seize passing mariners. She snatched away six persons from the boat of Ulysses. In all this we have represented the hazards of navigation from rocks and eddies. After the lapse of many centuries, we speak of our Scylla and Charybdis, when we have in mind perils between which we can pass with safety, only by the exercise of wise caution and painstaking care.

In due time we arrive at Athens, to which, as well as to Rome, Christianity was vastly indebted in the beginning. The one gave it a world-wide opportunity in a civil rule coextensive with ancient civilization, and the other gave it a universal language in a tongue that was understood throughout the Roman Empire. While people in Italy talked Latin, and in Palestine Aramaic, and elsewhere something still different, Greek was the medium of communication between all, as French has been in our day over the Continent. It was as if the whole civilized world now should have a common language. That was an immense advantage, which the gospel in the first century had for its propagation. So far as the linguistic situation was concerned, Christ came, as we would say, in the nick of time, or, as Paul said, in the fulness of time.

One of my early recollections is that of a college orator, in an eloquent effort, very properly giving attention, as Edgar Allan Poe has said,

"To the glory that was Greece

And the grandeur that was Rome.'

The comment of a countryman, who did not appreciate the deep significance of these two, was that the speaker "Romed (roamed) Greece all over, and Greeced (greased) Rome all over." Practically that is what we are doing, as from the

city on the Tiber we now go to Athens. To see all its splendor, we would have to visit not only its National and Acropolis Museums, but the British Museum with its Elgin collection including a large part of the sculptured frieze of the Parthenon, and we would have to travel through Europe, most of whose Museums have been enriched from this same source. But we must confine ourselves to the Athenian city, whose inhabitants, according to Luke, spent their time in discussing every "new thing." This, however, must have been more than idle gossip with the cultivated Athenians, who lived amid creations of artistic beauty, and in a literary atmosphere such that the apostle even in preaching had to quote Greek poetry. The new thing talked about there. would be the last poem written, the last piece of marble chiselled. A recent volume, "From Pericles to Philip," by T. R. Glover, lecturer in Cambridge University, England contains this significant statement; "With the sole exception of Homer, every Greek writer of the highest rank was living sooner or later at some stage of his career in Athens in the fifth century." "Not only in literature during this shining age was there this preeminence, but also in art, in architecture, and in almost every other field of intellectual accomplishment. When we wish to pronounce the highest enconium upon Boston, we characterize her as the Athens of America. In that single sentence we tell the story of her historical, literary, musical, and educational distinction. We have therefore come to a spot whose achievements have been greater than those of any other place on the face of the globe, and especially during the two centuries from about 300 to 500 B. C. Within this period mostly we are to range, giving ourselves not to every new thing but to every "old thing," or to express it more elegantly, to antiquities. None

of us like old furniture, but we delight in the antique, which is the same thing.

We go first to see the Olympieum, a glorious temple to Zeus, begun by Pisistratus in the sixth century before the Christian era, and continued by Antiochus Epiphanes soon after 175 B. C., and completed in the second century after Christ by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Of the more than 100 columns originally, only 16 remain, stately and graceful, though one of these lies prostrate like a fallen giant. This beautiful ruin, has been made familiar by modern art. The same emperor, who dedicated this spacious structure 130 A. D., has also left, as a last memorial bearing his name, the Arch of Hadrian, an elaborate gateway with its Greek inscriptions still intact. It is an imposing arch, with a second story containing three window-like openings. There it has been standing for eighteen centuries, and it is to-day the admiration of every tourist.

Close by the Olympieum is the classic river of Athens, the Ilissus. When former President Felton of Harvard went to see it, of which he had so often read in his Greek, the story is that on reaching its bank he stooped down and drank up the whole stream. It is small, often having a dry bed, and only in the rainy season swelling sometimes to a torrent, but though insignificant as to volume it is mightier than our boasted Mississippi or even the gigantic Amazon because of a wealth of associations. It was along this that Socrates and Phaedrus strolled, seeking a quiet retreat where they could engage in philosophic discussions. In their walk they came, as we learn from Plato, to what is thus described by Socrates: "A fair and shady resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents. There is the lofty and spreading planetree, and the agnus-castus high and clustering, in the fullest