revenge is not acceptable in the eyes of one god, but it is dear to the heart of another. Whatever crime man may be drawn to by his impulse, he can find favour for it from some of the assemblage of heroes, saints and deities.

This dallying with Polytheism then, which is so strongly denounced in the Bible, we assert to be a grievous fault in Socrates.

Another and, if possible, a still more obvious charge against Socrates is that he did not teach worthy notions regarding the dignity of woman or the solemnity of marriage. The cold, passionless, almost scornful way in which, at the opening of his death-scene in the Phaedo, he dismisses his wife from his companionship and, as it appears, from his confidence,* before he begins to teach and solace his male associates, is in marked contrast with the manner in which Jesus, agonizing in the torture of the cross, still tenderly remembered to provide, in the house and guardianship of the beloved disciple, a home for her who had been his virgin mother and his adoring follower.

wife Xanthippe and his child.

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* Phaedo, Cebes, Krito, and several other disciples, are introduced into the prison-cell of Socrates. They find him there attended by his As these disciples enter Xanthippe sees them and begins to cry aloud and say such things as women, "indeed, are wont, as, for instance, O Socrates, this is the last "time thy friends will speak to thee or thou to them. Then So"crates looked at Krito and said, O Krito, let some one lead this

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woman (tauten) away to her home. And certain of Krito's attendants "led her away in the midst of her cries and lamentations: but Socrates "sat down on the couch and began to rub his leg," which he had raised and crossed upon the other, whilst he descanted on the absurdity of that which men call pleasure.

In the Republic Socrates recommends such a community of wives and children as must degrade woman, put an end to the sweetest earthly happiness of domestic love, check the healthy growth of population by the effect of certain well-known physical laws, and, in a word, bring general and deep demoralization into a society all whose men and women would be, in their earliest infancy and childhood, trained, influenced and moulded by mothers who, as exchangeable wives, or rather as licensed concubines, could not be otherwise than despised and self-despising.

It is needless to dwell on the enormous evils which every reflecting reader will see would flow from such an institution—so eccentric and so enormous that one is only amazed how any sane man-not to say how a philosopher like Socrates-could for a moment have seriously contemplated it, much less deliberately propounded it,

as

a custom for a perfect state. It is equally unnecessary to insist on the well-known fact that, here again, the Bible contrasts most favourably with the teaching of the Academy. The obvious instruction of Holy Writ is that each man should have one wife; that husbands and wives should love each other with the utmost fondness and fidelity; and that, as a general rule, "young women should marry, bear children, guide "the household and give none occasion for reproach." So sacred is the matrimonial relationship considered by the Bible that it is even selected as a fit emblem of the union betwixt Christ and his Church.

The last fault of the Academic teaching, which it will

be necessary for us to notice at present, is the partiality with which it regarded mankind and the indifference it manifested as to the propagation of the truth. This partiality is apparent from the kind of life which Socrates represented as most approved by the gods; for it was impossible that all men, or indeed that any very considerable number of men, should abandon productive labour and give themselves up to the mere speculative contemplation of numbers, proportions, and the Academic doctrine of ideas. Yet this, as we have said, was what Socrates regarded as the highest condition attainable by man on earth. How does this fanciful notion contrast with the Biblical precept "Whosoever of you will be "chiefest of all, let him be the servant" (i. e. the profitable and helpful minister and fellow-worker) "of all”—as if it were said, if any man be ambitious for the highest possible human state, the way to satisfy his ambition is to be of the utmost use, in the friendliest manner, to the largest number of his most needy fellow-beings. As to the indifference about disseminating known and precious truth, of which we have accused Socrates, there is a most striking illustration in the death-scene to which we have already referred so often. The transcendent opinions, which the philosopher then promulgated, took his hearers quite by surprise. They had listened to him for many an hour before; but such teaching they had never heard even from his lips ere now; insomuch that one of the interlocutors in the dialogue gives utterance to his astonishment in words to the effect, "And were you, Socrates, about to have

"died without imparting to us these invaluable truths "if a casual interrogatory had not elicited them from "you?" Surely this negligence in communicating the highest truth even to the most intimate associates— this cold indifference to the interests of the masses—or, if it be despondency, this hopeless abandonment of the ignorant multitudes to the besotted course of their confessedly brutish ignorance and obstinate vice makes a sorry appearance when set in comparison with the Biblical command "Go and tell the glad tidings of "salvation to all nations," for, as the Bible elsewhere asserts, "God would have all men to be saved."

Such, then, are some of the chief and, as we think, very important blemishes in the religious and philosophical system of Socrates. We charge him with an injurious and narrow-minded intolerance of poetry; with a mistaken and degrading complaisance, if not a weak and superstitious clinging, to the prejudices of Polytheism; with an unnatural disrespect of the female sex combined with the most atrocious theory of co-habitation; and, lastly, with listlessness as to the spread of truth even among his disciples and still more among the countless multitudes of his fellow-beings. These are no light faults or slight accusations. We make them with no unfriendly or irreverent feeling towards the greatest and the holiest of the Heathen. We make them in the interest of truth, and to show, not only that the teaching of Socrates had its very grave errors, but still more to demonstrate that the Bible has its peculiar teachings of religious wisdom and excellence

which stand out in marked and prominent contrast when viewed in juxtaposition with the Socratic defects.

On these grounds then we claim for the Bible a still higher degree of reverence. It has, at least, a counterpart for each of the characteristic excellences of the noblest ancient religion: and, where that best and purest of ancient religions was at fault, the doctrines of Holy Scripture abound in wisdom and holiness. For the ancient writing, which has been the handmaid, if not the cause, of all great improvements for centuries. past-which alone is likely to tell us by what mysterious power Christus accomplished the religious revolution that Tacitus and Pliny ascribe to him-for that ancient writing which equals the greatest perfections of heathen philosophy and soars in the region of purity when the brightest of other religions lies low in feebleness and error-for this writing we claim from every man, not that it should be regarded as infallible, but that its every statement should be received with reverence and judged with searching care and humble sincerity; yea, and that even its errors should be dealt with as one deals with a father's failings or a mother's weakness. Such is the authority we reasonably, and therefore hopefully, claim for the Bible. Let no man say that this is a mean or insufficient authority unless he is prepared to say likewise that all legal, princely and parental authority is worthless, weak and despicable because it be marred with error.

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