Socrates faced death with the magnificent calm bred of dignified familiarity. He had built for himself a desired heaven of colour, light, and precious stones--the philosophic formula of those who set the spiritual above the material, and worship truth in the beauty of holiness. He is not troubled by doubts or regrets, for the path of the just lies plain before his face. He forbids mourning and lamentations as out of place, obeys minutely and cheerily the directions of his executioner, and passes with unaffected dignity to the apprehension of that larger truth for which he had constantly prepared himself. His friends may bury him provided they will remember they are not burying Socrates; and that all things may be done decently and in order, a cock must go to Æsculapius. Long before, in the days of the Captivity, there lived in godless, blood-shedding Nineveh an exiled Jew whose father had fallen from the faith. He was a simple man, child-like and direct; living the careful, kindly life of an orthodox Jew, suffering many persecutions for conscience' sake, and in constant danger of death. He narrates the story of his life and of the blindness which fell on him, with gentle placidity, and checks the exuberance of his more emotional wife with the assurance of untroubled faith. Finally, when his pious expectations are fulfilled, his sight restored, and his son prosperously established beside him, he breaks into a prayer of rejoicing which reveals the secret of his confident content. He made use of two great faculties: the sense of proportion, which enabled him to apprise life and its accidents justly, and the gift of inseeing, which led Socrates after him, and Blessed John in lonely exile on Patmos, to look through the things temporal to the hidden meanings of eternity. "Let my soul bless God the great King," he cries; and looks away past the present distress; past the Restoration which was to end in fresh scattering and confusion; past the dream of gold, and porphyry, and marble defaced by the eagles and emblems of the conqueror; until his eyes are held by the Jerusalem of God, "built up with sapphires, and emeralds, and precious stones," with battlements of pure gold, and the cry of 'Alleluia' in her streets. Many years later, when he was very aged, he called his son to him and gave him as heritage his own simple rule of life, adding but one request: "Keep thou the law and the commandments, and shew thyself merciful and just, that it may go well with thee. . . .. Consider what alms doeth, and how righteousness doth deliver. . . . And bury me decently, and thy mother with me." Having so said, he went his way quietly and contentedly to the Jerusalem of his heart.