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    Socrates dwelt in a land whose golden fields and gorgeous gardens were , with all their splendour , a wilderness , compared with the sandy plains and rugged fastnesses of Judea , because no visible glory shone on them from heaven . He sought the shade of temples , where no eye looked for a unity

    of essence amidst the diversity of the forms of beauty ; and the ministrations by which his powers were matured were , even if understood by himself , unrecognized by any besides . The Jewish prophets were sent with the light of Deity shining in their faces to deliver express messages from Jehovah to his people . When they preached , the thunder-cloud was beneath their feet , and the lightnings in

    their hands , They were empowered to proclaim , " Hear , O Israel , the Lord thy God is One Lord ; " and their office being thus express , they were not subject to the perplexities of a discretionary power , and had only to discharge their commission and bear the consequences . Socrates had no credentials to exhibit ; his appeals were enforced by no power on which he could visibly repose ^ and were addressed to a people who were united

    by no common bond of acknowledged truth . He was compelled to exercise a caution as difficult as it must have been irksome . He could only intimate great truths by means of such analogies as would interest and engage his Athenian auditors , leaving it to those whom it might concern to interpret rightly his . countenance of popular superstitions : and , after all ,

    his marvellous prudence , being exercised on behalf of others rather than of himself , did not avail to preserve him from persecution and martyrdom . The Jewish teachers had to deal with a stiff-necked , he with a licentious , people . They were appointed to carry forward openly an aneient scheme of Providence ; his humbler task was to instil the primary elements of religious truth . All these thirfgs , —the birth , the position , the office of these several teachers , must be contemplated before an accurate estimate of their characters , or judgment of their claims to inspiration , can be formed . It will not be questioned by any who intelligently hold the doctrine of a Providejice , that the qualities of every man are conferred by God , their direction superintended , and their end appointed and achieved by him .

    It is likewise evident that , as a miracle is an extraordinary event , not in itself , but only to human apprehension , so in its own nature inspiration is only a greater degree of power which is possessed by all- To mao , it appears at first a power special in kind as well as remarkable in degree ; but to the Giver of tight , who knows the unity of its essence , it cannot be

    so . Furthermore , when man investigates the history of his . kind , aiad prepares from its results a scale of human powers ,, he finds it impossible to adjust it to his satisfaction as long as he transfers the distinction between those powers from their modes of attainment and manifestation to their inherent nature . The actual distinction which exists is enough for the purpose for which it was ordained , —for the education of the human ob-

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    578 The Religion of Socrates .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1831, page 578, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2601/page/2/