SOURCE: "Socrates and Christ," in Socrates and Christ: A Lecture Given at Northwestern University, Northwestern University, 1928, pp. 5-52.

[In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture, Scott reviews Socrates's life and philosophic thought in order to demonstrate the influence of Socrates on Christianity. He argues that Socrates rejected the Olympic gods and thus left his followers searching for "a god of purity and a god of justice ", and he suggests that Christianity was successfully established in Greece due to this legacy.]

During September of 480 B.C. in the waters between the Island of Salamis and the harbor of Athens the great fleet of the Persians was defeated, and Xerxes returned to Asia leaving his foremost general with a huge army to subdue the small and divided forces of Greece, but the next summer this huge army was utterly destroyed,—so utterly that assurance was given to Athens of freedom from barbarian invasion, and permission to develop her own civilization.

Never has there been such an enthusiastic delight in the joys of the mind and in the reproduction of beauty in various and enduring forms. Never have so many outstanding men of genius of the highest creative order been found in one century or in one city as then moved within the streets of Athens.

Socrates was born in 469, or just ten years after the repulse of the Persians. His country still thrilled with pride in that unbelievable victory and was entering hopefully upon the great Age of Pericles. His life thus covered the morning, the noonday, and the evening of that mighty epoch.

His father was a sculptor, and it meant something to be a sculptor in an age and among a people that fashioned the Parthenon and carved its frieze and its pediments. The son followed the craft of his father and is said to have created a group of the Graces of such beauty that it was honored with a place on the Acropolis, where it was still to be seen after the lapse of several centuries.

Greek thought and Greek morals at that time were wholly materialistic. Thinking men tried to explain all things by laws of rest or of motion, by assumptious of infinite division or of all-embracing unity. There was no need of a Creator, since matter and motion explained everything. There was no such thing as a moral conscience or a moral law, and one of the greatest thinkers, Protagoras, proclaimed the axiom, "Man is himself the measure of all things," meaning that there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong, but only individual opinion and that all opinions were of equal value and all worthless,—thus introducing the germ of moral anarchy and the rejection of all authority. Gorgias followed by extending to science the agnosticism already existing in morals, and by declaring that knowledge of any sort is impossible, that nothing really exists, that if it did exist, it could not be known, and even if it existed and were known, this knowledge could not be imparted to others.

Teachers flocked to Athens eager to instruct the wealthier youth, for high fees, on how to succeed in nearly everything but in character, especially how to win without labor or merit and how to violate the laws without danger of punishment.

The young sculptor heard these men, asked them many questions, reasoned much, and became convinced that they were false prophets, also that there is a just ruler of the universe, that there is a law of the spirit and a moral law, and that these laws are as universal and unerring as the laws of matter. He put down his mallet and his chisel and spent the rest of his long and vigorous life in searching for this spiritual law.

In his searchings he met men of many sorts. He questioned them, reasoned with them in shops, markets, gymnasia, wherever he could find them. For almost forty years he must have been the most familiar figure in his own city. A list of the famous people who listened to him and to whom he listened would include at least one-half of the super-great of Greece. It may be doubted if any man ever knew intimately so many persons of the very highest order as did Socrates. He soon became conspicuous even in that great company and his society was sought not only by the élite of Athens but also by the great from all parts of Greece. Once when war had closed the frontier between Attica and Megara, the most distinguished citizen of Megara is said to have slipped into Athens disguised as a woman, just to enjoy the conversation of Socrates. The Oracle at Delphi proclaimed him as the wisest of men, and the rising young poet, Aristophanes, wrote a comedy, The Clouds, with Socrates at the center of the merriment. Aristophanes used Socrates at different times and other comic poets, as well as he, tried to win prizes and glory by making this familiar figure the butt of their humor.

However, the great event in two great lives was the meeting of Socrates and Plato, for this meeting meant a new birth for Plato, and through Plato the life and teachings of Socrates found a fitting immortality. Plato was then a poet of growing and assured distinction, about twenty years of age, while Socrates was a little more than sixty.

Plato lived more than fifty years after the death of his master and he wrote many books. We have from him the greatest bulk of any writer of classical Greece, yet in all these books except the very last, the work of extreme old age, his writings are essentially confined to the things he assumed he had heard from Socrates. Paul said, "For me to live is Christ." Plato with equal justice could have said, "For me to live is Socrates." The convincing proof of the greatness of Socrates is the lasting influence he had with such a competent judge as Plato.

The fixed principle of Socrates' life was that knowledge is the one thing needful, that sin is due to an error in thinking, that men who know the right will in the end do the right. A favorite theory of his was that a man who errs ignorantly is more dangerous than one who errs wilfully. Since the man who errs wilfully needs only to be convinced that his interests and aims are best served by following the better course, he will therefore follow that course. However, there is no need to convince the ignorant man, since he, not knowing the better course, cannot follow it and will blunder just the same. For example, a pilot who runs a ship on a reef wilfully can be shown that it is to his advantage to steer a safe course, but the ignorant pilot will continue to run on reefs, simply because he does not know how to do anything else. Such a statement would shock many a person who could not answer it. These people began to fear him.

He constantly argued that it took experts for everything but for politics, that no one would trust cloth to a tailor, leather to a cobbler, ships to a captain, unless he knew the people engaged had learned the trade and were able to show when and where they had learned it. In ruling the state, which he claimed was the most difficult, important and dangerous of all occupations, men were chosen who had no training, no experience, and no character. Hence the politicians hated him.

He put all the facts or the stories of religion and mythology to the test of reason and asked many hard questions that could not be answered by those in religious authority. Hence all the pious conservatives tried to silence him.

Athens had seen terrible days in the last five years of the fifth century. She had lost her colonies, had watched a hostile fleet ride in her harbor, with her own fleet scattered and destroyed; had been obliged to tear down the walls that protected her citizens and had seen this destruction carried on to the accompaniment of music and dancing, and then had seen her liberties taken from her and thirty brutal tyrants put in control. At last brutality went too far, a conquered people arose and recovered its liberties and started again upon the career of independent freedom. Under these conditions the people did not look ahead but back; they longed for the good old days of peace and power, when all the citizens had faith and when the gods visited the land with favoring prosperity. All the reactionaries shouted, "Faith of our Fathers, triumphant Faith!" And they were militant, too. The politicians joined them, also those who had been silenced by the reasoning of Socrates,—silenced but not convinced. He was just the man who carried in his own person all the forces which seemed to typify the new age when compared with the old, the old age of their imagination. He was tried for disbelief in the gods, and thus corrupting the youth; convicted, and he died by taking the hemlock in 399 B.C., when he was a little more than seventy.

To illustrate what I wish to say about Socrates I shall select four scenes: the conversation he had with Euthyphro just before the trial; the trial itself; a scene in the prison, also his last hours and death.

When it became known that he was to be tried on a capital charge, his friends urged him to prepare a defense, but he replied that somehow he could not get up any interest in the matter, and to their dismay he continued utterly indifferent to the trial and the outcome. On the way to the place where his trial was to be held he meets a young orthodox conservative, Euthyphro, and he finds to his delight that this man is an authority on all moral and religious matters, just the man to give him the needed instruction before the trial, for he is certain that if he can master the things Euthyphro knows and can tell the judges what he has learned, they will be convinced and everything will be settled. Socrates asked this expert if he could define holiness and unholiness. Instantly he replied, "Whatever pleases the gods is holy, whatever does not please them is unholy." "Fine!" replied Socrates. "Do you believe the tales that tell how the gods fought with each other, how Cronus mutilated his own father, and was in turn driven from power and from heaven by Zeus, his own son?" "I certainly do, and I can tell more startling tales than these," was the confident reply. Then Socrates continued, "If you and I do not agree regarding number we settle the matter by counting. If we differ regarding the size of anything we simply weigh or measure that thing and the dispute is ended. The only thing for which we would quarrel and which we cannot so easily settle is the question of right and of wrong, and the only thing that can produce quarrels and wars is the failure to agree on what is right and what is wrong. Hence, if the gods quarrel, as you affirm, it can only be because they disagree on moral issues. Therefore they cannot themselves be the criterion of holiness and unholiness, since some of the quarreling gods must think that identical thing is right which the opposing gods think is wrong."

When this little statement got repeated and its meaning understood there could no longer be any real faith in the gods of Greek mythology. He next asked the young man to define worship, and he replied: "Service of the gods." Socrates then asked him, if it is not the purpose of service to improve the thing served and if the only aim of service is not the betterment of the object of service. Thus, a server of dogs improves dogs, of horses improves horses, and a physician or server of health improves the health of the person served; hence service of the gods must improve the gods. "Oh, no!" exclaimed Euthyphro, "men cannot improve the gods and make them better!" "I thought not," replied Socrates, "but if worship does not improve the gods, just what does it do?" Euthyphro, not a whit abashed, answered that he knew, but that he was in a hurry and would answer later. Socrates expressed great disappointment that the man who knew it all was so thrifty of his knowledge and would not clear up these difficulties for him. These two questions,—how can the quarreling divinities of Greek mythology be the source of righteousness, and, if the gods are perfect, how can they be served by sacrifices which they neither need nor enjoy?—these questions could not be answered, and the fact that they were asked cleared the field for a new religion that could and did answer them.

The Greeks never arrived at the conception of a holy god, or looked upon worship as anything else than the purchase at a small price of great favors from unwilling and jealous deities. We cannot conceive of religion apart from morality, but they looked upon religion simply as the performance of ceremonies; it did not touch the life or conscience of the worshiper. There is no occasion in Greek history where the priests and religious leaders called the people to a higher moral life; these men thought only of ritual, and the enrichment of the temple or the sanctuary. The gods of their belief were cruel, jealous, and unscrupulous. The words of Jesus, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect," could have had little meaning for Greek ears.

In the course of the trial, after the accusers had made their charges, Socrates arose and spoke not in his own defense but on the necessity of searching for truth. He told of his great astonishment when assured that the Oracle at Delphi had declared him the wisest of men, since he was conscious of no knowledge at all. In his perplexity he went to different men of great reputation, hoping to find that these men were exceedingly wise. Then, when he found them wise, he would ask the god what he meant when he called Socrates the wisest, since these men were plainly much wiser. These different men were all alike, they did know some one thing better than Socrates, and this knowledge regarding one subject gave them conceit on all subjects, so that they were ready to give authoritative opinions regarding everything. When Socrates tried to show them their ignorance on all matters but their specialty, they became angry. Then after each fruitless encounter he would say to himself: "I am at least wiser than this man, because he thinks he knows many things which he does not, while I do not know and do not think I know." After long searchings and constant disappointments he reached this conclusion: "The oracle must have meant: 'Human wisdom is naught, and that person is wisest who like Socrates knows that he knows nothing."' He then did not wholly despair, but he said: "I continued to search everywhere for wisdom, questioning whatever citizen or stranger seemed to be wise, but when I found he was not wise, I tried to point out his mistake and to remove his false impression of knowledge. This searching has taken all my time and I have been unable to enter politics, or to look after my own private affairs, and I have spent my life in unlimited poverty while seeking for wisdom.

"Perhaps someone might say, 'How foolish to pursue a course which has brought poverty and is sure to lead to danger and possibly to death.' I reply, 'Sir, you reason not well, if you think that any man who deserves the name of man, counts the cost of life or death, but does not fix his eye on this alone, whether he does what is just or unjust, deeds worthy of a noble man or of a coward. To say that a man must shun danger is to bring dishonor on all those heroes who have dared to die in defense of their country, when by flight they might have been saved. Thus matters stand. 0 men of Athens, wherever one takes his stand, whether from his own choice, or by higher orders, there he should remain, refusing to count any cost, even life itself, at the price of faithful obedience. God has appointed me to search for truth, I cannot now desert my post. I have no fear of death, since I do not know that death is an evil, for it may be the highest good; but I do know that to desert one's call to duty is an evil, and therefore I shall never seek to avoid a possible good by choosing that which I know is an evil, for, after all, fear of death is only a form of self-conceit, the conceit that one knows what he does not know. If you should now offer to acquit me on the sole condition that I should remain quiet and cease from this search, I would reply, 'Men of Athens, I love you and admire you, but 1 must obey God rather than you, and so long as I live I shall never cease searching and urging you to strive for the nobler life, for I am convinced that the greatest good I can do to my city is to urge my fellow citizens to search for wisdom and to exhort them not to care for their lives, nor for their possessions, but to care for righteousness since it is from righteousness that real success comes to both city and citizens. Therefore, men of Athens, acquit me or convict me, as you choose, but be assured of this: I will not change my course even to avoid many deaths.' My accusers cannot harm me, since a good man cannot be injured by a bad. True, they can deprive me of my property, drive me into exile, or even put me to death, but I do not count these as injuries, since they do not affect my moral nature." He then turned to the jury and told the jurors that they need not expect from him the thing they anticipate from other defendants; that he would not bring his children to beg for him, nor would he beg for himself; and that a judge does not sit to dispense justice as a favor, but to decide according to the laws; and in this spirit, he concluded: "I yield to you and to God to decide as it may prove best for me and also for you."

Since many of the jurors were already prejudiced, since many could not comprehend, and since many thought that they had been defied, such a speech could have but one result. The ballot showed 220 votes for acquittal and 281 for conviction, a vote so close that it is certain it would have been changed to an acquittal, if Socrates had been more courteous and less defiant in his tone. It must be said to the credit of Athens that 220 jurors voted his acquittal in the face of an extremely unyielding and almost taunting address.

Even the conviction meant little, as a second vote had yet to be taken to determine the punishment, and a very light one would have been accepted. All that he needed to have done, at the worst, was to have moved to Megara to the home of a famous pupil ready to welcome him. Or he could have gone to Thebes, where there was almost a colony of his admirers. If he moved to Megara or to Thebes, the distance was about thirty miles to one city and forty to the other. It is also said that he was invited to share the palace of the King of Macedon,—an invitation accepted but a few years before by the poet, Euripides. Socrates did not choose to withdraw to any friendly city, but determined to abide by the decision yet to be made by the jury. There was no superior court to reverse or change the decision. He knew that the punishment awarded would be final, and presumably immediate.

The prosecutor demanded that death be the penalty. Socrates must present an alternative punishment, and the jury was obliged to select from these two. There could be no compromise and no other punishment. It must be either the death demanded, or some other penalty deemed sufficient by a jury which had already found him guilty. It was certainly a tragic moment when Socrates arose with seeming indifference and expressed his great surprise that so many had voted his acquittal, as he had felt the vote would be almost solid against him, and then he continued: "My accuser fixes the punishment at death. What counter punishment should I offer? What should an old man suffer fittingly in return for the fact that during all his life he has neglected wealth, comfort, position, in order to search for wisdom and to encourage others to neglect everything else and to seek for righteousness? What is a just punishment for such a man? I can think of no more proper penalty than making him a guest of the city and dining him in that state building where the official guests of Athens are entertained. I am convinced that I never deliberately wronged a single person and I do not now propose to wrong myself by suggesting any sort of punishment. Some one of you might ask, 'Could you not at least agree to keep still?' Now that is just the thing you cannot comprehend, since I believe that the greatest good that can come to a man is for him each day to test his own life and the lives of others, for the untested life is no life at all for man. These things I cannot make you understand in the brief time allotted to me, but I have never accustomed myself to think that a life spent wholly in search for truth deserves any punishment."

Certainly such a proposal could have but one result as the jurors who had already voted him guilty could not then have voted him the guest of the state. His friends in the audience or in the jury, evidently in terror and despair, urged him to offer something which the jurors could accept. He then said at their request: "Plato, Crito, Critoboulus, and Apollodorus urge me to fix as the penalty a fine to be paid in money. All right; I am entirely indifferent about money, as money means nothing to me. I will set a money fine at 30 Minae [about $500], a fine which these men will guarantee, and these men are certainly good for that sum."

A bare majority was all that was needed in an Athenian court. There was always an odd number of jurors; therefore a single ballot settled the matter. The jury of course could not go back on itself; hence it accepted the penalty suggested by the prosecutor. Socrates was condemned to death. There were no possible technicalities, no reviews. The matter was at an end.

An Athenian audience was rarely in a hurry, so that while the clerk was making out the papers for commitment and execution, the jurors and spectators lingered. Then Socrates arose once more and discussed the meaning of death, summing the matter up with these words: "We ought then to be of good cheer in the face of death and to hold firmly that this one thing, at least, is true: no evil can come to a righteous man either in life or in death, and his interests are not neglected by the gods." Ordinarily a condemned criminal was executed at once, either on the day of the trial or the following; but a religious ceremony had just begun and it continued until a sacred ship had been prepared, sent to Delos, and returned to Athens. During this period the state could execute no prisoners. At this particular time the sacred festival lasted for thirty days, during which period Socrates was visited in his prison by friends with whom he discussed the problems of human understanding, the laws of logic, and the issues of life and death.

On the day of the expected return of the sacred ship his wealthy friend, Crito, came before dawn. He was at once admitted by the friendly jailer, and he was surprised to find Socrates in peaceful slumber. He sat long beside him, not wishing to disturb the rest of the friend who was to die so soon. When Socrates perceived that Crito was at his side, he asked "Why so early?" Crito replied that the ship had been sighted the day before, just off the entrance to the Athenian waters, that now everything was at stake, and there was no time to be lost. Another day would be too late. Socrates said: "I trust that that ship will have a safe and happy entrance into her hoped-for harbor, but what is the cause of all your excitement?" Crito then with tearful earnestness told Socrates that a home was ready for him in a near and friendly city, outside the jurisdiction of Athens; that his trial had been a farce; that he had been unjustly condemned, as he well knew; that his friends were in disgrace, because they did not come to his aid at the trial, as they would have done if he had allowed them; that he had three small children who needed his help and guidance; that for the sake of his friends and his family, if not for his own, he should walk out of the opened jail and follow eager friends to safety.

Socrates, deeply touched by the affection and earnestness of this faithful friend, answered: "Your zeal is great and I thank you much, but is the cause just? For if it is not, the greater the zeal the worse is the result. Let us forget that I am about to die, but let us, as reasonable men, calmly consider the facts. All my life I have never followed any course except that course which on mature deliberation seemed to me the wisest." That is, he had never allowed interest or passion to influence his acts or his judgment.

I wonder if any other man has ever been able to say that thing? Paul certainly could not, for he exclaimed: "That which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I."

Then Socrates continued: "Life is not the thing of supreme importance, but a good life. A good life must be the life of one who treats every person justly, whatever injustice he may have received. If I now leave the jail as you desire, I shall have flouted and injured the laws of my native city, and shall be a law-breaker the rest of this life and all of the life to come. Having lived seventy years as a law-abiding citizen, I propose to die that way."

He refused to follow his friends and chose to die rather than to break the laws, and in this choice he willingly met a punishment which he knew was unjust. The little book of Plato's which tells this story, the Crito, is certainly a trumpet call to the obedience of law by all who would care to be known as good citizens.

On the day set for his death the little prison was thronged by admirers who came not so much to comfort him as to receive comfort. The story is told by one disciple to another disciple who could not be present, and that story is in turn preserved by Plato, for poor Plato on that day was sick, he could not bear the strain. During the day Socrates talked almost constantly, discussing great moral problems, the relations of this world with the world to come, the moral aspects of suicide. Once when he was interrupted with word from the executioner that if he did not remain quiet it might be necessary for him to drink twice or three times as much of the poison, "All right," Socrates replied, "let there be prepared three times as much," and went right on with the discussion. He reasoned that the mind or the soul alone can grasp truth; that the body hinders the pursuit of that truth; that the senses could grasp only the temporal, the fleeting; that the mind catches hold of the permanent and unseen realities, or as is said by Paul: "For we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

Socrates argued that we can attain to wisdom only when the mind is freed from the restraints and imperfections of the body, hence it would be foolish to fear death. He then discussed a multitude of subjects with his companions, such as the powers of reasoning and the need of trusting in pure logic; the relations of numbers and why it is that two odd numbers make an even, as well as two even numbers make an even; what it is that makes people and things differ in size; then the shape of the earth, reaching the conclusion that the earth is a sphere unsupported in space. Next he advanced a series of arguments for his belief in the immortality of the soul, concluding with these words: "My friends, since the soul is to live forever we must care for it, not only for this time we call life but for all eternity, for if we neglect it the danger is terrible. If death meant the end of all it would be a boon for the wicked, since by their dying they could get rid of their wickedness, but inasmuch as the soul is immortal there is no escape except by striving after wisdom and righteousness, for the soul takes nothing with it but the moral nature it has acquired." These are not the words of a loose-reasoning fanatic, but the reasonings of one of the most logical thinkers mankind has known. He concludes: "This, then, is the reason why a man should be of good cheer in the face of death, a man who has adorned his soul with its own peculiar ornaments, such ornaments as temperance, justice, courage, freedom and truth."

When the moment came to take the hemlock, Crito asked: "How shall we bury you?" Socrates with a smile replied: "Any way you please, if you can only catch me," and then, laughing, he turned to his companions, saying: "I cannot persuade Crito that the Socrates who talks and reasons is the real Socrates, since he thinks that I am the one whom he will soon see as a corpse, and asks how he shall bury me? I shall not be here but shall already have gone to share in the joys of the blessed. Do not say at the funeral that you are burying Socrates, but only the body of Socrates." He prefaced this last sentence with a most characteristic Socratic remark: "For you know well, my good Crito, that careless and slipshod definition is not only an error in the thing itself, but produces a sort of moral deterioration in the soul." When the executioner came in, that officer was weeping, and he told Socrates how much he had come to love him, how hard his task was, and asked him not to make the task any harder by being angry at the thing his office made him do. With words of thanks and comfort, Socrates cheered the poor fellow, took the cup into his own hands and drank it without a sign of any regret or emotion. When his friends saw him drink they could not restrain their tears or hide their anguish. He turned to them and begged them to restrain themselves, since he had heard that one should die free from the sound of words of ill omen.

The friend who tells of his death, ends with these words: "Such was the death of our companion, the best, the wisest, and most just of all the men whom we have known."

Socrates left no writings, founded no school, and never called himself a teacher, since he was always a searcher, an unsuccessful searcher, as he thought, for wisdom and for truth. The example of his unselfish life and fearless death for an ideal was his great contribution to the betterment of the world. But a life that bases virtue solely on knowledge, that takes no account of human frailties, and the life of a man who could truthfully say that, so long as he had lived, he had never done a single thing contrary to the course which his deliberate reason had selected as the best,—such a life and such an example could appeal only to the few, to the elect; it offered little to the weak and the erring. Socrates must have had great influence on the thinking and the self-reliant, but the common mass could not have followed him.

We are dependent on two men for almost all of our knowledge of Socrates: Xenophon and Plato, each a writer of fame, and they only vaguely agree. Xenophon wrote many books describing other famous men and these men are distressingly like his portrait of Socrates. One of his heroes was Cyrus the Great of Persia, and this Cyrus was only his Socrates removed to Persia and put on the throne. I am inclined to think that his Cyrus and his Socrates are both ideal pictures of what Xenophon would have done in their position.

This throws us on Plato alone, but Plato is regarded as the world's greatest artist in prose, with the reasoning powers of a philosopher and with the imagination of the most daring poet. Therefore we are never sure, when Socrates speaks, that we are not reading the ideas as well as the words of Plato. It is certain that the spell of Socrates followed him all his life, that it was his ideal he sought to achieve, and that a man with the noble ambitions of Plato could not have been inspired by one whom he did not regard as his superior. The estimate of Socrates given by Plato cannot be far wrong.

We have two prayers by Socrates: "Thou beloved god, Pan, grant to me that I be made beautiful within and that the outward man be in harmony with that inward beauty. May I esteem as rich the man who is wise, and may I have only such wealth as a self-reliant man can support with safety." It seems absurd to address a prayer for beauty and purity to that ugly and licentious god, Pan. And the other prayer is: "O king Zeus, grant to us what is good, whether we ask for it or not, and turn away from us the evil, even if we pray for it."

No Greek ever had high or pure thoughts because of his theology, but in spite of it. Greek men were better than their gods. When the noble ideas of Socrates had once been uttered the world could not let them wholly die. Hence his followers continued his search for ideals worthy of sacrifice. But they soon became divided. One part thought happiness was the goal of life and that pleasure was the end of all well-being. These men were called Epicureans. Another group thought that the best life consisted in indifference alike to pain and to pleasure. They argued that if the ledger of life is balanced, one will find that the sorrows are more than the joys; hence the only way to keep the account from showing a deficit is neither to laugh nor to weep, but to accept with stern indifference both mirth and sorrow. These men were called Stoics. Still another group believed that true happiness consisted in removing one's self from all the comforts and associations of life and in despising the conventions of society. These were called Cynics. However these groups varied in method, they all agreed in this: they did not return to a belief in the gods as those gods had been worshipped before Socrates.

They wearied in the search for something worthy of faith and worship and ended for the most part in flat despair. Even the proofs of immortality brought them no comfort, but only fear and torments. One of the chief poets of Italy, Lucretius, wrote one of the great poems of all tine with the noble purpose of freeing men from a belief in their own immortality, and in an eternity which they could only dread. He argued that there was no plan in the universe, that everything was the result of material forces, unguided by intelligence, that man was only matter, and that he need have no dread of a future in which he was not to have a share. This absolute negation of God, Providence, and immortality, led to a contempt not only for the future life but for the life that is, so that even this great poet is said to have put an end to his own career. Philosophers of that period, that is, just before and just after the beginning of the Christian era, had no hope and could find no source of comfort, so that a long list of the great thinkers of that age will show that they gave up the effort in despair and ended their despondency in suicide. The illustrious Cato, patriot, moralist, and philosopher, after having reread the story of the death of Socrates, is assumed to have said:

It must be so, Plato, thou reasonest well,
Else why this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality,

and then took his disillusioned and hopeless life.

At that time Socrates seemed not only to have lived in vain but to have inspired a search for the impossible and to have given birth to a dread of a hopeless immortality. He had forever shaken the beliefs in the old Olympian divinities and had sent men seeking for what they had not found: a god of purity and a god of justice. By the time of the Caesars his followers, for the most part, had no message and the best they could offer was contempt for the world and for life itself. Hence the indifference with which they contemplated and carried out suicide.

"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick," but high hope abandoned leaves nothing with which to face the future. Yet under these conditions the Athenians multiplied the number of their divinities and even erected a statue or shrine to the "unknown god." A highly significant thing about that remarkable chapter which contains Paul's address on Mars Hill, are the words which follow that marvelous address: "Howbeit certain clave unto him and believed, among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite." This man was not only a member of the supreme court of Athens but was presumably also a philosopher. Dionysius would not have accepted this strange faith at once if it had not been a thing long in his heart, for the Jesus preached by Paul seemed the fulfillment of the vision dimly seen by Socrates, and it was just because of that vision that Christianity so soon took root in Greece. The chapter which tells of Dionysius the Areopagite, contains these significant words: "and there believed of the devout Greeks a great multitude." Also "Therefore many of them believed; also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few." The first disciples who gathered around Jesus were like him, Hebrews—and so was Paul—but the leaders of the next generation, as well as the author of the book of Acts, were Greeks. Most of the early Christian fathers and the martyrs, after the first disciples, have Greek names. Their writings show that they accepted Jesus as the realization of the hopes inspired by the teachings of Socrates.

The structure of the Church is Greek, as is shown by the vocabulary, since bishop, priest, presbyter, deacon, episcopal, martyr, angel, esslesiastic, catholic, cathedral, choir, chorus, hymn, psalm, tune, clergy, laity, prophet, patriarch, evangel, apostle, even the words church and Bible, are all Greek. Without the work done by Socrates in destroying belief in the gods of paganism and in creating a longing for some such God as that revealed by Jesus, it cannot be doubted that Christianity would have found as barren a soil in Greece as it found among the Pharisees,—and even worse, for the Pharisees looked for a Messiah as the fulfillment of prophecy, while there was no such expectancy among the Greeks.

It was no accident, then, that Christianity soon outgrew Judaa and Jewish leaders and found among the Greeks those thinkers which gave it the structure, the content, and the vocabulary which it has ever since maintained,—thus fulfilling the words of Jesus: "I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." This great religious conversion, the most striking and important that ever took place among a people already civilized and cultured, was largely due to that simple sculptor who gave up ease, fortune, position, even life itself in the search for truth and for spiritual riches.

Everything that has been said about the setting for the life and career of Socrates must be reversed when speaking of Jesus, for Athens was the center of greatness and Socrates moved among the greatest of the great, while Nazareth was so humble, even in the humble region of Galilee, that a young man from an inconspicuous neighboring village said with a sneer: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" The companions of Jesus were of the lowliest sort, so lowly that they were noticeable "unlearned and ignorant men." Jesus never seems to have associated with a single person of outstanding education or position. Even Nicodemus, who came to him by night, would have had no high rank in Athens or in Rome.

We owe our knowledge of Socrates to two men, Xenophon and Plato, both men of such unusual literary ability and imagination that we never know how much of what they tell us about Socrates is pure invention and how much is fact. The men who tell us about Christ were simple men, men of no reputation apart from what they derive from telling us of him,—men without literary imagination, just fitted for the simple narration of unadorned facts. A thing which pleases me much in Boswell's Life of Johnson is the way Boswell makes clever side remarks when quoting Johnson. But the writers of the Gospels never had that much self-reliance or assumption; they made no clever side remarks.

No other character until well on in the age of printing has been described by so many different persons who knew him well as was Jesus. Of very few people who lived in antiquity have we any account written by those who knew them. We are obliged to rely for all that we know of even such outstanding men as Solon, Hannibal, or Scipio, on the writings of men who lived several generations later. Certainly the most prominent men of the time of Christ were Augustus, the Roman Emperor under whom he was born, and Tiberius, under whom he was crucified. Yet for most of our knowledge of these two emperiors we are forced to rely on Tacitus and Suetonius, neither of whom lived during the lives of either of these rulers.

We have letters written by James, Peter, John, and Jude, each an intimate companion of Jesus. We have many letters by Paul, an exact contemporary who knew, if not Jesus himself, many men who did. And we have four Gospels written by four men, two of them disciples; one other belonging to a family intimate with Jesus; one other written by a competent historian who lived at that time and moved through that land, a writer who says that he had full knowledge of all these matters from the very beginning. Here are eight writers, each thoroughly familiar with the facts, who vouch for the life of Jesus. The chance that the Church later gathered these writings into one book and labeled that book the New Testament does not reduce the number of first-hand authorities.

We have the unqualified statement of the best Roman historian, Tacitus, that Nero after the burning of Rome tried to escape the blame by punishing the Christians, who, says Tacitus, were the followers of Christ who had been put to death during the reign of Tiberius by Pontius Pilate, a Roman official. Here is positive proof that shortly after 60 A.D. there were already in Rome sufficient numbers of Christians to attract the attention of Nero. We have a long letter from Pliny, a governor in Asia Minor, a letter that was written to the Emperor Trajan asking him what to do with the large number of Christians who would not worship the old gods of the Romans, especially refusing to join in the cult of the Emperor.

We have a reference in Epictetus, a writer of that period, to the Christians, and we have a paragraph from Josephus who was present at Jerusalem when that city was destroyed by Titus in 70 A.D., besides a flood of references from writers who lived within a century of the time of the Apostles. Take it all in all, we have more evidence for the life of Christ outside of the New Testament than for the existence of any except very few of ancient times. But since we have the Gospels this outside evidence is needless. Here we have four contemporary documents, each written in a consistent style, and each in a style different from that of the others. Thus, the Gospel of Luke is written in long periodic sentences, evidently by a trained writer, while John is written in short sentences, evidently by a man whose education was delayed and who never dared to trust himself to the sweeping sentences so dear to the rhetorician. The style shows that we have four authors, and these four authors made no attempt to make their accounts coincide. They are telling the same story, but in different ways. Thus Matthew says that there was written on the cross: "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." Mark says that on the cross was written: "The King of the Jews," leaving out the name of Jesus entirely. Luke says that the inscription was in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: "This is the King of the Jews." He inserts the words "This is" to the words of Mark, but he adds that the inscription was in three languages. While John does not name the language, he gives the inscription as "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." John is the only one to insert the word Nazareth, while both Luke and Mark omit even the name Jesus. Certainly, if a group of men had concocted the Gospels they would all have written in the same way so important a matter as the inscription on the cross. The reason is plain: the disciples at the cross were greatly excited and in great grief; some things they saw and remembered with clearness, others they did not. At that time no one of them expected ever to write this story; they did not take notes, but years later, each remembered the fact of the inscription and that Jesus was mocked by being called "King of the Jews." They all agree to that, but the rest was either vague or else forgotten.

All the Gospels tell the story of the trial, the crucifixion, and the resurrection in essentially the same way. These were facts that they could not misunderstand or forget. Except for these mighty truths, the four have little in common. Even so important a matter as the birth of Jesus is passed over in silence by Mark, who wrote the oldest Gospel, and by John, who wrote the latest. Matthew says that "Jesus taught many things in parables, and without a parable spake he not to them." Yet John who was closest to Jesus wrote an entire Gospel without quoting a single parable. Evidently there was no collusion between the authors of these two gospels.

It is the consensus of scholars that Mark is the oldest of the Gospels, and it is an axiom of criticism that writers who depend on any given document for what they write, may dilute, expand, or condense their source, but they never add anything of value to that original document. If the writers of the Gospel depended entirely on this oldest Gospel they could not hide that dependence.

We know that Matthew was a Jew, evidently in bitter trouble, so bitter that he took a job, the most despised in the world: he became a tax gatherer for a hated usurping foreign power, and wrung taxes from his poor countrymen to be sent to their masters. No wonder that when he saw a chance, not for something better but for any escape from what he was doing, he accepted it, and followed Jesus. Matthew tells the story of the birth of Jesus; he gives the account of five miracles, and he tells fourteen parables which are not in Mark. He is the only writer to give the Beatitudes and their larger setting in the Sermon on the Mount; also all the contents of that wonderful twenty-fifth chapter are found only in his story. That chapter gives the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the parable of the Ten Talents, and the words ending in the great conclusion: "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it not to me." If Matthew, or the one whom Matthew is quoting, conceived and wrote the Sermon on the Mount and this twenty-fifth chapter, he is one of the greatest thinkers and literary artists that ever lived; but we have the best possible proof that he was nothing of the sort. He and Luke both tell of the attempt of the lawyer to tangle Jesus with hard questions. The lawyer begins by asking: "Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" The answer ends with the famous verse: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Matthew stops right there; but Luke, the Greek, the literary Greek, continues the narrative by saying that the lawyer then asked Jesus: "And who is my neighbor?" And Jesus answered and said: "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves." Then follows the great story of the good Samaritan, one of the finest stories known. Yet Matthew who heard it thought nothing of it. A man so lacking in literary appreciation was not likely to make up the Sermon on the Mount, or the great chapter which I have quoted.

If Luke depended on these two we should expect to see a restatement in other words of what he had found in Matthew and Mark, but here again we find a similar though different story. Luke alone tells us that Jesus was born in a manager. You would never suspect that from the account in Matthew. Luke alone repeats the song of the angels: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men." He alone tells the story of the Good Samatitan, and he alone tells the only story I know that can claim a place beside it, the story of the Prodigal Son. He is the only one who tells us that Jesus said on the cross: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," or his words to the thief: "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;" and the only one who repeats those other words: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." It seems to me that these few passages which I have quoted from Luke and which are in Luke alone, would place him among the very greatest writers of all time, if they were all his own. But if they are his own, he is a fraud, robbing himself of the glory he deserves, and he is using these noble ideas to fortify the imposture of another. Why should the Greek physician bestow all these treasures on the son of a Hebrew carpenter?

The last Gospel is by John. Most of that Gospel is a new story and shows other sides of the Savior. John alone repeats the words: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." It is hard for us to put ourselves back into the period before these words were uttered and to feel their force and novelty. Homer said: "The gods have decreed that poor mortals shall live in grief, while they themselves are free from sorrow." Herodotus, whom I love more than any other writer of Greece, said: "The gods allow no one to have high aspirations but themselves." Aristotle argued that there could be no affection between a superior and one vastly his inferior; that therefore love between God and man is impossible; that God cannot be interested in finite affairs, but must spend all his time in contemplating himself. This sentence in John, thrown off like a commonplace, with no arguing and no doubt of its truth, if it originated with John would make him one of the greatest thinkers of all times. But it is not the only great sentence, for soon there appears "God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth"; shortly to be followed by: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." This sentence, in whole or in part, is the favorite motto of our universities. When Johns Hopkins University was founded a little over fifty years ago they tried to get a motto that would cover what this new university hoped to accomplish. At last they took this old and much used sentence, for nothing else seemed to express so well the real purpose of a university. It seems incredible that a man who was writing to support an impostor should have had the desire or the ability to give this mighty tribute to truth. Somehow this sentence was uttered and some one must have been the first to speak it. If Jesus did not utter it, who did?

Further, it is contrary to human nature that John could have made up and falsely put into the mouth of Jesus the words spoken just before his betrayal: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you," or those other words: "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." The words and their setting are in such terrible contrast. If John himself conceived these great ideas he deserves a place among the greatest thinkers of all time. But then he would be one of the greatest impostors,—an impostor who glorified righteousness and truth, two things in which an impostor never believes, and two things which he cannot comprehend.

Here we have four different writers, all showing by their language that they belong to the same century, all of them men of no outside renown, all presenting ideas unequaled by Socrates or by Plato, all giving the glory to another, and all making that other one the same person, Jesus Christ.

The things which they all tell in common and the things which but one tells, all unite in the one figure of Jesus, and they all agree in proving to me, at least, that they present a true picture of a real character. The very essence of greatness is that it should be honest. That one dishonest man should have pictured Jesus is thinkable, but that four dishonest men should agree in unity as well as in variety in imagining such a being is beyond the uttermost limits of reason.

There is a certain similarity between Socrates and Christ. Socrates realized that there is a moral law in the universe, that we are not helpless children of blind chance, that there is a soul in man and that the soul is of limitless worth, that above all and ruling over all there is a just power that rules in righteousness,—but it was all so hidden in darkness that despite his hope he constantly faltered. Even in those arguments just after his condemnation with which he consoled himself and his friends by reasonings for immortality, he used these sad words: "if indeed these things told us are true." Think of pillowing one's head in martyrdom on nothing more than an if!

Socrates felt that his sole superiority lay in the fact that he knew nothing and was aware of that ignorance; also that in spite of disappointment he continued the search for knowledge. Jesus never sought for knowledge or wisdom from anyone. He never used the words "I do not understand," or "I do not know." His very strongest authority was himself and his most emphatic utterance was "But I say unto you," and he even went so far as to claim that he was the very truth itself.

Socrates knew that he was but a simple and a mortal man, while Jesus never questioned or allowed others to question his own belief that he was divine. No one of the followers of Socrates ever claimed that he returned to them from the dead, while the disciples of Jesus who on that bitter Friday evening after Calvary abandoned all hope, lost faith in their Master, and started back to their old tasks, soon became the most enthusiastic of men, willing to go to prison or to death in the conviction that they had seen the risen Lord. The fact of this enthusiastic devotion and of their martyrdom is unquestioned; something made them change from despair to unflinching optimism, and no adequate reason for that change has ever been given except the reason which they themselves gave.

It takes less credulity to believe that Jesus was what he claimed to be than that he was not. It takes less blind faith to believe that the writers of the Gospels owed their greatness to Him rather than that He owed His greatness to them.

There are many parallels between the high and noble sentences uttered by Socrates and those of Jesus. Socrates believed that the first step in the pursuit of knowledge is the recognition of one's own ignorance and that humility is a sign of greatness. Jesus said "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," and "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven."

Socrates said that "Whatever a man might gain at the cost of his own moral nature is only loss." Jesus said: "For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

Socrates said that truth is the great possession, not for any exterior advantage, but simply for its own sake. Jesus said, "The truth will make you free." Socrates argued that the soul is immortal and that a righteous soul will be rewarded with eternal blessedness. Jesus said, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." "And the righteous shall go into everlasting life."

Socrates said that in his zeal for truth he had sought no advantages for himself and had spent his life in poverty. Jesus said, "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head."

Socrates said that he had never parted from that moral course which his reason had selected as the best. Jesus said: "Which of you convinceth me of sin?"

Socrates said: "We should injure no one however much that person has injured us." Jesus said: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

Socrates said that he had no fear of those who injured the body but could not injure the moral nature." Jesus said: "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul."

Socrates said to those who had accused him and to those who had condemned him that he cherished no ill-will against them. Jesus said: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

In these matters and thus far they agree, but Socrates has nothing to place beside any of the following, since they belong to another world: "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee, but that ye may know that the Son of man hath power to forgive sin, I say unto thee, arise, and take up thy bed and go into thine own house."

"All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal him. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory."

"Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." This last verse is remarkable not only because of its assurance, but more than that, it is the first positive statement that God is best served by kindness to his creatures, even the humblest. This at last is the answer to the question asked by Socrates of the young man Euthyphro: "If service of the gods does not benefit the gods, just what is its purpose?"

There is nothing in Socrates like the following: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am."

"All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

"One of the crucified thieves said unto Jesus, 'Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.'

"Jesus said unto him, 'Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in Paradise."'

Three crosses stood side by side suspending three wretches, all alike condemned as felons to a disgraceful and inhuman death. One of these writhing figures answered the jeers of the mob with curses, one began to pray, and one assumed to throw open the gates of Paradise. What a contrast!

And, again, there is no parallel in Socrates to the following: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

The woman said unto him, "I know that Messias cometh, which is called the Christ; when he is come, he will tell us all things."

Jesus saith unto her, "I that speak unto thee am he."

Then Martha said unto Jesus, "Lord if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died."

Jesus said unto her, "Thy brother shall rise again."

Martha said unto him, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

Jesus said unto her, "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

No wonder that the officers answered and said, "Never man spake like this man." No wonder that Peter answered, "Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God," and no wonder that those who had known him best endured persecution "rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name."

My great teacher, Professor Gildersleeve, said that "Socrates reached an arm's length toward Christ,—it was only an arm's length, but it was toward Christ." It is just this fact, that the greatest man of the most intellectual city and at its most exalted period saw but dimly and partially that which Jesus saw so clearly and so completely and with such assurance, which has strengthened my faith that the carpenter of Nazareth and the companion of simple men of lowly Galilee must have been something more than a man.