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    circumstance has acted , instead of distance of time or place , to exclude him from the teachings of Jehovah ' s temple ; and to him the instructions of the Grecian sage may be as salutary as , welcome . There may bean Aristodemus who will obtain from Socrates such evidence of the unity of the Creator as he would never have learned from a teacher of another

    nation : and many a Cntias , and many an Alcibiades , may be shamed into decency , or won over to a temporary energy of self-denial , by the force of irony , or the attraction of benignity ^ of which time has been powerless to divest the instructions of the wisest and best of Heathens * If he could appear to-day in our places of public resort , he ought to be welcome to

    resume his ancient office . It would be wise in our legislators to-admit him into the senate , in our philosophers to invite him to their sittings , in our religious teachers to open a way for him into their temples ; for assuredly he could , in each place , teach as much to some as he could learn from others : and the certain result would be , that he would lead his followers

    after him to an earnest advocacy of man's social rights , to a full recognition of all sound philosophical principles , and to an exulting reception of the gospel . Under such a conviction as this , the work before us has been planned and elaborated . It is prepared for those who would throng around the Athenian philosopher if he were to appear , and who , in his absence , care

    for no other teacher . The religion of Socrates is proposed to the consideration of those whose modes of philosophizing and chosen course of study forbid their rejecting such an appeal . If they pride themselves on being classics , they are met by a classic . If they rank themselves among philosophers , they find themselves challenged by a philosopher . If they reject dissertations on the Christian evidences , as wearisome and stale , they find no mention of Christianity in the whale course of the argument ; or if , as

    sometimes happens , they receive the dogmas of the ancient philosophy in connexion with the superstitions which still defile Christianity , they will here meet with no offensive reforming zeal which shall shock their prejudices . The Christian teacher , also ,, will find this work powerfully adapted to prepare the way for the gospel among a class whom his instructions are little likely to reach , and may himself derive some valuable hints from a work which opens so uncommon a method of appeal .

    We announce its purpose in the author's language rather than our own : " In the course of an inquiry into the meaning and origin of the mysticism of Plato , my attention was arrested by some peculiar traits in the character of Socrates . These appeared to me deserving" of a close examination ,

    not only for the sanction they derive from the integrity and wisdom of Socrates' character , but on account of a remarkable analogy which subsists between the state of knowledge in Socrates' times , and in our own . Each period may be considered a transition-state from a relaxing" authority to a more fully established conviction .

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    The Religion of Socrates . 581

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1831, page 581, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2601/page/5/