of the Platonic dialogues, with a sagacity beyond all praise, with an impartiality which trenches upon indifference, not merely in questions of merely speculative interest, but of moral concernment.[163] It is a noble work, representing the labour of long years devoted almost exclusively to the study of the master-mind of Greece. Socrates there stands before us. We enter into his thoughts, we know him as a living man. His character may indeed have undergone some change of representation in passing through the mind of the most imaginative of human teachers, his greatest disciple, Plato; but it is a change which does but magnify and idealize his loftiest characteristics. Let us see, then, in what respects this wisest and best of men, this teacher whom the great Fathers of Christendom justly reverenced as a true though unconscious preparer of men's spirits for the coming Teacher, resembles, in what respects, not less than the other two, he especially differs, from our Lord. This strikes us at a glance. Socrates is altogether and throughout a Greek. His intellect, his character, is Greek. The stamp of an exclusive nationality is upon him. He has the feelings, the prejudices, of a singularly exclusive section of an exclusive race. His code of morals tolerates, I will not say sanctions, habits and feelings "quite at variance," as Mr. Jowett says, "with modern and Christian _notions_." Characters moulded to a great extent under his influence became living embodiments of some of the worst characteristics of heathenism, of force, pride (ὑβρις [Greek: hubris]), and licentiousness, as, for instance, Critias, Charmides, and Alcibiades. Exquisite and perfect as was his sympathy with all that was noble, all that was graceful and beautiful in Hellenic culture, it went no further. Graces which to the Christian are the very foundation of spiritualist life, had no place, no name even, in his philosophy. I cannot recall, among all his sayings, one that expresses sympathy with man in his extremest degradation and misery, or indignation with his countrymen for their treatment of their slaves. I would not be unjust. I never turn to the pages in which his spirit breathes without recognizing its attractions for the lover of man and the seeker after God; but still the fact remains, and stands out more clearly the more fully that spirit is made known, that Socrates, in his best and in his worst characteristics, was out and out an Athenian by character, by temperament, by moral sympathy, and by religion also, not less than Confucius was a Chinese, and Siddartha a Hindoo.