I speak to persons able to bring the stores of varied reading to bear upon these questions, and we live in a time when learning has fairly rivalled science in bringing regions of thought hitherto unknown, or known only to solitary students, within the cognizance of men of general cultivation. As a matter of a deep interest and importance, I would ask you, when you have attained to a complete conception of our Lord's Person, to compare His teaching with that of men whose influence has been most widely and abidingly felt in the world. I will not insult our Master by placing His name in juxtaposition with the founder of Islamism, nor indeed would it fairly enter into the inquiry; for if you separate the elements of truth derived from Judaism and from Christianity, through the medium of a corrupt tradition, the Koran will yield you but a mass of idle legends. It is indeed the fashion at present to speak of Mahomet as "a great and genuine prophet, with a Divine mission" (see Hutton's Essays, i. p. 277). Now I do not doubt his sincerity at the beginning of his career, or his steadfast adherence to the one great truth which he proclaimed; but it must never be forgotten that he invented a special revelation to justify indulgence in his master-sin (see the Koran, c. 66), and that he commanded the propagation of his religion by the sword. There are, however, three great names connected with those mighty revolutions of thought which have permanently affected the moral or religious convictions of mankind; I speak of them specially, because their character and teaching were wholly uninfluenced by revelation, and because they severally represent the highest development of pre-Christian character: Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates. Of two I have already spoken, and will now simply refer you to the clear and impartial accounts given by Ampère, Francke, and Barthélemi St. Hilaire, to justify my statement, that although, as might be expected, in some points of their moral teaching and in their spiritual aspirations they bear a true resemblance to Him in whom human nature was perfectly represented, yet each of them differed, as indeed all other men differ, from Him, in one special characteristic; each of them is the creature of his race and of his age; the influence of each is felt in the full development of the peculiar tendencies of his own section of the human family; in the one case, of physical languor and mental dreaminess; in the other, of a formal and conventional morality, and of political unity secured by the sacrifice of all independent action and thought. I turn to Socrates. There is a special reason why we should direct our attention to his character. It has at various times been brought into comparison with that of our Lord; even when that comparison is not distinctly brought out, it is often intentionally, or it may be unintentionally, suggested. That character has been delineated by Mr. Jowett, in the prefaces of his translation