Taylor, Socinus, and Pelagius maintained. But the scheme has been and is rejected by orthodox ministers and churches, throughout Protestant Christendom, as subversive of the essential principles of the Gospel. The scheme is sufficiently exposed by Edwards, in his work on Original Sin; and I deem it unnecessary for me to say more on the subject.

In the article in the number of the Repository for January, 1844, page 124, line 11 from the bottom, after "otherwise," insert with me.

[Concluded in the next number.]

ARTICLE VIII.

SKETCHES IN GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY.

By Rev. William S. Tyler, Professor in Amherst College, Mass.

INTRODUCTORY.

Socrates.

In the first year of the ninety-sixth Olympiad (B. C. 396) there died at Athens a martyr to the truth-a victim to popular prejudice-who has been justly styled, by way of eminence, the Moral Philosopher, and whose influence, embodied in the Grecian Philosophy, will live and spread itself with the imperishable literature of Greece, till earthly knowledge shall vanish away. He was of humble origin, but Wisdom adopted him as her favorite son, and gave him a nature of unfading glory. The son of a statuary and a midwife, he playfully remarked, that, at different periods of his life, he followed the profession of each of his parents-that of his father in earning his daily bread, and that of his mother in developing the character of his numerous disciples; for in the height of his fame as a philosopher and a teacher, this aged sage claimed no higher pre

rogative, than simply to evolve from his pupils the ideas and sentiments which lay dormant within them-a conception of education so just and true, that it has been incorporated into the very structure of the Latin and the English language. Yet in the education of himself, he had not only to cherish the growth of good seed, but to check the seminal principles of much evil. With the head of a Silenus, as he is described by a favorite pupil, and with all those gross propensities of which such a physiognomy is indicative, as he himself confessed, he formed a character of unblemished purity and extraordinary wisdom. With Xantippe for a wife, he congratulated himself on living in so fine a school of patience. When she pelted him with a storm of angry words within doors, he avenged himself by teaching his sons a lesson of filial duty to their mother. When she threw water on him, as he left the house, he dryly remarked, that rain was to be expected after so much thunder. With Crito for a patron, and several of the chief men of Athens for his providers, he lived in a style of the plainest simplicity and the strictest temperance. More than two thousand years before the boasted era of the temperance reform, he had discovered the fundamental principle of that reformation, and recommended to those who were given to appetite, as the only rule which would afford them safety, entire abstinence from such articles of diet and luxury as stimulated them to eat when they were not hungry, and to drink when they were not thirsty.

In an age of Sophists, he taught a true philosophy and a genuine eloquence. The style and spirit, as well as the result, of his teaching may be seen in the following tribute from the pleasure-loving yet aspiring Alcibiades, as recorded in Plato's Banquet of Philosophers: "When I heard Pericles or any other great orator, I was entertained and delighted, and I felt that he had spoken well. But no mortal speech has ever excited in my inind such emotions as are kindled by this magician. Whenever I hear him, I am, as it were, chained and fettered. My heart leaps like an inspired Coryphant. My inmost soul is stung by his words, as by the bite of a serpent; it is indignant at its own rude and ignoble character. I often weep tears of regret, and think how vain and inglorious is the life I lead. Nor am I the only one that weeps like a child and despairs of himself; many others are affected in the same way." Never was there penned a more perfect description of true effective eloquence. The eloquence of the pulpit especially should be that

of Socrates. The hearer should go away, not thinking how well the orator has spoken, but stung to the inmost soul, indignant at his own rude and ignoble character, and weeping tears of shame and repentance over his vain and inglorious life.

In an age of polytheism and idolatry, and among a people proverbial for their superstition, Socrates taught, so far as uninspired reason can teach, a true and spiritual religion. He believed in one supreme and eternal God, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely wise, and just, and good, who created the universe, who governs the natural and the moral world, who hears prayer, who gives wisdom to those that ask it of him, and who will reward the truly pious by the everlasting enjoyment of himself, in a future life. Socrates furnished the elements and outlines of Paley's Natural Theology; it is greatly to be regretted that he had not contributed as largely to the Moral Philosophy. For the system of the heathen moralist is as much superior to that of the Christian, as virtue is a higher and better end than happiness, and the claims of duty are paramount to the considerations of personal interest.

In like manner, his sentiments on providence and prayer, as they were not only uttered by his lips, but illustrated in his life, might well put to the blush many a doubting and many a philosophizing Christian. His was an intelligent and yet an unwavering faith, a childlike trust in superior wisdom-the truly believing spirit acting itself out habitually in a corresponding life. Amazed that men should be so easily swayed from a course of known duty by the flatteries or the frowns of the world, he declared that he would no more swerve from that path when disclosed to him by the wisdom of God, than he would follow a blind and ignorant guide in preference to one who had the clearest vision and the most perfect acquaintance with the road he wished to travel. With humility only equalled by his wisdom, he simply prayed, that God would give him good things, without further specification, since the Deity knew infinitely better than himself what things are truly good. To pray, as too many did, for pleasure, power, riches, or any so-called earthly good, was as foolish in his estimation, as to pray for a game of chance, or any thing else, which was as likely to prove a bane as a benefit, and might peradventure involve his utter ruin. In the same spirit of deference to divine authority, he bowed to the oracular response, which pronounced him to be the wisest of men, but he modestly put this construction upon it: Others thought they

knew far more than they did know; he was sensible he knew almost nothing and in this particular he must acknowledge his own superiority to them. Yet the modesty of Socrates was at the farthest possible remove from the affected ignorance of the skeptic. He had a moral and religious creed, to which he held with unbroken firmness, and which linked him to the Eternal throne. He was modest, not because he knew nothing, but because there was so much more which he did not know. This modesty was that of the philosopher, when he looks out over a boundless universe-and like that of the Christian, when he looks up to an infinite God.

Socrates was a reformer in politics, as well as in religion. With a devotion to his country which often led him to peril his life in her service, and a deference to her laws and lawfully constituted authorities which would not let him evade, when he might, the execution of her unjust sentence against himself, he at the same time made no secret of his dislike for her ultra-democratic constitution, and the tyrannical exercise of unlimited power by her excited populace. With a consistency not to be found in the ultra-democracy of modern times, the Athenians asserted their perfect mutual equality, by casting lots for public officers among the entire list of citizens. Socrates told them that not a man of them would be such a fool as to act upon the same principle in the selection of a pilot, or a musician, or in the pettiest of all his private concerns. In his defence, written by Plato, and imagined to be spoken before the people, (a fictitious defence, indeed, but yet true to the character and spirit of Socrates,) he assures them that they have always ostracised or condemned by form of law, or otherwise persecuted their most distinguished citizens, and no man can expect to live long, who tells them the truth, or advises them for their good.

Here we see the secret of his accusation, condemnation, and death. He taught his fellow-citizens a wisdom too pure, spiritual and sublime for their comprehension. He told them truths which they could not bear to hear; and they sent him the cup of hemlock. His last hours he spent with his disciples, conversing on the immortality of the soul. He bade them to dispose of his body as they saw fit; but to conceive of Socrates as an emancipated, happy spirit. His last words are variously interpreted. We cannot speak of them with confidence. But may we not hope they were not the words of an idolater? Do not his known character and established opinions authorize, if not

require us to give them an allegorical interpretation? "Offer a cock to Esculapius;" as if he had said, "Render a thank-offering to the God of health; I am almost well. I shall soon recover, and rise to a higher, better life." Words, thus understood, worthy to fall from the lips of the dying Christian! The whole scene was so affecting that his disciples were bathed in tears; and Cicero says, he could never read of it without weeping!

Socrates may have had his blind panegyrists-his indiscriminate admirers. Doubtless he has. Perhaps the writer is among them. If any think so, we would only say, with his disciple and biographer, Xenophon: Compare any other man's character with his-take into view the age in which he lived, and the difficulties which he encountered, and then decide between them. Quite sure we are, he has had his unjust censure-his unreasonable detractors. Critics and theologians have united to misrepresent and decry him.

Macaulay has done him no little injustice, in his brilliant and fascinating, but partial and sophistical review of Bacon. He represents him (on the authority of Bacon, too, he would have us believe) as the author of a reformation, which was far from being an improvement in the Greek Philosophy-as the father of a system of barren speculation, which could not condescend to the humble and degrading office of ministering to the comfort of human beings, and which gloried in nothing so much as its splendid unprofitableness. But is this said of Socrateswho stanched the wounds of the bleeding Xenophon, and bore away from the battle-field the fallen Alcibiades; who cheered the solitary artisan in his shop, and instructed him in the principles of his art; who, by his wise counsels and his personal influence, comforted so many desponding minds, and soothed so many aching hearts; who reconciled family feuds, regulated social and convivial entertainments, and put a check to legislative and judicial injustice; who silenced the declamations of sophists, baffled the rage of tyrants, and withstood the lawless violence of the popular assembly in a word, whose characteristic glory it was, in the opinion of the academic Cicero, that he brought Philosophy down from heaven to earth, and made her the companion and guide of men in the private walks of life? Surely, here must be some mistake. There was doubtless ground enough for such a charge against many of the so-called Socratic schools of speculative philosophy, which were founded by his