Let us consider for a moment, in order to illustrate our meaning, the life of one such priest, whose fame has come down to us undimmed by the corroding influence of time--the life of Socrates. He held no office, he ministered at no shrine, yet he was in the true sense a priest. A plain unpretentious man, content to live on coarse fare, inured to want, homely in appearance, using homely language; nothing had he in appearance to attract; yet the gay youths left their feasts and frolics when he approached, and the busy market-place was hushed to listen to the strange wisdom of his sayings; there was indeed a singular and potent charm in this man's soul. He had a great need of righteousness, wonderful, how he awakened the same need in the hearts of the Athenian burghers of his day. He was the reverse of dogmatic. In comparison with the vastness of the unknown, he was wont to say, all human knowledge is little even to nothingness, he did not assume to know the truth, but strove to assist men in finding truths for themselves. He had his own enlightened views on questions of theology. But far from desiring to convert others to his convictions, he rather sought to divert their attention from those mysterious problems, in which men can never be wise, problems that are no nearer their solution today, than they were two thousand years ago. To those who questioned him concerning religion he replied: Are ye then masters of the humanities, that ye seek to pry into divine secrets? His father had been a fashioner of statues before him, he was a fashioner of souls! This Socrates was condemned to suffer death on the charge of atheism, and met his fate with the calmness of the philosophic mind. If death, he said, is progress to untried spheres, then welcome death! If it is sleep only, then also welcome death and its deep repose. All the tokens of the priest were fulfilled in him. He was true to himself and unbared to others the veiled truths of their own higher nature. He was a loftier presence on earth, a living flame fed from its own central being, a sun to which the world turned and was thereby enlightened. We perceive then, that what we desire is not a new thing. There has been this service of the Ideal from the earliest times. Only a new plea would we urge for larger fidelity to that which the best have striven for, and which under new conditions it will be the glory of our age to approach more nearly.