"for numerous apostles putting forth with increased "energy that process of interrogatory test and spur to "which he had devoted his life, and was doubtless to "him far dearer and more sacred than his life "- how his escape from prison was only prevented by his own decided refusal to become a "party in any breach of "the law "-how deliberately, and with matter of fact precision, he satisfied himself with the result of the verdict, by reflecting that the Divine voice of his earlier years had "never manifested itself once to him during "the whole day of the trial; neither when he came "thither at first nor at any one point during his whole "discourse"-how his "strong religious persuasions were attested by his last words addressed to his friend immediately before he passed into a state of insensi"bility:" "Crito, I owe a cock to Esculapius; will you remember to pay the debt?"

66

66

ious char

Perhaps in the powerful modern narrative of the career of Socrates perhaps in our own as His religcondensed from it the readers of ancient acter. history, as it has hitherto been familiar to us, will have felt something like a jar against the solemn and majestic associations with which the life and death of Socrates have always been invested. To a large extent this is merely the inevitable result of the sudden exhibition, in its true historical light, of a great character usually regarded with almost ideal indistinctness. It is very seldom that the first sight of an eminent man exactly corresponds to our preconceived impression; and the disturbance of that impression, especially if the impression is tinged by moral or religious awe, has the effect of disappointment and depreciation beyond what is justified by the facts of the case. It is for this reason, amongst others, that it has been thought

good to introduce at length the contemplation of the whole historical position of Socrates. It illustrates precisely the like difficulty which we experience in dealing with the characters of the yet more consecrated story of the Jewish sages and prophets. But on second thoughts we shall recognize, as in other matters, so in this, that truth and reality, so far from being inconsistent with a just reverence, tend to promote it. The searching analysis of the modern English scholar has taught us more exactly wherein the greatness of Socrates consisted, and we are therefore the better able truly to honor, and, so far as in us lies, to imitate it. We know better than we did wherein lay the true secret of his condemnation, and we are therefore the better able not merely to compassionate, but to take warning by the error of his judges.

We have pointed out in the story of "the wisest of "Greeks" how curiously his claims, his expressions, even his external mode of life illustrate, and are in turn illustrated by, the utterances and acts of the Hebrew seers. But there is yet more than this. As in the case of David and Jeremiah, we have felt ourselves entitled to see the forecastings. -the preludings- of that supreme event which gives to the earlier Jewish history its universal interest, so, in the case of Socrates, it is not less remarkable to trace the resemblances which bring that final consummation of the Jewish history into connection with that Western World for which the great Prophet of the Captivity already had anticipated so important a part1 in the fortunes of his own

race.

In studying the character and life of Socrates, we know that we are contemplating the most remarkable

1 See Lectures XL. and XLI.

Christian

moral phenomenon in the ancient world; we are conscious of having climbed the highest point Likeness of the ascent of Gentile virtue and wisdom; to the we find ourselves in a presence which invests History. with a sacred awe its whole surroundings. We feel that here alone, or almost alone, in the Grecian world, we are breathing an atmosphere, not merely moral, but religious, not merely religious (it may be a strong expression, yet we are borne out by the authority of the earliest Fathers of the Church), but Christian. Difficult as it was to escape from these associations under any circumstances, the language of the latest Greek historian has now rendered it all but impossible. The startling phrases which he uses, as alone adequate to the occasion, are dictated by the necessity of the case; and when we are told that Socrates was a "cross-examining missionary" -that he spent his life in "public apostolic dialectics"- that he was habitually actuated by "his persuasion of a special religious mis"sion," we are at once carried forward from the time of Socrates himself to that more sacred age from which these expressions are borrowed, and by which alone we are enabled fully to appreciate what Socrates was and did.

The comparisons which have often been drawn between the Galilean Teacher and the Athenian sage may have been at times exaggerated. There are in the accompaniments of the character of Socrates dark shadows, grotesque incidents, unworthy associations, which render any such parallel, if pressed too far, as painful and as untrue as the like parallels that have sometimes been found in Jacob or David, or, yet more rashly, in Jephthah or Samson. Still, if viewed aright, there are

1 Grote, viii. 553, 566, 588.

Likeness to the Gospel History.

1

few more remarkable illustrations of the reality of the Gospel history than the light which, by way of contrast or likeness, is thrown upon it by the highest example of Greek antiquity. It is instructive to observe that there, almost alone, outside of the Jewish race is to be found the career which, at however remote a distance, suggests whether to friends or enemies a solid illustration of the One Life, which is the turning-point of the religion of the whole world. We do not forget the marvellous purity of the life of Buddha; nor the singular likenesses and contrasts be-tween the rise of Islam2 and the rise of Christianity. But there are points of comparison where these fail, and where the story of Socrates is full of suggestions. When we contemplate the contented poverty, the selfdevotion, the constant publicity, the miscellaneous followers of Socrates, we feel that we can understand better than before the outward aspect at least of that Sacred Presence which moved on the busy shores of the Sea of Galilee, and in the streets and courts of Jerusalem. When we read of the dogged obstinacy of the court by which he was judged - the religious or superstitious prejudices invoked against him—the expression of his friend when all was finished-"Such was "the end of the wisest and justest and best of all the "men that I have ever known"-another Trial and another Parting inevitably rush to the memory. When we read the last conversations of the prisoner in the Athenian dungeon, our thoughts almost insensibly rise to the farewell discourses in the upper chamber at Jerusalem with gratitude and reverential awe. The differences are immense. But there is a likeness of moral 1 See Lecture XLV.

2 See Lecture VIII. on Eastern Church.

atmosphere, even of external incident, that cannot fail to strike the attention. Or (to turn to another side), when we are perplexed by the difficulty of reconciling the narrative of the first three Evangelists with the altered tone of the fourth, it is at least to step towards the solution of that difficulty to remember that there is here a parallel diversity between the Socrates of Xenophon and the Socrates of Plato. No one has been tempted by that diversity to doubt the substantial identity, the true character, much less the historical existence of the master whom they both profess to describe. The divergences of Plato from Xenophon are incontestable; the introduction of his own coloring and thought undeniable; and yet not the less is his representation indispensable to the complete ideal which mankind now reveres as the picture of Socrates. Nor, when we think of the total silence of Josephus, or of other contemporary writers, respecting the events which we now regard as greatest in the history of mankind, is it altogether irrelevant to reflect that for the whole thirty years comprised in the most serious of ancient histories, Socrates was not only living, but acting a more public part, and, for all the future ages of Greece, an incomparably more important part, than any other Athenian citizen; and yet that so able and so thoughtful an observer as Thucydides has never once noticed him directly or indirectly. There is no stronger proof of the weakness of the argument from omission, especially in the case of ancient history, which, unlike our own, contained within its range of vision no more than was immediately before it for the moment.

If we descend from this higher ground to those lower but still lofty regions, which yet belong to the Likeness to the Apostolclosing epoch of the period of which these ic History.