A college student once said to a distinguished professor of history who had referred to the roads Solomon built: "Do you mean to tell us that Solomon was a real person? I thought he was just somebody in the Bible." That is the way too many persons feel about Paul. To make the apostle real he must be seen in connection with the very real world in which he lived. Mr. Dunn attempts to show in a rather novel fashion Paul's relation to Platonism. His reconstruction of the address of Paul at Athens is, of course, only conjecture, but does it not help us to understand the effect which it had upon thoughtful persons?The sermon of Paul on Mars Hill has long held a place in the front ranks of examples of forensic oratory; and properly no oratory holds such rank that is not effective, for the object of oratory is to convince, and that which lacks convincing power lacks the essential feature of true oratory. There have been many comments on this effort of Paul, many reflections on its ingenious method, many on its immediate effects, many on its permanent argumentative force. And yet, when considered in the setting of its known surroundings, it seems singularly inadequate to the results attained.Paul had just arrived at Athens from Berea. His preaching in Macedonia up to this point had not produced like results. On the contrary, it had evoked 351 individual lives, but in the social relations and common life which these individuals maintain together. "Thus," in the words of a well-known modern theologian, "the special incarnation in Christ requires as its complement the wider incarnation in humanity; and the life of Jesus remains incomplete till it is contemplated in relation to the larger social ideal whose realization it is designed to promote." So rich, then, is our spiritual heritage in the doctrine of the incarnation, when we approach it, not in order to debate its adequacy or accuracy as a theological formula, but to discover its value as a treasury of Christian experience. It summons us as individuals to a deeper experience of the reality and saving power of God, and a clearer discovery of his character, as these are revealed in Jesus Christ. It dignifies our human nature with its evidence of our nearness of kin to "the Father of our spirits." And it heartens us for all our moral struggle and social aspiration, with its promise and prophecy of that final consummation both of our personal and of our common life, in which "God shall be all in all."

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