Athens from Mars Hill

‎There is nowhere else such a multitude of commanding positions as in the city of Athens. The site of Athens embraces several lofty hills. One of these is the Areopagus. A city more favorable to a high display of oratory and too powerful effects certainly never existed. Here the “philosophers of fashion,” who taught philosophy and religion, not as a faith, but as a system, came into contact with the thorough earnestness, the profound conviction, the red-hot zeal, of the Apostle Paul. From Mars Hill, the whole city was spread out like a map before the speaker. In the above picture, we are looking toward the northwest, in which we have a view of the whole plain on which Athens was situated with the mountains in the distance. The houses of Athens are for the most part white—some of a marble, some of the firm, fine-grained limestone with which the region abounds, but most of them are stuccoed. The streets are of a respectable width, a few of the old-fashioned narrow kind remaining as reminders of other years. Yonder, to the north of the city, in the olive groves, is one sacred spot, honored as being the site of the Academe of Plato, near Colonus and not far from the Cephesus. Milton says:

‎We sat in that classic spot and read of the wisdom which is exalted in Job, xxviii; and as we thought of Plato we read the broad charter of the University of Christ as recorded by Paul in Philippians 4:8.