Acts 17:23

“For going through and seeing your devotions [i. e., temple, shrines, altars and statues], I also found an altar on which was superscribed, ‘To the Unknown God.' Therefore, whom you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” Wonderfully shrewdly did Paul, in this way, approach and touch the sympathies of his highly-cultured audience. No other city on the globe, at that time, was so adorned with the most beautiful and innumerable marble statues, altars, shrines and temples, erected to all the gods with whom they had become acquainted in the universal conquest of the Greeks under Alexander the Great, yet, after all, they were fearful that there might be a god somewhere with whom they had no acquaintance. Hence, profoundly solicitous to secure His favor, they had even built a temple and superscribed on it, “To the Unknown God,” and were thus worshipping him, though they knew neither his name nor his attributes. At this point Paul very adroitly approaches them, certifying boldly to them that he was acquainted with their “Unknown God,” whom they had honored with a temple, and were ignorantly worshipping. Hence he commands their sympathies and appreciative audience while he preaches to them their own “Unknown God.”