If you will read the chapters which intervene between the last lesson and this, you will read the very interesting history of the conversion of many others, Jews and Gentiles, in various lands, through the efforts of the apostles. The present lesson tells us of Paul's work at Athens, and we want to stop and know something about this celebrated .city.

You will remember that the Ancient Church which had revelations from the Lord very much like those we of the New Church have, was established in a number of countries of Asia and Africa, among them being Phoenicia and Egypt. All Europe was Gentile. History records that the learning of Greece came originally from these two countries, and Athens became the principal seat of the arts and learning and wisdom of Greece. It was so celebrated that in the decadence of the Ancient Church, it had become the resort of philosophers and students from all the countries of the then civilized world.

The mythology of Greece, that is to say, the worship of the gods and goddesses, and the stories told about them, were all modeled upon the original true doctrines of the Ancient Church, only that in passing out of the Egyptian and Phoenician churches they became changed.

"But," you may ask, "since the Ancient Church worshiped only one God, how did the Greek mythology come to have so many gods?"

In the Ancient Church, the different attributes of the Lord, that is to say, the different good and true things which come from the one God into the hearts and minds of men, were personified: they made pictures of them. They knew that innocence was a holy virtue inspired by God, and so, because a babe shows forth innocence more than anyone else, they made pictures of babes, to designate innocence. Because men are intelligent, they made statues of strong men to represent intelligence. Because women are governed more by love than by truth, they made statues of women, and represented love by them. Because wisdom guards and defends man from evil, and repels assaults of falsity, they portrayed it by a statue clothed like a soldier. They had a great variety of pictures, some of which were in the forms of statues of stone or porcelain, or wood, or gold, or silver, some were carved in relief upon the temple walls, some were painted, etc. They were all helps in devotion to think about the things which the Lord God gives men.

But in course of time, as the Ancient Church declined, that is, as the people of the Church became less spiritually-minded, caring less for the things of heaven and more for the things of the world, loving money, and fame, and power, and pleasure, better than the Lord, and heaven, and usefulness, and the neighbor, they were no longer interested in knowing what the beautiful relief work and statues and paintings meant spiritually, but they worshiped the images themselves, and so made idols of them.

The Gentiles who received their religious ideas from them, did likewise. And yet the wisest among the Greeks knew that there is only one God, and that the gods and goddesses and lesser divinities represented the Divine things that come from that one supreme God. They also knew that God as He is in Himself could not be thought of or known. So men can see the sunlight in the clouds, and in objects on earth, but they cannot look into the sun itself. This was something which the wise Greeks had likewise learned from the Ancient Church.

The Old Testament teaches, "No man shall see Me and live." And the Gospel declares, "No man hath seen God at any time, the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath brought Him forth to view." (John 1:18) "To be in the bosom of" someone, does not mean to be in his bosom, but it means to be as close as the body is to the soul. So "the only-begotten Son," which means, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ, is "in the bosom of God," meaning that the Infinite Divinity is His soul.

It is with the Lord as it is with man. We do not see each other's souls, but we see the body in which the soul manifests itself. That is, we know of the soul of another through his body in which the soul is.

Just so the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the Invisible Deity and is called "the Father" in our Word, is made visible, or knowable, through His body, which is called "the Son." When we think of the Lord Jesus Christ as He was seen after His resurrection, then we think of the Lord our God. "In Christ Jesus dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead (this word means 'Divinity') bodily." (Colossians 2:9)

Now, something like this was what Paul was led to teach the people of Athens. He saw the altar dedicated to "the unknown god" and felt that he was sent by the Holy Spirit to tell people that the Lord had known of their ignorance of Him, but that now the time had come for them to remain ignorant no longer, but to know Him, by knowing the man-form with which He had clothed Himself, so that all people might see and know Him. Paul began telling them about God creating all things, and that men live from Him. This was something that the people of Athens had heard before, for the Greek poets and philosophers taught it and, in fact, Paul quoted their language, "in Him we live and move and have our being," "we are also His offspring." Now they must learn to realize that God, whose offspring they are, cannot be like "gold or silver or stone graven by art and man's device." Therefore they must no longer worship such idols, but "repent" of this worship, and know that God has manifested Himself by means of a Man, and that Man is Jesus Christ. The world is judged by Him, and they might know this from the fact that this Man was raised from the dead.

When Paul had reached this part of his speech, he was evidently not permitted to continue, for he was interrupted by men who mocked at him because he spoke of the resurrection. Yet some said that they would hear him again; and he had said enough to interest some people, among them being persons of high standing in the city.

Notice particularly, that Paul first urged them to repent, and then told them about "the Man" who was to judge the world. Herein Paul did as John the Baptist and the Lord Himself had done, and also as the other apostles did. They all preached "repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand," or "repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ."

We are told that the doctors of the Christian Church have not as yet known "that the one God, who is invisible, came into the world and assumed the Human, not only that He might redeem men, but also that He might become visible, and thus capable of being conjoined; for it is read, The Word was with God, and the Word was God; and the Word. became flesh (John 1: 1, 14) ; and in Isaiah, A Child is born to us; a Son is given to us, whose name shall be called God, Hero, the Father of eternity (9:6); and in the prophets many times that Jehovah Himself was to come into the world, and to be the Redeemer; which also He became in the Human which He assumed.

"This church is the crown of all the churches that have hitherto been in the world, because it will worship the one visible God, in whom is the invisible God, as the soul is in the body." (T. 786, 787)

Before we leave this chapter read verse 21 again, "All the Athenians and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing." Other writers of antiquity speak of the same trait of the Athenians. People retain their characteristics after death, and we learn in the Writings, that the ancients from that part of Greece still retained their desire to know about things new, thousands of years later when Swedenborg visited them in their eternal homes in the spiritual world. Read in M. 182, 207, or in T. 692, 693, 694, how they repeatedly asked him, "What news from the earth?" This was not from idle curiosity, but from real desire to learn something new that is worth while knowing.

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