Lectures propose to treat, the illustrations supplied by the life of Socrates are still more apposite and instructive. When we are reminded of the "apostolic" self-devotion of Socrates a new light seems to break on the character and career of him from whose life that expression is especially derived; and the glowing language in which the English historian of Greece describes the energy and the enthusiasm of the Athenian missionary enables us to realize with greater force than ever "the pureness, and knowledge, and love un"feigned" of the missionary in a higher cause, who argued in the very market-place where Socrates had conversed more than four centuries before, and was, like him, accused of being a "vain babbler" and a "setter"forth of strange gods." "1 And even in minute detail there are some passages of the Apostle's life which are singularly elucidated by the corresponding features in the career of the philosopher. How much more vividly, for example, do we understand the relation of St. Paul, himself a Rabbi, to the teachers of his time, at once belonging to them and distinct from them, when we contemplate the like relation of Socrates to the Sophists! How striking is the coincidence between the indignant refusal of St. Paul in these very cities of Athens and Corinth to receive remuneration for his labors, and the similar protest of Socrates, by precept and example, against the injurious effect produced on teachers by direct dependence on the casual contributions, on the voluntary or involuntary payment of their hearers! 2 And how remarkably is the vulgar feeling of the Roman world towards the Apostles and their converts illustrated by the vulgar feeling of the Athenian world towards Socrates and his pupils! In the attack which

1 Acts xvii. 18.

2 Grote, viii. 482. Comp. 1 Cor. ix. 1-18.

was made at two distinct periods on Alcibiades and on Socrates we see the union of the great mass of Athenian society, both democratical and aristocratical, against what they conceived to be revolutionary, and against men who where obnoxious because they towered above their age. As in the alleged plot of the mutilation of the Hermæ, Thessalus, the son of the aristocratic Cimon, and Androcles, the demagogue, both united against Alcibiades in the charge of overthrowing the constitution and establishing a tyranny- so Aristophanes, the poet of the aristocracy, and Anytus, the companion of the exiled leader of the popular party, combined in bringing against Socrates the charge of overthrowing mythology and establishing atheism. In each case there was a real danger to be discovered - if the prosecutors could have discerned it. Alcibiades was at work on designs which might have dissolved the existing bonds of society at Athens, and perhaps made him its tyrant and destroyer. Socrates was at work on designs which would ultimately tend to place the religion and morality of Greece on a totally new foundation. They failed. to convict Alcibiades, because his plans were not yet fully developed; they failed to convict Socrates justly, because his design was one which none but the noblest minds could understand. So far there was a resemblance between the two cases a resemblance of which the enemies of Socrates made the most. But, as every one now recognizes, the difference was far wider. Alcibiades was really what he was taken to be, the representative of all that was worst in the teaching of the Sophists of all that was most hostile to faith and virtue. Socrates, whilst formally belonging to the Sophists, was really the champion of all that was most true and most holy; and he fell a victim to the blind

ness which in all great movements has again and again confounded two elements intrinsically dissimilar, because externally they both happened to be opposed to the prevailing opinion of the time.

There is no passage in history which more happily illustrates the position which was taken up against the Christian apostles and missionaries of the first and second centuries- a position which has not unfrequently been overlooked or misapprehended. "Christ"ianity," as has been well remarked, "shared the com"mon lot of every great moral change which has ever "taken place in human society, by containing amongst "its supporters men who were morally the extreme op"posites of each other."1 No careful reader of the Epistles can fail to perceive the constant struggle which the Apostles had to maintain, not only against the Jew and the heathen external to the Christian society, but against the wild and licentious doctrines which took shelter within it. The same confusion which had taken place in the Athenian mind in the case of Socrates and Alcibiades, took place in the first century of the Christian era with regard to the Apostles and the fierce fanatics of the early Church, who were to all outward appearance on the same side, both equally bent on revolutionizing the existing order of civil society. As Aristophanes could not distinguish between the licentious arguments of the wilder class of sophists and the elevating and inspiring philosophy of Socrates, so Tacitus could not distinguish between the anarchists whom St. Paul and St. Peter were laboring to repress, and the pure morality and faith which they were laboring to propagate. He regarded them both as belonging to "an execrable race," "hateful for their abominable

1 Arnold's Fragment on the Church, 85.

LECT. XLVI. ANTICIPATIONS of a higher REVELATION. 251

"crimes;" and as the Greek poet could see nothing but an atheist in Socrates, so the Roman historian would have joined in the cry, "Away with the atheists," which was raised against the first Christians. In each case the next generation judged more wisely and more justly. Socrates was in the age of Plato and Aristotle more fully appreciated, and the gross mistake which Tacitus had made with regard to Christianity in the reign of Nero we learn from the milder tone of the younger Pliny to have passed away in the reign of Trajan. But these warnings are instructive for every age; and it is because the two cases, amidst infinite diversity, tend to explain each other that we have ventured thus far to anticipate the story of coming events, and to bring them together as combining to read the same indispensable lesson of religious wisdom.

Besides these indirect illustrations of the Hebrew annals in the life of Socrates there are also indications in the Platonic representations of his teaching which bring it directly within the prophetic scope of the Sacred History. Not only in the hope of a Prince of the House of David, or an Elijah returning from the invisible world, who should set right the wrong and deliver the oppressed, but in the still small voice that was heard by the Ilissus or on the quays General anof the Piræus was there a call for another ticipations Charmer who might come when Socrates was revelation. gone even amongst the barbarian races1-one who should be sought for far and wide, "for there is no "better way of using money than to find such an "one." Not only in the Man of Sorrows, as depicted by the Evangelical Prophet, but in the anticipations of the Socratic dialogues, there was the vision, even

1 Phædo, 78; Politicus, 262.

of a higher

to the very letter, of the Just Man, scorned, despised, condemned, tortured, slain, by an ungrateful or stupid world, yet still triumphant.1 And yet a higher strain is heard. No doubt the Egyptian monuments speak of another life, and the Grecian mythology and poetry spoke of the Tartarus and Elysium and the Isles of the Blessed. No doubt the Hebrew Psalmists and Prophets contained aspirations for a bright hereafter, and also dim imagery of the under-world of the grave. But in the dialogue of Socrates in the prison, the conviction of a future existence is urged - whatever may be thought of the arguments — with an impressive earnestness which has left a more permanent mark on the world,2 and of which the Jewish mind, hitherto so dark and vacant on this momentous topic, was destined henceforth to become the ready recipient and the chief propagator. There was also the double stream of the two philosophies which have since flowed from the teaching of Socrates; each of which has in turn dominated in some measure the Jewish Church, in a still larger measure the Christian Church - the "world unrealized" of Plato, the counterpart, in Hellenic phrase and form, of the anticipations of the Hebrew Prophets; the "world explored" of Aristotle, as we have already indicated, and shall have occasion again to notice, the counterpart, on a colossal scale, of the boundless knowledge and practical wisdom, as it was believed, of Solomon and his followers.

These details belong to a later stage of the history, and are connected with Socrates himself more

The general

influence or less remotely. It is true that he founded no school, that he refused the title of master.

of Socrates.

1 Plato's Republic, 362.

Life, 185-193. See Lectures XLVII.

2 Alger's Doctrine of a Future and XLVIII.

8 Lectures XXVIII. and XLVII.