"Everywhere," says
Heine, "that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there
also is a Golgotha."
"Many loved Truth and lavished life's best oil,
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
With the cast mantle she had left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her,
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness." (1)
Socrates was condemned to drink the hemlock at Athens in his
seventy-second year, because his lofty teaching ran counter to the
prejudices and party-spirit of his age. He was charged by his
accusers with corrupting the youth of Athens by inciting them to
despise the tutelary deities of the state. He had the moral
courage to brave not only the tyranny of the judges who condemned
him, but of the mob who could not understand him. He died
discoursing of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; his
last words to his judges being, "It is now time that we depart--I
to die, you to live; but which has the better destiny is unknown
to all, except to the God."
How many great men and thinkers have been persecuted in the name
of religion! Bruno was burnt alive at Rome, because of his
exposure of the fashionable but false philosophy of his time.
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