Therefore many of them believed. Contrast between the ignoble prejudice and the noble openness of mind. Responsibility for our faith. Knowledge and practice bound up together.

I. THE TRUE PREPARATION FOR DIVINE BLESSINGS.

1. A state of mind. At liberty to think. Open to teaching. Desire for instruction. The two kinds of skepticism (skepsis), inquiry for truth, inquiry for reasons against faith.

2. A course of action and habit. Reading of the Scriptures daily, with a set purpose, devoutly, in connection with the preached Word, with an intention to follow their guidance.

II. THE TRUE FAITH SETTLED ON ITS BROAD FOUNDATION.

1. As distinguished from mere individual self-assertion and ignoble pride.

2. As accepting the standard of revealed truth.

3. As apostolic, seeing that "those things were so," i.e. as Paul represented them. The Pauline faith was the only faith which linked together the Old Testament and the New.

III. RESULTS FOLLOWING THE USE OF MEANS. A lesson to both preachers and hearers. - R.

1. They "believed" — a little word, but a great thing — the step by which they passed from condemnation to peace; from the house on the sand before it fell, to the rock. The moment before they were without Christ and hope; the moment after they were in Christ, and heirs of eternal life. How could interests so vast turn on a point so small? All decisive turnings are made on points. The poles are mathematical points, yet how huge the mass that spins round them!

2. "Many believed." A swelling of spiritual life sometimes comes over a city or country, as the tidal wave over the ocean — lifted and led in both cases by a power in the heavens. The symptoms which portended this revival were a bent of mind towards the Word, and a daily searching of it. When we see the same symptoms we may expect the same enlargement.

3. Note the classes who were won to the Lord.

I. GREEKS. There is no respect of persons with God: "neither Jew nor Greek." Yet the conversion of a Greek may give an apostle greater reason for joy, inasmuch as while of no more value intrinsically than a Jew, a Greek could open a door into a wider field. Those successes were sweetest which were promises of more.

II. MEN AND WOMEN. God made both in marvellous wisdom for each other; together they have gone from Him; it is a glad sight when they return in company. How sad when the sexes are divided by that partition which divides the Church from the world! As there is neither Jew nor Greek, so there is neither male nor female in the kingdom of Christ. Sometimes the husband or brother believes, while wife or sister smothers the spiritual life by the cares of this world. Sometimes the women of the family are devoted to Christ, while the men are too philosophic or self-indulgent. Husbands and wives, etc., be heirs together of the grace of life.

III. PEOPLE OF HIGH STANDING. Are the upper ten, then, more precious? No. But there are times and circumstances in which their conversion is more noteworthy.

1. If for nothing else, the early disciples valued it as men value certain gems, on account of its rarity. The common people heard the Master gladly, but the rulers held aloof. On that account Jesus looked fondly on the rich young man who came to Him.

2. Their influence is greater.

3. Great temptations bind them.

IV. NOT A FEW. There is a strange appetite in the Christian's heart; it continually cries, Give an appetite inherited from Christ. When many came He invited the rest as eagerly.

(W. Arnot, D. D.)

Women are first named, implying that they were first to believe. This is still no common occurrence.

I. WOMEN RECEIVE THE GOSPEL MORE READILY THAN DO MEN. Lydia's case is repeated in all quarters of Christendom. The sisters of Bethany, the women who ministered unto Christ, prophesy the faith of their sex.

II. Upon the basis of this fact it is not flattery to say that WOMEN ARE MORE NOBLE THAN MEN. There are qualities belonging to their sex fitting women above men to appreciate the gospel. Though first in the fall, also first in relations, qualifications, and promise to bring deliverance.

III. WOMEN HAVE SPECIAL REASONS FOR BECOMING CHRISTIANS. Their aptness to receive it is evidence of their need of it —

1. To satisfy their finer, quicker sense of right, truth, beauty.

2. To fulfil their mission in life not by power, but by influence. Their want of Christian character is a want of qualification for their life work.

IV. WOMAN'S OBLIGATION TO CHRISTIANITY. Outside of the religion of revelation they were burdened and enslaved. Their elevation they owe to Christianity.

(S. Mease, D. D.)

Of the men in Berea, not a few received the gospel. The same is true wherever the gospel has been carried. The inference, however, is that the number of men was not equal to the number of women. This inference is confirmed by observation of modern churches. This unfortunate phenomenon is deserving of discussion.

I. MEN'S NEED OF THE GOSPEL IS AS ABSOLUTE AS THAT OF WOMEN.

1. Depravity is as deep and real, effecting an equal estrangement from God, and producing the same evil fruits — disobedience, perversion of life, unrest, apprehension of evil, and death, both in body and soul.

2. Their manly courage, strength, and capacity leave them helpless as women; for spiritual ends God's help alone will avail.

3. They must find the same one remedy — the blood of Christ.

4. To men the gospel is as much and all that it is to women — the power of God unto salvation to them that believe.

II. THE ALLEGIANCE AND SERVICE OF MEN ARE AS UNCONDITIONALLY REQUIRED AS THOSE OF WOMEN.

1. The gospel is the one instrumentality for the world's redemption. Against it are arrayed all the forces of sin and Satan. Will men, strong and courageous, refuse to enlist, while women contend with readier will and in greater numbers?

2. The work of the gospel is great above every other, securing human happiness here and hereafter. Wherever men are, there is a call to labour. Sin, crime, poverty, and suffering are devouring multitudes by reason of gospel work undone, whilst men are idling in the market place. Will men, with stronger endowments and better advantages, look on, leaving the burden to weaker but better women?

III. THE EVIL RESULTING FROM MEN'S GREATER RELUCTANCE THAN WOMEN TO ACCEPT AND PROMOTE THE GOSPEL. Were the men as ready to believe as are women, the latter in still greater numbers would be at the feet of Jesus — our daughters, wives, and mothers. An increasing host of both sexes would flock to the standard of the Cross. Men out of the Church are hindrances to women who would enter, and often difficulties to such as have entered. The men are in the front ranks of the world's battle: why should they not be in the front as to numbers and activity in the battle for truth, salvation, and God?

(S. Mease, D. D.)

Athenians, Damaris, Dionysius, Jason, Paul, Silas, Thessalonians, Timotheus, TimothyAmphipolis, Apollonia, Areopagus, Athens, Berea, ThessalonicaAlong, Believe, Believed, Believers, Classes, Estate, Faith, Gentlewomen, Grecian, Greek, Greeks, Honorable, Honourable, Indeed, Position, Prominent, Result, Standing, Upper, Women1. 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 17:12

     7535   Greeks

Acts 17:5-13

     5279   crowds

Acts 17:10-12

     8497   witnessing, approaches

Acts 17:11-12

     5854   experience, of God

Acts 17:11-13

     7757   preaching, effects

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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