Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

392 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDcould only reach definite ethical statements in conversationwith others. Thus his art was MentalMidwifery,31 as Plato designates it. His confessednon-knowledge, resting on the firm consciousnessof the essence of true knowledge, stood higherthan the imagined O knowledge O of those who conversedwith him; and to it was attached the So-cratic Irony; that apparent recognition which ispaid to the superior wisdom and prudence of anotheruntil this is dissolved into its nothingnessby the dialectic examination which measures whatis maintained as a generalisation by the fixed pointof the particular case. Thus it was that Socratesexercised the charge of examining men,32 which hewas convinced had been imposed upon him by theDelphic god in the oracle elicited by Ch^erephothat he was the wisest of men."The opinion, practice, and teaching of Socratesconcerning the gods and the godhead are set forthmost graphically by his disciple Xenophon in twochapters of his Memorabilia. Scarcely could aChristian moralist exhibit more lucidly the argumentfrom design in proof of a divine Providencewhich has formed and which rules the world;more than this, which has produced the seasonsof the year, the plants, the animals, for the goodof man. In the eyes of Socrates the human bodyitself is a never-failing proof of the divine love of31 % naicvTiKrj, Plat. Tliecct. p. 149.32 e|eYa