of separate centres of creation, and treat as a fantasy the doctrine of development, we are, on the other hand, taught to turn aside from the opinion that all human varieties are due to mere differences of climate and outward circumstance. The persistency of races — the retention, generation after generation, by whole communities of the peculiar characteristics of the variety to which they belong; and that under the most altered conditions of climate, occupation, food, is against that. Look, e.g., at the Jews, and at the Europeans settled in Africa, or the Africans in North America.

2. Enables us to read and understand aright the world's history. There are some who see in national changes nothing but the results of fixed mechanical laws. Others, again, see nothing but the result of either an ungoverned caprice or of the ordinary passions and tendencies of men. But on neither of these hypotheses can a real philosophy of history be built. We can reach this only by keeping fast hold of the truth, that all human operations are conducted under the superintendence of an infinitely wise and powerful Being, who, without interfering with man's free will, or interrupting any of the ordinary laws of nature, regulates all events according to the council of His own will, and uses all agencies as the instruments of a vast world plan, of which He alone knows the compass and the details. On these two poles all true philosophy of history turns. If we view man as a mere piece of organised mechanism, we cannot bring the phenomena of his history within the range of modern science at all; if we deny or overlook God's supremacy we are out upon a wide sea, across which no path is drawn, and over which no light rests.

3. Shows us how contrary to the primary order of the world, and the will of the great Father of the race, are all attempts to extirpate races, or to drive people from their native soil, or to take forcible possession of it. God, no doubt, may overrule such deeds; but the deeds themselves are impious. Each nation holds the country it has aboriginally occupied by Divine right — by the will of the common Father. Who can tell how many of the calamities that befall great nations are just retributions for the deeds of rapine and wrong perpetrated in the day of the nation's pride and strength on some weaker or some utterly defenceless people?

II. THE DUTY BINDING ON MEN TO SEEK AFTER GOD. This Paul brings in as describing the purpose which God had in distributing the nations, and allotting to each its place and time.

1. By being thus distributed over the whole face of the globe, and placed under the constant superintendence of God, the nations had the entire revelation of God in nature and in providence subjected to their study.

2. That it is man's duty to search after God, is one of the primary truths of morals and of natural religion. In his present state man neither knows God aright, nor are his relations with God such as they originally were. Hence he needs to seek after God that he may enter into right relations and true communion with Him. These words depict man's course in regard to this great matter. Endowed with a religious principle, men feel themselves constrained by the highest wants of their nature to seek after God; and yet, when left to their own unaided efforts, it has ever been only as one who gropes in the dark and at a peradventure, that they have pursued their search. To a few of the higher and purer spirits there came, like angels' visits, ever and anon, brief revelations of the hidden mystery, just and true thoughts of the Infinite. But for the mass of men it was a fruitless groping, until at length, baffled and disheartened, they were ready to carry their homage to any altar that priestcraft or superstition might erect, or at the best, to embody at once their deathless longings and their conscious impotence in an altar to "An Unknown God."

3. To what is this melancholy failure to be traced? Not, the apostle reminded the Athenians, to want of means and materials of success. God, whom they thus haplessly groped after, was, all the while, "not far from every one of them." Not only are the evidences of the Divine existence and attributes presented in copious abundance on every hand, but the fact that man is the offspring of God supplies to him the most natural help for realising the truth concerning God. For, if man be God's child, he must have a natural capacity for God. And there is thus a solid basis laid in the very constitution of man's nature on which a true theology may be built; and when the page of creation and providence is opened before a being so fitted and prepared to learn the lessons they so abundantly teach concerning God, it can only be through some perversity of his own mind that he fails to attain to the knowledge of God (Romans 1:20-22). But sin had seduced them from God, so it became the great obstacle to their receiving those right views of God which the phenomena around them so clearly taught.

4. It was thus that the nations were betrayed into idolatry. Nothing can be more absurd in itself than to represent the Great Spirit under the similitude of any creature; and nothing can be more inconsistent than for those who call themselves God's offspring "to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone graven by art or man's device." Who of us would accept any image that human skill could produce as a fit representation of that which really constitutes us — our soul? And this is the true source of all those wrong, deluding, and debasing views of God, by which men are still led astray, even where the light of written revelation is enjoyed. Would that all who shudder at the thought of Atheism were equally alive to the evil and danger of a false, imperfect, or fanciful Theism!

(W. L. Alexander, D. D.)

He manifests therein —

I. HIS CREATIVE POWER, causing the human spirit to be unfolded in the multiplicity of national spirits.

II. HIS GRACIOUS GOODNESS, giving to each nation time and space to develop its peculiarity.

III. HIS JUDICIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS, appointing to each nation, whether it be Greece or Rome or Israel, the end and limit to its power and prosperity.

IV. HIS HOLY LOVE — the whole history of the world aiming at this that the kingdom of God may come and that men may seek and find Him.

(K. Gerok.)

The doctrine that God "hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitations," was taught by Moses — "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the Children of Israel." The periods of their existence have been defined, and its limits mapped out by God. By the periods he means not simply their natural duration, but also the crisis or turning points in their national experience. And they had many of them in their own history. Not to speak of such epochs as the return of the Heracleids, the religious mission of Epimenides, the deeds of the Alcmaeonids, the despotism of Pisistratus, or the usurpation of the thirty tyrants, there had been the battle of Marathon, when Asiatic invasion was repelled by a gallant handful, and, ten years after, the victorious naval action at Salamis — both of them hair-breadth escapes for Athens, and both securing against loss of liberty and degradation into a Persian satrapy. These momentous junctures were the fore-appointment of an unrecognised Protector, who settles the limits of nations; for there is a boundary which they cannot pass, no matter what their ambition, and what the success of their arms. Their own defeats, and the ostracism of so many of their leaders, had shown this. Miltiades the patriot of Marathon, and Themistocles the hero of Salamis, had been sent into exile for misadventures by which the ambitious projects of Greece were limited, and similar had been the fate of Cimon and Alcibiades. Beyond certain termini Athens could not, with all her skill and valour, carry her arms; an unseen arm defined her bounds, and kept her within them. Minerva could not protect: Xerxes had burned her dwelling, and her spear and shield had neither repelled Philip from the north, nor beaten back the Roman warriors from the west. She stood immovable on that rock, defenceless against the invader. The sudden death of Alexander broke into four principalities the huge empire which he contemplated. But the Divine providence is all-embracing, and all history proclaims it. The battle of Zama relieved Italy and civilisation from all fears of Carthage. The Saracen power was thrown out of central Europe at a very critical period, and the tide of Turkish fanaticism was finally checked under the walls of Vienna. He blew with His winds and dispersed the Spanish Armada. Borodino, Leipzig, Trafalgar, and Waterloo set bounds to France in recent times, and Blenheim and Ramillies in days gone by. Bunker's Hill put an end to British supremacy in the older American colonies. And the moral purpose of God in the allocation and government of the different nations was a special one — "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." Why do nations cease to be, and why are their bounds invaded and broken down? Simply because they do not own or follow out this Divine purpose. They deify themselves and forget Him who is above them — live but for themselves, and "feel after" aggrandisement, and not after Him. The Canaanites were ripe for expulsion on the invasion of Joshua, and so were the Jews themselves before the Roman Titus. The liberties of Greece had been struck down on the fatal field of Chaeronea, and many a nation has been dispossessed of its soil. No people have an irrevocable charter to it; they possess it only so long as they are worthy of it, and act in harmony with Him who planted them in it. And they are displaced that the new occupant may be put upon its trial, too. In this light may be viewed those conquests which are establishing modern colonies — the conqueror in turn is judged, and will, if God decrees it, be in turn exiled. The Anglo-Saxon has driven back the Celt to the verge of the Atlantic, but the Sclave may be commissioned to exercise the same force upon the Anglo-Saxon if he do not service as God's tenant of His lands. And thus God shall be for Britain, so long as Britain is for God.

(Prof. Eadie.)

Athenians, Damaris, Dionysius, Jason, Paul, Silas, Thessalonians, Timotheus, TimothyAmphipolis, Apollonia, Areopagus, Athens, Berea, ThessalonicaAllotted, Appointed, Blood, Boundaries, Bounds, Caused, Determined, Dwell, Dwelling, Dwellings, Exact, Face, Forefather, Habitation, Homes, Inhabit, Lands, Limits, Mankind, Marked, Nation, Nations, Ordained, Ordering, Periods, Places, Race, Seasons, Span, Spring, Surface1. Paul preaches at Thessalonica, where some believe,
5. and others persecute him.
10. He is sent to Berea, and preaches there.
13. Being persecuted by Jews from Thessalonica,
16. he comes to Athens, and disputes and preaches the living God, to them unknown;
32. whereby, though some mock, many are converted unto Christ.

Acts 17:26

     1305   God, activity of
     4029   world, human beings in
     4065   orderliness
     4203   earth, the
     4903   time
     4945   history
     4971   seasons, of life
     5002   human race, and creation
     5082   Adam, significance
     5235   boundary
     5308   equality
     5326   government
     5655   birth
     5955   strength, divine
     6213   participation, in sin
     6708   predestination
     8438   giving, of time

Acts 17:16-32

     7757   preaching, effects

Acts 17:17-34

     7535   Greeks

Acts 17:18-29

     8770   idolatry, in NT

Acts 17:22-31

     1440   revelation, creation
     5816   consciousness
     7703   apologetics

Acts 17:23-27

     5441   philosophy

Acts 17:23-30

     8702   agnosticism

Acts 17:23-31

     6183   ignorance, of God

Acts 17:24-27

     8135   knowing God, nature of

Acts 17:24-28

     1040   God, fatherhood
     4060   nature

Acts 17:24-31

     5003   human race, and God

Acts 17:25-28

     1355   providence

Acts 17:26-27

     1403   God, revelation
     5263   communication

Acts 17:26-28

     1325   God, the Creator

Acts 17:26-29

     5724   offspring

April 24 Evening
The eyes of all wait upon thee.--PSA. 145:15. He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.--The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.--Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. The same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.--Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

February 17 Evening
God created man in his own image.--GEN. 1:27. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.--For whom he did foreknow, he also …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

April 7. "In Him we Live and Move" (Acts xvii. 28).
"In Him we live and move" (Acts xvii. 28). The hand of Gehazi, and even the staff of Elisha could not heal the lifeless boy. It needed the living touch of the prophet's own divinely quickened flesh to infuse vitality into the cold clay. Lip to lip, hand to hand, heart to heart, he must touch the child ere life could thrill his pulseless veins. We must come into personal contact with the risen Saviour, and have His very life quicken our mortal flesh before we can know the fulness and reality of His …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

The Man who is Judge
...He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.'--ACTS xvii. 31. I. The Resurrection of Jesus gives assurance of judgment. (a) Christ's Resurrection is the pledge of ours. The belief in a future life, as entertained by Paul's hearers on Mars Hill, was shadowy and dashed with much unbelief. Disembodied spirits wandered ghostlike and spectral in a shadowy underworld. The belief …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts

Thessalonica and Berea
'Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: 2. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath- days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, 3. Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. 4. And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts

Paul at Athens
'Then Paul stood In the midst of Mars-hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. 23. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24. 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; 25. Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts

The General Resurrection
Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. A n object, great in itself, and which we know to be so, will appear small to us, if we view it from a distance. The stars, for example, in our view, are but as little specks …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

The World Turned Upside Down
We believe that what these Jews said of the Apostles, was just a downright wilful lie. They knew better. The Apostles were not the disturbers of states. It is true, they preached that which would disturb the sinful constitution of a kingdom and which would disturb the evil practices of false priests, but they never meant to set men in an uproar. They did come to set men at arms with sin; they did draw the sword against iniquity; but against men as men, against kings as kings, they had no battle; …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 4: 1858

Colossians 4:14 "Luke, the Beloved Physician. "
[2] THERE are two things in the title of this paper which I shall take for granted, and not dwell on them. One is, that Luke here mentioned is the same Luke who wrote the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, and was the friend and companion of St. Paul. The other is, that Luke really was a physician of the body. On both these points the consent of learned men, who have a right to command our attention, is almost universal. I shall rigidly confine myself to two remarks which appear to grow out …
John Charles Ryle—The Upper Room: Being a Few Truths for the Times

Acts 17:16-17. Athens.
[9] "Now, while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry." Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him." --Acts 17:16-17. PERHAPS the reader of this paper lives in a town or city, and sees more of bricks and mortar than of green fields. Perhaps you have some relative or friend living in a town, about whom you naturally feel a deep interest. …
John Charles Ryle—The Upper Room: Being a Few Truths for the Times

He is Lovely in his Offices
Secondly, He is altogether lovely in his offices: let us consider for a moment the suitability, fullness, and comforting nature of them. First, The suitability of the offices of Christ to the miseries of men. We cannot but adore the infinite wisdom of his receiving them. We are, by nature, blind and ignorant, at best but groping in the dim light of nature after God, Acts 17:27. Jesus Christ is a light to lighten the Gentiles, Isa. 49:6. When this great prophet came into the world, then did the day-spring …
John Flavel—Christ Altogether Lovely

Immortality of the Soul, and a Future State.
--Inter silvas academi quærere verum. Hor. lib. II. epist. 2. v. 45. To search out truth in academic groves. THE course of my last speculation [3] led me insensibly into a subject upon which I always meditate with great delight, I mean the immortali …
Joseph Addison—The Evidences of the Christian Religion, with Additional Discourses

Repentance and Restitution.
"God commandeth all men everywhere to repent."--Acts xvii. 30. Repentance is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Bible. Yet I believe it is one of those truths that many people little understand at the present day. There are more people to-day in the mist and darkness about Repentance, Regeneration, the Atonement, and such-like fundamental truths, than perhaps on any other doctrines. Yet from our earliest years we have heard about them. If I were to ask for a definition of Repentance, a great …
Dwight L. Moody—The Way to God and How to Find It

Original Righteousness.
"For in Him we live and move, and have our being: as certain also of your own poets have said. For we are also His offspring." --Acts xvii. 28. It is the peculiar characteristic of the Reformed Confession that more than any other it humbles the sinner and exalts the sinless man. To disparage man is unscriptural. Being a sinner, fallen and no longer a real man, he must be humbled, rebuked, and inwardly broken. But the divinely created man, realizing the divine purpose or restored by omnipotent grace …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

Period iii. The Dissolution of the Imperial State Church and the Transition to the Middle Ages: from the Beginning of the Sixth Century to the Latter Part of the Eighth
The third period of the ancient Church under the Christian Empire begins with the accession of Justin I (518-527), and the end of the first schism between Rome and Constantinople (519). The termination of the period is not so clearly marked. By the middle and latter part of the eighth century, however, the imperial Church has ceased to exist in its original conception. The Church in the East has become, in great part, a group of national schismatic churches under Moslem rulers, and only the largest …
Joseph Cullen Ayer Jr., Ph.D.—A Source Book for Ancient Church History

St. Justin Martyr (Ad 166)
Although Trajan was no friend to the Gospel, and put St. Ignatius to death, he made a law which must have been a great relief to the Christians. Until then they were liable to be sought out, and any one might inform against them; but Trajan ordered that they should not be sought out, although, if they were discovered, and refused to give up their faith, they were to be punished. The next emperor, too, whose name was Hadrian (AD 117-138) did something to make their condition better; but it was still …
J. C. Roberston—Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation

Whether Idolatry is Rightly Reckoned a Species of Superstition?
Objection 1: It would seem that idolatry is not rightly reckoned a species of superstition. Just as heretics are unbelievers, so are idolaters. But heresy is a species of unbelief, as stated above ([3101]Q[11], A[1]). Therefore idolatry is also a species of unbelief and not of superstition. Objection 2: Further, latria pertains to the virtue of religion to which superstition is opposed. But latria, apparently, is univocally applied to idolatry and to that which belongs to the true religion. For just …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether Sufficient Reason Can be Assigned for the Ceremonies Pertaining to Holy Things?
Objection 1: It would seem that no sufficient reason can be assigned for the ceremonies of the Old Law that pertain to holy things. For Paul said (Acts 17:24): "God Who made the world and all things therein; He being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made by hands." It was therefore unfitting that in the Old Law a tabernacle or temple should be set up for the worship of God. Objection 2: Further, the state of the Old Law was not changed except by Christ. But the tabernacle denoted …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether Woman Should have Been Made from Man?
Objection 1: It would seem that woman should not have been made from man. For sex belongs both to man and animals. But in the other animals the female was not made from the male. Therefore neither should it have been so with man. Objection 2: Further, things of the same species are of the same matter. But male and female are of the same species. Therefore, as man was made of the slime of the earth, so woman should have been made of the same, and not from man. Objection 3: Further, woman was made …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether all Things are Life in God?
Objection 1: It seems that not all things are life in God. For it is said (Acts 17:28), "In Him we live, and move, and be." But not all things in God are movement. Therefore not all things are life in Him. Objection 2: Further, all things are in God as their first model. But things modelled ought to conform to the model. Since, then, not all things have life in themselves, it seems that not all things are life in God. Objection 3: Further, as Augustine says (De Vera Relig. 29), a living substance …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

Whether Souls are Conveyed to Heaven or Hell Immediately after Death?
Objection 1: It would seem that no souls are conveyed to heaven or hell immediately after death. For a gloss on Ps. 36:10, "Yet a little while and the wicked shall not be," says that "the saints are delivered at the end of life; yet after this life they will not yet be where the saints will be when it is said to them: Come ye blessed of My Father." Now those saints will be in heaven. Therefore after this life the saints do not go immediately up to heaven. Objection 2: Further, Augustine says (Enchiridion …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

The World, Created by God, Still Cherished and Protected by Him. Each and all of Its Parts Governed by his Providence.
1. Even the wicked, under the guidance of carnal sense, acknowledge that God is the Creator. The godly acknowledge not this only, but that he is a most wise and powerful governor and preserver of all created objects. In so doing, they lean on the Word of God, some passages from which are produced. 2. Refutation of the Epicureans, who oppose fortune and fortuitous causes to Divine Providence, as taught in Scripture. The sun, a bright manifestation of Divine Providence. 3. Figment of the Sophists as …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion

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