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
AEsculapius.

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 in-seeing, 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.