Acts 17:23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD… 1. What was there in Athens to which Paul could appeal? To Jewish prophecy? No one held them in esteem. Should he begin with repentance, faith, Jesus, and judgment? No one would understand his message. Ought he now to overthrow these altars? But destruction is not construction. Ought the nothingness of the gods to be exposed to ridicule? Enlightenment that presents the stone of unbelief for the husks of superstition may train its subjects to doubt, but not to hope. To the apostle the heathen world seemed the groping of a man who is blind. But no man of feeling ever makes sport of a blind man's groping, or strikes the last coin out of a beggar's hand. Paul sought through the streets of Athens to see whether, somewhere, he could not still discover a trace of the footsteps of the living God, some pieces of the golden thread by which to lead these misled wanderers back into communion with God — and, behold, he has found something: here is an altar with the inscription, To the unknown God: a discovery which affords him as much joy as when he once picked up the words of the Greek poet we find him quoting here. That had seemed to him a feather which the angel, flying through heaven with the gospel, dropped into heathen lands. To the weak as weak, a Greek to the Greeks, the apostle explains this inscription to his hearers with most becoming deference. 2. This altar is a testimony to a grave defection, a longing that impels to seek, a hope fulfilled in Christ. Let us ask — I. BY WHAT MEANS THE LIVING GOD BECAME UNKNOWN? 1. The features have been almost obliterated, but whose image has been stamped upon the souls of men? — Not from the clod, nor from the ape — we are also of His offspring! "God hath made of one blood all nations of men," etc. One blood, therefore one family, one origin, one conscience, one hope: to seek God, everyone's mission; to find God, everyone's goal! 2. But if we live, and move, and have our being in Him, and if creation manifests His invisible power and Divinity — whence all this uncertain groping, until, brought to a stand, children of men cling to wood and stone? Whence the blindness that changes the clear mirror of nature into a thick veil, whence the insanity that desires to imprison the God over all heaven and earth within temples and images? Paul describes the lamentable process in Romans 1:21-24. Moral aberration always precedes the spiritual. Sinful inclinations in the heart are the fruitful lap of error. Doubt is a tendency of the character. Strange that amidst this jumble of rage, sensuality, love of money, etc., any room should remain for an altar dedicated even to the unknown God! II. WHEN IS AN ALTAR ERECTED TO THE UNKNOWN GOD? Just as in an impoverished family some jewel is preserved as a reminder of better days, so, in Athens, this one altar was a testimony of impoverishment. Israel could erect an Ebenezer: but this altar is only a monument, confessing: "Hitherto have we gone astray." Its erection indicates home-sickness. According to a tradition, the Athenians built this altar when a plague seemed to threaten never to leave their walls: — there must, they concluded, be some other god whose anger is dangerous, whose favour of importance, to whom therefore it was necessary to rear an altar. 1. It is an hour of fatigue at midnight, the candle has burned down low, and an investigator is dipping into the depths and not finding the goodly pearl, and growing more and more weary, cries, "Boundless Nature, where shall I comprehend thee? Ye sources of all life, for which my withered breast so longs — ye flow, ye quench, and yet I thirst in vain!" Such imploring, outstretched arms — what are they but an altar erected to the unknown God? 2. Now enter yon brilliant room. Surely no sorrow can obtrude here. Nevertheless sighs from an inner chamber announce that "Death has no respect for riches." A child is lying here sick unto death. Why has the anxious father no eye for the pictures that look down from the walls? Why does he not open some of his favourite poets? Why does he avoid that book which convinced him yesterday that there is room for neither miracles nor prayer? The anguish-stricken father throws himself on his knees — before whom? Which god can support him to bear this threatened loss? Oh ye pictures, books, money piles, ye idols that have eyes but no pupils, arms but no help! — at this moment, an altar rises in a corner of the room, faintly traced, "To the unknown God!" 3. Stranger, you have strayed into this house of God — do you know to what end? Do you know that your wandering and your sojourning, your childhood and your manhood, your solitude and your society, your sorrows and your joys, have all been working together to lead you to seek the Lord if haply you might feel and find Him, and to make that dusty altar to the unknown God in the corner of your heart one of reminder and of prophecy? III. IN WHOM DOES GOD MAKE HIMSELF KNOWN? Who shall win earth back to heaven, and reconcile and harmonise divinity with humanity? who is the man in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells, and whose body is a temple, the only one worthy of Divinity? Through Christ the weather-beaten inscription, "To the unknown God," is changed for "To the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." You are advancing to meet this unknown God as a revealed God in Christ Jesus. How? As a Saviour or a Judge? (R. Koegel, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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