St. Paul was well learned in all these
questions, and set forth to the Athenian students, in glorious words,
that the truth was come for which they had so long yearned, and declared
to them the Unknown God Whom they already worshipped in ignorance.
Some few believed, but the others were too fond of their own empty
reasonings, and Athens long continued the stronghold of heathenism. He
had better success at Corinth, where he spent eighteen months, working
at his trade as a tent-maker, and whence he wrote his two Epistles to
his Thessalonian converts, about the time that St. Luke was writing his
Gospel, it is thought by direct revelation, since neither he nor St.
Paul had been with our Lord. The Jews hunted them away at last; after a
short stay at Jerusalem, they went back to Asia Minor, and passed three
years at Ephesus, whence were written the Epistle to the Galatians,
against the Jewish practices, and the First to the Corinthians, on some
disorders in their Church. Ephesus was the chief city in Asia Minor, and
contained an image of the Greek goddess of the moon, Diana, placed in a
temple so beautiful, that it was esteemed one of the seven wonders of
the world, and thither came a great concourse of worshippers.
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