St Paul: now and then

The world supplies unending material on which to comment. But for the truly bizzare we must often turn to the church!

Yesterday the Dean of St Paul's in London resigned his office.

The reason for his departure from his august and well paid position?

Because a motley, rag-tag band of protestors refused to move from their camp in front of St Paul's cathedral after the dean's repeated calls for them to be off.

Could nobody have told the man that he could have dispersed

 the crowd within 10 minutes if he and his bishop had stood and preached the Gospel in power from the steps of the sanctuary?

Unfortunately the preaching was going on INSIDE the building and not to the congregation that really mattered on the OUTSIDE.

Contrast this miserable display of cowardice to the preaching of the original St Paul at Mars Hill in Athens.

The great man, seen here, preached to a band of Athenian sceptics who didn't hang around for another sermon.

They were soon gone leaving behind a handful of people who were the seed that helped spread the Word through the whole of Greece within the century.

Thus an opportunity was seized by St Paul and a golden one was

missed yesterday at St Pauls!

Ian