Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

396 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDlast utterance, " 0 Crito, we owe a cock to zEscu-lapius : pay it, and do not neglect it."I have cited at length these passages becauseI think that they exhibit clearly the opinions anconvictions > of Socrates on the most importantof all subjects. We behold here a man of a veryreligious mind, holding with the utmost tenacitythe idea of a Providence, the Benefactor of menand their Judge, since it discriminates betweenthem by reward and punishment: nor is it an im-^^^^^personal Providence, an abstract Reason, but " awise world-maker," who loves man and does himgood, and whose operations in this very purposeof doing him good indicate unity of design andperfection of execution: and yet in his conceptionof the godhead itself he halts between unity andplurality, and beside a statement such as we mightread in a Pauline epistle of the one God whoorders in harmony the universe and holds it toother,we find him passing to the recognition andworship of many gods: beside words to his judgesmost sublime and most pathetic, concerning theissue of life and of death, we find him with hislast breath directing his friend to discharge thesacrifice of a cock which he had promised to JEs-culapius. He does not attempt to solve either therational or the moral antagonism between manygods and one ; but practically he throws himselfinto the worship of his country, referring to thelaw of each place as that which should determine