SOURCE: "Socrates and Christ" in Socrates and Christ: A Study in the Philosophy of Religion, William Blackwood and Sons, 1889, pp. 236-64.

[Here, Wenley contrasts Socrates with Christ, stating that while there exist "points of external contact" between the two men which "render comparison by no means unreasonable," they nevertheless had little in common in terms of "inner spirit."]

The "great solicitude" sometimes "shown by popular Christianity to establish a radical difference between Jesus and a teacher like Socrates,"¹ is a misapplication of effort. The contrast stands in need of no further emphasis than that which history has so plainly given it. Antecedents, problems, contemporary influences, were different for both, not in degree alone, but also in essential nature. Neither special pleading, nor introduction of supernatural attributes, is necessary in face of authentic occurrences, which must after all be largely self-explanatory. Every leader of men exists, "not for what he can accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him."² But the "in him" has reference to a living organism, and not to dead matter. What can be accomplished depends very largely upon the co-operation with which the man is able to aid circumstances. Opportunity is the world's work, but no amount of external pressure will cause two rational beings to interpret opportunity in precisely the same manner. Each reacts upon it in his own way, and so the results are invariably diverse. Much more is this true when not only the opportunities, but also the individuals, are entirely different, at the beginning of the process. Action and reaction are not equal and opposite in the spiritual world, for in every given case the rule receives a new application. Abstract from Socrates and Christ everything, except the attributes "Athenian" and "Nazarene," and the "radical difference," which so many sincerely desiderate, but place on a wrong basis, remains unimpaired.

But no such narrow distinction needs to be adopted. The natural course of history, without any tendenz interpretation, has set a great gulf between Socrates and Christ. It could be shown, for example, that even if Greek philosophy and Christianity were traceable to a common source, the latter possessed elements which the former had not.³ The factors of a complete revelation, which the Greeks had failed to derive from their Aryan ancestors, reappeared, by some inexplicable process, in Palestine, and that at the time of Christ. These, and like considerations, are, however, foreign to the present task. It is sufficient now to take Socrates and Christ as we find them, and to note, that totally different circumstances influenced them, that alien civilisations produced them, that self-consciousness found distinctive expression in each. The sense of defect which swayed Socrates had reference wholly to man's knowledge of himself. The power of the Sophists was both founded on, and productive of, misbelief. Socrates saw nothing to prevent individual wellbeing, if only self-knowledge could be obtained. Nor had the time arrived at which to regard spiritual or mental research as hopeless. The external world, which the older Greek philosophers had studied so assiduously, seemed less important to Socrates than the inner sphere of mind. Of this view, and of the self-study which it implied, he was the Greek pioneer. The difficulties complicating such a search, and the possible illusoriness of the self-perfection in which it was to end, did not impress Socrates so much as the conviction, of which his daimonion was but an aspect, that there is a permanent principle in man. This, in his view, was far more worthy of attention than culture, than phenomena, material or political.

To one thus assured of the actual, the question of possible or impossible, probable or improbable, did not appeal with much force. Socrates had nothing to remove, he rather desired to arrive at something which certainly existed. He was thus able, as, for example, in 'Protagoras,' to deny the possibility of virtue through self-knowledge, and yet, by this very denial, to show that his negative is better than the Sophists' positive. Protagoras professed to teach virtue without a basis; Socrates was only seeking for it. Yet, his tentative efforts resulted in an assurance the bare possibility of which his contemporaries scouted. He set himself to discover a new realm of thought, but he was certain of its discoverableness ere he began to search. His it was to bring this reality home to the everyday life of the time, and to follow out his method of so doing, even though its conclusions were the prison and the poison-cup. He gave himself for the progress of rational inquiry at a crisis in its development, and on this account we enrol him with the greatest. Yet to mistake his work, in this matter, were certainly a poor way to do him reverence.

The circumstances into which Jesus was born were of a totally different character. Unacquainted with the learning of the Greeks, and in all probability quite unaware of that peculiar Judaism⁴ which Philo represented, his work had little relation to the discovery of new intellectual spheres. Nay, it was brought about by causes which were in strange contrast to any operative in previous times. The answer to the cry of a world in pain, its inherent force proceeded in great part from its very simplicity, as compared with systems which the mental subtlety of a single people had previously produced. Christ found it necessary not only to enunciate, but also to prove the perfectibility of man. And at the time, such was the state of the nations, that the proposition was sufficiently improbable to be startling, the practice unprecedented enough to be convincing.

The condition of the Roman Empire need not be made subject of too complacent comparison. "It is a common remark, that very few lines need be altered in Juvenal's Satires, beyond what is purely local, to make them applicable to the London, or Paris, or Vienna of to-day."⁵ But even thus, there is an irreducible difference. The spirit—to take but one instance—which was so greedy of blood, that the amusing slaughter of 20,000 men, slaves no doubt, could take place almost without comment, has disappeared. Superadd nigh inconceivable brutality, rampant cynicism, and barefaced lust, to all that is most devilish in our modern capitals; take away shame from vice, cancel the sneaking admiration for goodness which even the worst will to-day accord, and think of the absolute need, yet apparent folly, of a doctrine of perfectibility. In Palestine itself, where a larger remnant of moral effort still remained, goodness was mainly misdirected. For, when morality takes the form of special commands, it loses much of its cogency in transmission. Conventional rules serve but to dry up the springs of sympathy from which all that is most valuable in life—all that is not of mere prescription—flows. Christ gave Himself for the perfecting of humanity at a period when perfection either appeared an absurdity, or was fenced round with regulations that rendered its attainment impossible. To show Rome that there was a life of the spirit, to tell Judwa that her law was morally suicidal, this was His mission. Even Pilate felt that his conduct had finished the former work. As a cultivated Roman he might hopelessly inquire "What is truth?" but as a responsible man, he could declare, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person." Christ's statement of perfectibility was proved by His practice, but for the finality of the proof He died. "We have a law, and by our law He ought to die." The execution of this condemnation broke the law in pieces, and issued in the possibility of perfection for others everywhere.

But even here we cannot stop. Socrates and Christ are separated, once more, by racial diversity. No juggling with subjective presuppositions⁶ can explain away the fact that Christianity grew out of Judaism. It did not come forth from a religious idea, but from a religion. No law of abstract logical categories was the cause of its birth. Had the stern intensity of the Hebrew spirit been absent, Christianity might have appeared, as did Philonism, in the guise of an intellectual system, it would never have been a religion. One might as well hope to Hebraise Socrates as to Hellenise Christ. Athens under Pericles brought forth men whose like has never been seen. Yet in a few short years others sprang up, in Greece and elsewhere, to inquire what might be the meaning and permanent value of all that had been achieved by their Periclean predecessors. Socrates was the first of such inquirers. A citizen of a unique city, he found it necessary to ask himself what were the presuppositions of his citizenship. Because he was a Greek, he had the means at his command to found the science which treats of man's relations with his fellows. Nevertheless, the subject-matter of his inquiry—a society based on rational principles—was known to the Israelites from early times. But they did not come together spontaneously like the Greeks, and thereafter proceed to reflect on the happy chance. They were members of an ordered community, whose relationships had been determined according to the dictates of a national conscience. Socrates could demand justice between Greek and Greek; Christ could require purity of all men. Race distinction rendered their respective interpretations of life's realities radically different.

In several of its aspects Socrates' work overlaps that commonly considered peculiar to the religious teacher. His conviction, that "the penalty of unrighteousness is swifter than death,"⁷ might be taken as the motto of his career. While others had been content thoughtlessly to assume the inner life, he was determined to know it, and, in the light of this knowledge, to guide his action. Indeed, the formation of character on a new basis, rather than the systematic discussion of ethics, was his lifework. It was ethical in its aim, rational in its method, practical in its results. Without any dry body of doctrine to inculcate, Socrates was able, mainly by the force of example, and by the application of new standards to things wrongly held precious, to alter current conceptions concerning conduct. By no means a metaphysician, he yet made life subservient to ideas obtained and tested in dialectic dispute. For he had already laid hold on the principle that conduct consists in "the application of ideas to life." Not to change his fellow-citizens, but to show clearly the generally accepted yet half-apprehended principles, on a tacit understanding of which the state found basis, was Socrates' business. The just man has only to perceive the "general definitions" underlying society, to become straightway the good man. In wisdom he realises what is highest. Thus, however little he may have known what the good was, Socrates saw that social wellbeing is dependent upon individual morality. The Athenians had doubtless some vague notion of what "morality" meant for themselves. But, like Euthyphro's piety, it stood in need of definition. Socrates, by his conduct and conversation, indicated this need, if he did not absolutely supply it.

Hence his personality was possessed of a semi-religious influence, or rather, he exerted himself for the conscious moralising of his fellows. The manner in which the entire man Socrates pervades the work of his greatest disciple, and is traceable neither here nor there, neither with this limitation nor with that, but is a constant living presence, may be taken as typical. In such a view Socrates' mission so far overlaps that of the religious teacher. The jailer in 'Phado' felt the magnetism of the martyr's character. It was not the subtlety of metaphysics that caused him, on the bare enunciation of his errand, to burst into tears and go out.⁸ He needed no more than Socrates' presence to convince him that this was a just man, for whose death he could assign no adequate reason. The possession of self, which true self-knowledge alone bestows, was in the highest degree distinctive of Socrates. He cannot but have impressed himself upon others more by his personality than by his doctrines. He could not tell Plato what "the good" was, but Plato knew that Socrates was good. Conviction was written upon his conduct, and this, far rather than set phrases, must have helped his friends to clearer notions of the "ought-to-be."

It is exceedingly difficult, if not altogether impossible now, to determine to what extent Socrates' ethicorational work received from his living presence the "touch of emotion" inseparable from religious principle. Enthusiasm for the man could not, in any case, remove the limitations under which he necessarily laboured. Zeal for a more clearly defined political morality, and supreme confidence in the mental capacity to discover principles of social action, cannot but have been quickened to fullest life by Socrates' personal example. Yet, in the modern sense of the term, religious influences were but little formative of his career. His petition for "inward purity and for a lot that shall best agree with a right disposition of the mind," is limited not only in its conception of deity, but also in its grasp of the possible relationships between divine and human. Concerned chiefly for self-knowledge,⁹ he did not depart from this his way to overturn popular belief, and he was satisfied if he could see in the world a principle analogous to the self in individual life. Speculation, and nothing else, led him to entertain such doubts as he may have had respecting traditional polytheism. The unity of purpose, which characterised his whole career, was but the other, and the familiar side, of such well-grounded scepticism. Socrates was therefore a religious teacher in that he was true to what he understood. Strength to be himself was his, and, as a consequence, all the qualities of gentle manliness, which issued from conviction of personal superiority, linked, however, with hesitation in deep consciousness of ignorance, served to endow him with a sway sweeter as well as stronger from its artlessness.

Knowledge that the Athenian citizen lacked the inner sense which would have enabled him to act upon principle rather than from habit, and a presentiment that he could do something to fill this gap, stood to Socrates in place of the more spiritual religion only attainable by a later generation. Had he not been a "religious" man, after the manner in which it was then possible for him to be such, neither Xenophon nor Plato could have had such a testimony to bequeath. His religion consisted in his life, spent as it was in the exercise of his best social and intellectual powers for the discovery of a "good," which all Greeks might consciously pursue. He was "religious," because, realising the reason for his being, he used his life, regardless of consequences to self, in the true spirit of the moral artist.

Nevertheless, it remains true that Socrates was primarily a moralist. The genius of the Greeks produced a unique species of civilisation, which was mainly remarkable for the external presentation of an artistic ideal. Socrates applied this ideal to the life of the individual in the city state. He taught men, that by taking thought, they might put opportunity to better uses, or might be enabled, by the application of discoverable methods, to substitute dignity and beauty for the querulousness customary in common life. Laudable and indispensable as an aim of this sort is, one cannot but admit that it differs widely from the object of religion. Moral philosophy can furnish ideals, but it is unable to tell how far conduct, oppressed as it is by adverse conditions, may be brought into harmony with the universal "ought." "A man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him,"¹⁰ not because he can put his signature below the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Westminster Confession, but rather because he has certain convictions with respect to the possibility of realising what is best, even in circumstances which might make the worse appear the more profitable act. Religion presents a concrete reality to man's consciousness, while morality witnesses to a mental ideal which is the terminus ad quem of an infinite being. The one is, the other may be. What Christianity has to tell is embodied in a life; the teaching of Greek philosophy is, that happiness must be sought in wisdom, but what that wisdom contains for the bettering of men it never definitely declares.

Moral life continually projects itself towards the best conceivable ideal. Formally, it may be entirely an extension of self for the sake of self-improvement. But the religious man cannot rest content with this. The mere growth of self is not sufficient. Nay, the direction which advancement takes, and the process in which it shapes itself, are both altered with him. Perception of goodness may assuredly be accompanied by a reaching forth to something like it. This is the highest form of the moral life. But religion implies, in addition, the possession of a goodness which, in the shape of a creative principle, transforms the entire man. It is so far easy to know and to discuss a speculative ideal, and it is well to conform to such an ideal, always granted that it is capable of partial realisation. Yet all this may be done, and thoroughly done, solely with reference to the self. In this sense personal morality is largely illusory, and so remains devoid of that ideal actuality which religion demands. It leaves something to be discovered, of which religion feels itself to be in possession. Morality testifies to the consciousness of a higher life, but it does not give man his kingdom qud that life. Just as idolatry is a makeshift for the satisfaction of faith, so morality is a temporary salve to religious aspiration. It connects man with a supersensible sphere, through the inner conflict of his own nature, but it can affirn nothing with regard to the reality of that sphere. The truth is, that the ideal which morality sets forth mediately on rational principles, religion reveals immediately to the soul. The apparatus of proof that points to an unattainable "is" which "ought to be," finds substitute in a positive conviction of a real "is" which "has been." Self-sacrifice takes the place of mere self-projection towards the ideal, and this means, that the ideal is no longer beyond man, hid away perhaps in some impossible region, but is in him, and is attainable only through his willingness to actualise his own undoubted inner capacity for well-doing.

There are many who cannot see that morality finds any extension in religion, or who consider it derogatory to man's dignity, that reverence should be paid to a God—known or unknowable. But on the view just stated, religion is an advance upon morality, and its aim is not primarily the glory of God. "It is not for the benefit and honour of God, but for the benefit and ennobleiment of Man.… God has nothing to gain by our devotion, but men have very much to gain by other men's righteousness."¹¹ But righteousness is not the result of precept, it is consequent upon the building up of character. And character is fully formed only when, by its own inner force, it brings forth the best that is, and does not merely abase itself before an external "ought-to-be." Righteousness, in other words, is a religious product. The moral greatness of Socrates, of Plato, and of many Stoics of antiquity, has rarely found equal in the Christian ages. Yet, in these last, the types of holy living have added something to moral greatness. The ideal has been brought down from an abstract heaven to earth. It is in man's own heart. Not the assertion of self, with its proud humility, but the real sacrifice of the whole man to that which is known to be good character—this is the Christian conception. Because the ideal is in man, self-sacrifice must be recognised as the sole self-realisation. The beauty of holiness transfigures him in whom others first bear witness to its presence. Socrates gave direction to life, but Christ revealed in His own person the very principle without which there would be no life. The ancient world, in the work of Socrates and of the few who were like him, sought to reconstruct man's life on the basis of a reinterpretation of his nature; and this must always remain the work of morality. But with the appearance of Christianity, God and man were shown to be co-essential, and the task of morality was superseded, if not eliminated, by the affirmative declaration of religion. Finally, within its sphere, the Socratic teaching had not fathomed reality fully. It is in no sense unfair to say, that the Greek sage knew almost nothing of the inner force by which men, as indeed all things, "fulfil the law of their being."

But on the other hand, it would be merest childishness to deny the influence of Socrates as a forerunner of Christ. The revelation of the one was preparatory to that of the other, just as morality is frequently the seed of religion. In the development of the religious consciousness, for example, the progress towards monotheism, so conspicuous in Socrates and the other Greek philosophers, was but one of the many lines that ultimately converged towards Christianity. No doubt, such ideas were peculiar to thinkers who regarded superstition as spiritual food fit for the mob. Yet the confidence of Socrates in a supreme being was the foundation of Plato's affirmation, that man is like to God,¹² and this, in turn, is not very far removed from Christian doctrine. The Greeks had, in short, discovered a certain element in human nature, which demanded definite satisfaction. With this they were unable to supply it. God night be "single and one" for them, yet they could not conceive how, being such, he was able to enter into relationship with the many. They adumbrated one element in the religious conception, more than that they could not grasp. But Socrates, in that he tended to replace polytheism with a species of quietist monotheism, must not be denied his place as a forerunner of fuller religious development. Whatever may be said of the varied semi-religious conceptions of Greek philosophy, there can be no question that the light thrown back upon the past now enables one to estinate Socrates' value as a herald of Christianity. Here his true greatness must be sought, and that in well-authenticated facts. For "the ideal of Christian life is far more clearly distinguishable from the ideal of Greek and Roman, than the elements of opinion and belief which have come from a Christian source are from those which have come from a secular or heathen one."¹³

Now ethically, that is, in principles of rational action, Socrates and his followers were but one remove from Christianity. The investigation of self, begun by Socrates, although it ended for him in the identity of the knowledge of virtue with virtue itself, was the groundwork of the difference between goodness and counterfeit goodness, which Plato and Aristotle afterwards formulated. For these thinkers virtue is its own reward, and their praise is, that whatever be the form of man's religion, virtue must ever remain self-satisfying. This was the great principle which, by means of rational investigation, Socrates was the first to bring to light. The common measure of all the virtues is the desire of virtue, which is excited by the knowledge that virtue can be obtained. Thus, Socrates represents in practical life the preparation for Christianity, which the Hebrew prophets supplied on the more strictly religious side. He taught that to be good is good because it is good, and thereby furnished the form in which true Christian morality has always presented itself. In this respect Socrates was a real prophet, reaching forth to an end which he could not fully see. His life, no less than his teaching, pointed at once to an ideal, and to an acknowledged human need, which he could neither reach nor supply. When he thus gifted the Greeks with a perception of moral quality, he set the seal of insufficiency alike upon their exclusive citizenship,¹⁴ and their polytheistic religion. But he could not tell what "the good" was, and his philosophy was powerless to stay the appetite which it had created. After him ancient thought occupied itself in the attempt to fathom human nature. Ethical need, infinite then as now, was man's to increase knowledge and sorrow. Religious aspiration was also his. But for the former no full satisfaction was obtainable, for the latter none at all. The Greek protomartyr merits, and surely none would grudge him, the homage due to his consistent life and glorious death. Yet he was separated from Christ both by attainment and by distance in time. He felt the yearning that Christ came to soothe. And whatever praise may be his, it must always be remembered that the end was not then. When, through what Socrates had not done, "philosophy had grown sad by thinking beyond its depth," there was necessity for a greater than he.

If the mission of Socrates had been mainly ethical, that of Christ was at once moral and religious. But the religion, of which he was the chief corner-stone, cannot be defined as "morality touched by emotion." Ethical and emotional elements it doubtless had, but these do not represent its entire content. So long as man is upon this earth his lot is to struggle with sin and misery. At no period in history did the issue of the conflict seem darker than when ancient philosophy, in the person of Seneca, became helpless to stay Nero's brutality.¹⁵ Consciously or unconsciously, the Roman Empire was crying aloud for light upon the awful problem of evil. And the light burst forth in a life which, although moral and human, had itself a magnetic influence which all have agreed to recognise as unique. This is the point which, in the estimation of the properly equipped sceptic, even nineteenth-century blasphemy cannot blaspheme away. Christ taught man how to bear sorrow, and by the sacrifice of self, to eliminate sin from life. It was not possible that the cup of suffering should pass from Him, and as He drained it, He created righteousness, thereby proving that even for us the draught is not too terrible. Now the implication of this holy life is, that the moral philosophy of Socrates had been superseded. The ideal had been made actual, and that not as an abstraction, substantive or other, to which men could only progress. It had taken personal form—that is, it had been revealed as a principle organic to life. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature," not because something mysterious has been done for him, but because, by his own recognition of kinship with Christ, he is assured that he too can do what the Master did. Self-sacrifice is not only the character of Christ, it is also the one key to the movement of the entire spiritual universe.

Stirb und werde!
Denn so lang du das nicht hast,
Bist du nur ein truber Gast
Auf der dunkeln Erde.

The deepest testimony to this truth is Jesus' growing conviction of it, which only found culmination on Calvary.

Nor is this self-sacrifice a mere piece of mechanism for the manufacture of happiness. It is rather a principle of moralisation which, in its long conflict with sin and selfishness, develops new faculties in the individual character. The width of the Christian conception, including as it does all men, imposes responsibilities upon us which the Greeks, even in their finest moods, could not have imagined. For it points to no small society cinctured with a holiness wrought out of the degradation of all beyond its own circle. It constitutes the pursuit of the good by self in sacrifice a means to the bettering of all men. Christ set forth, not the doctrine alone, but its application. He did not come unawares, but brought to an end the problem of evil, then ready for solution. Moreover, he proved the practical value of his solution as a working scheme. His self-sacrifice has nothing in common with asceticism. Renunciation of self is not sought for the mere sake of renunciation, but in order that, purified of all the self-seeking which shuts out true riches, man may become the instrument at once of his own and of his fellows' perfection. If any one apprehend perfectibility, as it stands revealed in Christ, he cannot but adopt Christian ethics. For only thus will he gain for himself a completeness, which is indissolubly bound up with an identical perfection in others. As Christ was the first to proclaim that God can only be served in man, so He was the first to tell that such service will never be absolutely worthy until wrought in humanity as a whole. In this, His true humanitarianism, Christ supersedes Socrates. He appeals to the whole man and to mankind, while the Greek sage speaks only to the free-born citizen, and to him rather as a thinker than as an essentially moral agent. For this reason, Christ's work is eternal, and whatever one may think of His nature, Christianity cannot be separated from His person.

Eliminate the theory of Christ which was diffused among the Jews prior to His advent;¹⁶ admit that nothing is directly known of Him, save what is told in the discourses collected by Matthew, and in Peter's reminiscences edited by Mark—who had never seen the Master;¹⁷ allow that the "pedantic ingenuity of rationalism" is misdirected scarce at all,—and you do not detract one whit from the value of Christ's Christianity. His "application of ideas to life" still remains the one essential and commanding fact in His career. He not only promulgated but lived a principle, against which intellect cannot revolt, and for which conscience records its whole testimony. His religion is His, not because He formulated any creed concerning Himself, but because He alone trod the only road to man's natural perfection. Christianity is inseparable from His person in no dogmatic sense, but as a matter of everyday experience. We cannot look back across the ages and fortify our faltering faith with "a tremulous quasi- knowledge of a whole globe of dogmas."¹⁸ Only if the Christ-life be reproducing itself here and now, can Christianity be regarded as in vital connection with the Person of its founder. That it is thus connected His veritable creation of righteousness proves. He did good for the sake of so doing, and this His revelation may, nay, must go on reproducing itself.

         So, each ray of thy will,
Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long
  over, shall thrill
Thy whole people, the countless, with ardour,
  till they too give forth
A little cheer to their sons: who in turn, fill
 the South and the North
With the radiance thy seed was the germ of.¹⁹

Reasonableness and naturalness are the chief characteristics of Christ's revelation. Non mors sed voluntas sponte morientis.²⁰ Only an unrivalled knowledge of the human heart in its origin and destiny could have effected the combination of material necessity and spiritual inevitableness by which it continues to sway the world. The complete humanity of Christ's life is the cause of the permanence of His religion.

"To say that a man has genius is to say that all he effects is truly and entirely the result of others' labours and done by their power; that he is merely a stimulus, and owes his influence solely to his relation to an organisation built up, and a functional power accumulated, wholly by others … Genius does things without force because it does not do them, as the fall of an uplifted body needs no force."²¹ Of all the great this is true. But in relation to Christ, it receives an application sui generis. Theirs is the result of others' labours, and for Him too the whole course of civilisation had been preparing. But what he effected was not brought about once for all by the co-operation of prior and contemporary influences. His genius is not a mere expression of what others thought and urgently desired; it is a living force which still remains, and reproduces its own qualities in the lives of men now. "Heroes" and "Representative Men" are the quintessence of epochs; He is the germ which fructifies at all times. In this respect He is without parallel, and so we cannot separate His Person from His work.²²

Nor does the contrast between Christ and the other masters cease here. He superseded Socrates, and it might very well seem, that after so many centuries, and in view of the "service of man," His time to depart had now also come. Notwithstanding, Christ's work cannot but remain so long as human nature retains its present constitution. Expansion is not without conditions. "Because our present house is too small for us, it is not to be inferred that we shall live henceforth in the open air. As a general rule of life and conduct, we see as yet no reason to believe that liberty, if this be its meaning, is better than service."²³ Christ revealed the source of virtue in His life of lowly obedience. The "service of man," of which we now boast ourselves, is a bare possibility only through Christ's subservience and humiliation. It is easy to take humanity as we find it, and convenient to ignore this fact, but then it is also easy to accept light without a scrupulous recognition of the sun's agency. The peculiarity of Positivism is that, apart from its distinctive philosophical tenets, it is virtually a reproduction of one portion of Christ's principle.²⁴ Why go about with a candle to see the sun? Its altruism is His also, but without the integration which He deemed necessary to complete the character of an individual. His consciousness of God—which is but the more spiritualised expression of what has been rediscovered as "cosmic religion"—had its counterpart in His consciousness of mankind, which is to-day the raison d'etre of that second faith so called, the "religion of humanity."

The supremacy of Christ is further enhanced by the strange circumstance that His revelation is not, like the work of Socrates, of Luther, or of Carlyle, representative only of a specific stage in the world's development. Like others, He came at a crisis which was for Him. It used to be supposed that in Him divine revelation culminated, and remained final thenceforward. After a sort it did, but progress has been continuous since. "God did not retire to rest after the well-known six days of creation; but, on the contrary, is constantly active as on the first. It would have been for Him a poor occupation to compose this heavy world out of simple elements, and to keep it rolling in the sunbeams from year to year, if He had not had the plan of founding a nursery for a world of spirits upon this material basis. So He is now constantly active in higher natures to attract the lower ones."²⁵ In this later advance the Christian revelation is continually renewing itself. Historically it appeared at the time which was prepared for it. But it is not only a stage like others, for it is perpetuated in a principle which is the motive force of human nature, and must remain operative, no matter how circumstances may change. In the other masters we see all that is, in Christ there was all that ought to be. Socrates was the forerunner of later ideals, Christ Himself was the exhibition of the ideal in history. Christianity, just on account of those elements which differentiate it from Greek philosophy, constantly stimulates the higher life, and that without laying any restrictions upon intellectual activity. For Christ's work is a spontaneous revelation of human nature—of a nature which has spiritual as well as mental and material needs. His kingdom is not of this world, and only in so far as this is true can it remain in the world. It makes little difference what dogmatic views recommend themselves to the individual mind. For there is religion without rites, and there may be churches without religion. But the power of a perfect life can never pass away. It is for humanity, because in man full expression was given to it.

The eternity of Christianity is based on human nature, the kaleidoscopic creeds are but accidental embodiments of the true reality. What boots it for practical life that Christianity is often no better to its professors than was Islam to Mrs Skewton.²⁶ Presented in such shape it is indeed useless, and the sooner that science completes its destruction the better. But the answer given in Christ's life to the timeless question of man's relation to sin and misery, continues among the eternal verities. And so long as man is

Created half to rise and half to fall,

it must remain. Art may to-day revive Hellenism, in so far as that is possible, and baptise its find the "Religion of Beauty." Physical science may go back to the abstract monotheism of Palestine, and call its setting of God over against man "Agnosticism." But the interpretation of the great truths contained in each of these movements is already beforehand with them in Christianity. There Hellenism and Hebraism met, not under the form of a doctrinal system, but in a nature which at once realised God's transcendence, yet continual presence, in the beauty of the world and in the human spirit.

The inner life which Christ illustrated and actualised is the highest revelation to man of the universal moral order. But no seal is thus set upon the potentiality of things. Men are Christians, not because they accept a few dogmas which outrage both intellect and conscience, but because they perceive in the man Christ Jesus a kind of being which is the one permanent index of a universal human "capacity of using and modifying any existing state of things," for the furtherance of wellbeing, intellectual and social, no less than moral and religious. Man's chief atheism is sin, and if the consecrated life of Jesus be without message to those who would live sin down, then, so far as revelation has gone, atheist man is doomed to remain. But there is a message which, whether willing or unwilling, human nature cannot shut out. The modernness of Christianity lies in this—that for sin we must even now "suffer with Christ whether we believe in Him or not."²⁷

While, then, there are points of external contact between Socrates and Christ, which render comparison by no means unreasonable, it must be remembered that in inner spirit they have little in common. Above all is it necessary to avoid the radical misconception of regarding Christianity as a species of sublimated Greek philosophy. The life of Christ could only have been lived when and where it was lived. No speculative system contemplating, like Greek philosophy, an explanation of being, could have produced that sense of sin which culminated in a life of grace. Socrates was able to consider his death an inevitable sacrifice, just as Christ did. Yet he died in the full assurance that punishment had already overtaken the evil men who composed the majority of the Dicastery. For this reason, were there none other, his fate does not appeal to us with the same power as Christ's. Both had strength given them to die in a just cause. But the occasions were not identical. The calmness of Socrates and the agony of Christ are separated by constituent elements which, if subtle, are none the less obvious. The Socratic philosophy represents the bringing to birth of what was highest in Greek thought. Its founder was able to die calmly, because he was persuaded that the world-order had universality. This universality he had tried to find in the life of each man. Yet even had he known the reign of law, and of liberty, as it is now understood, his revelation would still have been imperfect. Later thinkers, persuaded of this imperfection, sought to surmount it in various ways. But the conception of the moral governance of man was not to be completed from Greek civilisation. The wise man, so called, might think about it, and describe it, but unfortunately, the wise man himself never appeared, nor could he.

Only in the matrix of Judaism, surrounded by the consciousness of an ethical God, and determined by the idea of living to this deity, could the wise man appear. The Greek ideal of a mediator between the transcendent God and the world, the Græco-Roman conception of the sage's life, and the Jewish thought of a saviour, were all requisite to, as they were realised by, the Christ. He did not protest that He was such, but, by living as He did, He solved the universal problem. In a sense, He added nothing to the knowledge of Greek and Jewish thinkers,—Philo had all the elements,—but he brought thought about God and morality out of the theoretical region of discussion down to the practical sphere of the Godlike and moralised life. And of this change the Jewish religion was the prime cause. Socrates and Christ are both revealers of principles, which they incarnated. For each the crisis of history called. The religious intensity of Jesus was impossible to Socrates, because utterly foreign to the entire mode of thought which he expressed. Yet without it, the lesson of the ages would have been proper only to the Greek man, not to humanity.

Socrates and Christ alike had faith in the ideal, but this was different for each. The artistically rounded life of the Greek citizen, set with nicest care into the united social fabric, could not, Socrates was persuaded, be produced on the Sophistic method. His work, therefore, was to find a new way to the ideal which his age contemplated. Like the other masters, he had to "fit to the finite his infinity." But the ideal, partial even as it was, still remained ideal, and no struggle of later thought availed, save as a process of development, to bring it nearer. Yet, although in Christ the moral possibilities of human nature found realisation, Christianity is no exceptionally supernatural phenomenon. It came in the fulness of time, when the passage of thought from the phenomenal to the real, as seen in Greek philosophy, had prepared a way for it. The spiritual discipline of the Jews was the determining factor in the life of Christ, but the problem, which He died to solve, was also set in the Gentile world. Judaism saw heaven from earth, Hellenism imagined earth heaven, and both at last felt that their conceptions were illusory. Christianity brought heaven to earth, and, by inculcating, as Christ lived, that this is the place of self-sacrifice for the moralisation of humanity and of the individual,

         Goes changing what was wrought,
From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.²⁸

The comprehensiveness of Christianity is the evidence that it is no transfigured Hellenism. Christ breathed a new spirit into the world by living for the sake of righteousness. He put the existence of an ideal life beyond possibility of question. To-day His religion is not a mere recorded fact of intellectual history, but because His work is completed and human, Christianity goes on reproducing itself as a manner of life. In its essential eternity for man it depends ultimately, neither on historical occurrences, nor on theological dogmas, but on the constitution of human nature. Knowledge of Christ must be gleaned as is knowledge of Socrates. But, seeing that Socrates was a searcher after the ultimate in man and God, and Christ a verification of the divine in the human, knowledge of Him comes with power. The perfection which is possible for man He had. His life was the answer to every cry for deliverance from the burden of sin, because in it are to be seen certain spiritual experiences which, let knowledge be what it may, are continually repeating themselves in human nature as the sole means to moral perfection. What those experiences were, Socrates did not understand. But he was among the first to awaken that consciousness of defect, which went on deepening through the ancient world, until all spiritual functions were "smothered in surmise" of superstition. The appearance of Christ was eminently natural, and in the principle of His life all that the world desired was granted. His Personality, and the possibilities of human nature which it revealed, form His indestructible contribution to moral progress. As the great Person, who subdued the greatest crisis in man's history, He is, and, so long as the world is governed by Reason, must remain, the type, in assimilating themselves to which other persons may rise to further self-completeness.

"The true reality that is and ought to be, is not matter, and is still less Idea, but is the living personal Spirit of God and the world of personal spirits which He has created."²⁹ Before Christ the conception that self-conscious personality was common to God and man alike had been but dimly foreshadowed. The Christ-life elevated it into a certain fact. Here then is Christ's inalienable contribution to human progress. His religion cannot fail of endless application; for His perfect character is the sole guarantee that every man, though knowing the evil, can be true to himself only in being holy and in following after righteousness. But this righteousness is not an external thing upon which one can lay hold or towards which one can progress. In the self-conscious sphere the category of law, as usually conceived, has little or no application. Yet it must not be supposed, on this account, that personality develops aimlessly. True, present conditions are nought save as interpreted by it: but, wanting them, the interpretation could not be. Both are essential factors in a life which is constantly revealing and actualising an immanent cause—an inner principle. Socrates was the first to observe the importance of this causa sui. It was Christ's to realise the absolute value of personality as such, and to show how, by a full apprehension of all that self-mediation implies, each may, nay, cannot but escape the yoke of the law, by using it as a means to his own perfecting. And this perfecting is righteousness. The good man is truly free; for, by appreciation of the transforming power of character, he finds himself capable of subduing all circumstances to his own growth in moral stature—a growth inseparably bound up with a like advancement in his fellows. Christ's life and teaching embody in full that freedom which exists only amid limitation, and issues the more triumphant the more it is circumscribed—freedom which, for this very reason, can be attained, in some measure, by all who, as partakers of His humanity, are able to make weakness the perfection of strength.

Notes

¹ St Paul and Protestantism, Matthew Arnold, pp. 78, 79.

² Representative Men, Emerson, p. 393 (Bell's edition).

³ La Science des Religions, Emil Burnouf, p. 220.

⁴ Cf. Is God Knowable? Prof. J. Iverach, p. 186.

⁵ Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, Oxenham, p. 202.

⁶ Cf. Hegel, Werke, xii. 166.

⁷ Cf. Apology (Introduction), Jowett, vol. i. p. 326 (first edition).

⁸ Cf. Phado, 116.

⁹ Cf. History of Greece, Thirlwall, vol. iv. p. 268 sq.

¹⁰ Carlyle, On Heroes, p. 2.

¹¹ Christianity in its Cradle, F. W. Newman, p. 127. I have taken the liberty of using the customary orthography.

¹² Cf Thextetus, 176.

¹³ St Paul's Epistles, Jowett, vol. ii. p. 392.

¹⁴ Cf. Prolegomena to Ethies, T. H. Green, pp. 264-308.

¹⁵ Cf Essays and Addresses, J. M. Wilson, p. 107.

¹⁶ Cf. La Science des Religious, E. Burnouf, p. 242.

¹⁷ Cf. Through Nature to Christ, E. A. Abbott, p. 346 sq.; 373 note.

¹⁸ The Kernel and the Husk, p. 257.

¹⁹ Saul, Robert Browning, Works, vol. vi. p. 122.

²⁰ St Bernard.

²¹ Philosophy and Religion, James Hinton, pp. 113, 114.

²² Lessing, in Die Religion Christi, and Herder in Ideen, like Goethe and others of the anti-eighteenth century school, seem to forget that the eternity of Christianity is not based, as they suppose, on a Person who is temporal, but on their own article of faith, that persons alone can transform a momentary act into an eternal principle.

²³ Prose Remains of A. H. Clough, p. 409.

²⁴ Cf. The Service of Man, J. C. Morison, p. 177 (head fifth).

²⁵ Conversations of Goethe, Eckermann, pp. 569, 570.

²⁶ "There is no What's-his-name but Thingummy, and What-you-may-call-it is his prophet."

²⁷ John Inglesant, J. H. Shorthouse, p. 259.

²⁸ A Death in the Desert, Robert Browning, Works, vol. vii. p. 145.

²⁹ Microcosmus, Lotze, vol. ii. p. 728.