HAROLD and Elsie are quite ready for another visit to the British Museum. To-day there will be an addition to our party, as Elsie has brought her school friend, Connie, who says she is reading the Acts of the Apostles, and would like to know a little more about the cities visited by Paul.
In the Ephesus room we shall be able to see for ourselves shattered fragments of the temples and statues on which Paul must have looked when he visited that city. But we linger a moment in the small ante-room leading to it to notice some small Greek statues. They are believed to be among the oldest known, and were carved between two and three hundred years before Christ. Among them is one of a mother and child, so like many of the carvings and pictures that may be seen now in any Roman Catholic church. In China exactly the same kind of pictures representing "The Goddess of Mercy" are known to have been painted hundreds of years before the name of Christ had ever been heard in that empire. We may be sure that those who tell us that Rome papal is built upon the ruins of Rome pagan have good reason for such an assertion.
As we enter the Ephesus room and look at the broken fragments of many objects on which the eyes of Paul must have rested, we are reminded of the visit of, the apostle to Athens of which we read in Acts 17
“Was not Athens a large and very learned city?" Harold asks, and Connie asks if Homer was not a Greek poet? and adds—
“Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which Homer living, begged his bread.”
Yes, it was on his visit to Athens that Paul found himself surrounded by the poets and philosophers then living. The Greeks, like other heathen nations, had "lords many and gods many," and we remember how Paul's spirit was stirred when he saw the city wholly given to the worship of these false, helpless gods.
There is a fine model of the city as it then was in one of the glass cases at the end of the room, and from Mars' Hill Paul could look down upon a group of heathen temples; the altar to "the unknown god" was perhaps also within sight, or if not, very near at hand. As the apostle told them of the one living and true God, we can almost seem to see him pointing to these temples, now mere heaps of ruins, telling his hearers that God, the Maker of heaven and earth, "seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands." (Acts 17) And later he said, "We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.”
Perhaps there are no stones on earth more beautifully carved than those on which the eyes of Paul may have rested as he spoke those living, glowing words. Even the broken fragments that have been found and placed in glass cases in the museum prove that the Greek sculptors must have been men of no common genius.
Harold, who has been for some time looking at a marble carving of a horse's head on one of the wall slabs, says, "It's splendid!" It is said to be one of the finest pieces of Greek art in the collection, and is often studied as a model by artists and sculptors.
The visit of Paul to Athens must have taken place some time before that scene at Ephesus of which we read in Acts 19
Elsie, who has been turning over the pages of her Bible, asks if I can tell her what the people of Ephesus meant when they cried out, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"? (Acts 19:2828And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. (Acts 19:28).)
Acts 19 will have, I believe, a new interest and meaning for us if we read it in the Ephesus room of the British Museum, surrounded by broken fragments of the great temple of the heathen goddess, Diana. Treasures of art, costly jewels, gold and gifts of almost priceless value, had all helped to make the great temple of Diana at Ephesus one of the seven wonders of the world. As we stand among these broken shreds of marble we seem almost to hear the shouts of the excited and angry people as for two hours they cried, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians.”
Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines for Diana, called together the craftsmen and workmen, and told them how almost throughout all Asia, "this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: so that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.”
Connie asks, “What did the silversmith mean by calling his work a craft?”
Well, Connie, the word "craft," though not often used nowadays, simply means a trade or occupation. I have been told that it is quite an everyday occurrence when a boy was to be apprenticed to a master tradesman, for the master in signing the indentures of apprenticeship to bind himself to instruct the youth "in the arts and mysteries of his craft.”
The center of this wonderful temple, and the object of worship, was a shapeless, huge, black stone, which the people believed had fallen from Jupiter. Such stones do fall now and then; I have myself seen such in the museum at South Kensington. They are really masses of mineral matter which have reached the earth's surface from outer space.
The town clerk of Ephesus found it no easy task to quiet the people. He did not think the temple was likely to suffer from the preaching of Paul and his friends; but thought that they themselves might get into trouble. What account could he give of the confusion if Nero or his governors should hear of it? "For we are in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar, there being no cause whereby we may give an account of this concourse"; and thus "he dismissed the assembly.”
But the silversmith was right after all. The temple was to be destroyed, the few broken fragments of its ruins, among which we can stand in London, may give us some faint idea of how large and grand it once was.