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negative. It is negative evidence that he spoke of "the gods," and in various modes acknowledged Deity as residing in a diversity of forms; since circumstances develope ample reason for his thus accommodating himself to popular conceptions. On the other hand, we have positive evidence in his teachings, as recorded by Xenophon, that he conceived of a Being who is Supreme, "extended through all places, extending through all time, and whose bounty and care can know no other bounds than those fixed by his own creation."

And this, if we might enlarge in proportion to our subject, we could show to be the issue of all opposition of evidence on the most important points of the philosophy of Socrates. But we must hasten on to what it remains to us to observe; namely, that the mission of Socrates is not yet fully accomplished.

It is impossible ever to assign any limit to the operation of influences which are set in motion by God. It can never be said of any of his dispensations that all its purposes are fulfilled, or that any of his modes of agency are for ever relinquished. It is thus with the missions of the Jewish prophets, and of the Heathen philosophers. Not only is the everlasting gospel of Christ still on its way, but all subsidiary dispensations are, though closed to some, yet open to others. There is a remnant of Israel yet to whom the prophets have not yet declared the whole counsel of God; and there are some who are not sufficiently advanced to listen even to them. There are some, even in this Christian land, who are as much less wise than Socrates as his Athenian pupils. We shall scarcely find a Plato; and if we did, we should hesitate in administering to him the elements of a philosophical or religious experience; but there may be a Xenophon upon whom circumstance has acted, instead of distance of time or place, to exclude him from the teachings of Jehovah's temple; and to him the

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instructions of the Grecian sage may be as salutary as welcome. There may be an Aristodemus who will obtain from Socrates such evidence of the unity of the Creator as he would never have learned from a teacher of another nation and many a Critias, and many an Alcibiades, may be shamed into decency, or won over to a temporary energy of self-denial, by the force of irony, or the attraction of benignity, of which time has been powerless to divest the instructions of the wisest and best of heathens. If he could appear to-day in our places of public resort, he ought to be welcome to resume his ancient office. It would be wise in our legislators to admit him into the senate, in our philosophers to invite him to their sittings, in our religious teachers to open a way for him into their temples; for assuredly he could, in each place, teach as much to some as he could learn from others; and the certain result would be, that he would lead his followers after him to an earnest advocacy of man's social rights, to a full recognition of all sound philosophical principles, and to an exulting reception of the gospel.

Under such a conviction as this, the work before us has been planned and elaborated. It is prepared for those who would throng around the Athenian philosopher if he were to appear, and who, in his absence, care for no other teacher. The religion of Socrates is proposed to the consideration of those whose modes of philosophizing, and chosen course of study, forbid their rejecting such an appeal. If they pride themselves on being classics, they are met by a classic. If they rank themselves among philosophers, they find themselves challenged by a philosopher. If they reject dissertations on the Christian evidences, as wearisome and stale, they find no mention of Christianity in the whole course of the argument; or if, as sometimes happens, they receive the dogmas of the ancient philosophy in connexion with the super

stitions which still defile Christianity, they will here meet with no offensive reforming zeal which shall shock their prejudices. The Christian teacher, also, will find this work powerfully adapted to prepare the way for the gospel among a class whom his instructions are little likely to reach; and may himself derive some valuable hints from a work which opens so uncommon a method of appeal.

We announce its purpose in the author's language rather than our own.

"In the course of an inquiry into the meaning and origin of the mysticism of Plato, my attention was arrested by some peculiar traits in the character of Socrates. These appeared to me deserving of a close examination, not only for the sanction they derive from the integrity and wisdom of Socrates' character, but on account of a remarkable analogy which subsists between the state of knowledge in Socrates' times, and in our own. Each period may be considered a transitionstate from a relaxing authority to a more fully established conviction.

The Politician, requiring obligations to prevent the dissolution of all the bonds of society; the Speculatist, desiring to know how far he may urge his theories without danger to practice; and the Religious, anxious to prevent belief sinking into scepticism, and devotion being chilled into irreligion, may find much that deserves his attention in the conduct and motives of Socrates. For the very end of Socrates' philosophy is to fix important objects, and to develope sufficient motives to excite men to pursue them.

"Socrates investigated human nature for principles, and examined human affairs for consequences; and ascended, by the soundest inferences of reason, and the purest dictates of conscience, to a still higher obligation. He desired something which might be made a Discipline for the young, a Rule for the guiding of middle life, and a Support to the aged. And surely his Philosophy is addressed to the feelings of the purest time of life; yet stands the test to which the experience

and knowledge of manhood can put it; and its recollections and anticipations are among the best comforts of age. It affords a system of obligation which rests on the most enlarged view of moral and physical causation. It does not indulge in the splendid error which would separate the present from the past; yet it proposes to make the present better than the past, and the future than the present time. And, lastly, it affords one of the most perfect comments which reason and conscience have ever supplied on the truth and importance of the moral lessons we have derived from the Christian Religion.". - Pref. v-vii.

After a beautiful sketch of Socrates, as a Speculatist and a practical Moralist, the work consists of an exposition of the three great objects to which his agency was directed; viz. to rouse and elevate the minds of the people to such a reverence for the Deity as may become an influential motive to conduct to make his expression of this reverence as consistent as truth would permit with the established belief and worship of his country and the removal from his country's belief and worship of whatever principles appeared irreconcilable to reason, and prejudicial to happiness. Under these three heads are comprehended an inquiry into the rectitude of Socrates' principle of resting conduct on Divine Obligation; an inquiry into the nature, design, and result of his compliance with the religion of his country; and a consideration of the duty and the best methods of removing practical falsehoods from that religion, as generally professed.

We will not injure an argument so closely knit by separating its parts for the extraction of any; nor will we anticipate the effect of the whole on the reader by commenting on its separate portions, from some of which we should have to express our dissent, and expose what we deem their sophistry. We give only a few paragraphs which will bear disconnexion, and chiefly for the purpose of attracting our enlightened readers to a study of the work.

"Antiquity has adjudged to Socrates the palm for goodness and for wisdom; for the goodness which labors to promote the well-being, and for the wisdom which discerns what constitutes the well-being of man. In all that Socrates is recorded by his more scrupulous biographer to have said or done, there is so much good sense, and so much right feeling, that we are in danger of forgetting his power of intellect in dwelling on the soundness of his character. We are in danger of considering the philosopher, who may with truth be said to have developed all the leading truths of natural religion and morals, merely a plain good man, because he has preferred whatever is sound in practice to what is striking in theory.

"But the simplicity of Socrates' manner may with many prove as great an obstacle to his being ranked high as a philosopher, as is the soundness of his matter. If ever there existed a merely human being who could recognise the Divine voice in the plain instincts of conscience, and the simplest inferences of reason, it may be admitted that Socrates had that power. Therefore it is that his opinions and conduct exhibit a harmony so consentient between feelings not too acute, and a reason not too grave, yet each yielding its clear and perfect tone, that we are tempted to consider the instrument perfectly attuned by the Divine hand, and to think less of the master's skill. In other words, we are inclined to attribute the invariable soundness of Socrates' mind to the Divine allotment of an unerring moral sense, and to forget the largeness of his prudence in the supposed acuteness of his sagacity.

"It is thus, that some calm and majestic temple, raised by a master in Grecian art, when compared with the innumerable perplexities of Gothic barbarism, appears so indivisible in its unity, so inseparable in its completeness, that we are tempted to consider it the execution, or rather the conception, of some happy moment, and to deny that it could have been put together from an infinity of formless materials by the vexatious toilings of incessant care, directed by a profound knowledge of the principles of beauty. This is a great error

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