SOURCE: "Socrates and Christ," in Socrates and Christ: A Lecture Given at Northwestern University, Northwestern University, 1928, pp. 5-52.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture, Scott reviews Socrates's life and philosophic thought in order to demonstrate the influence of Socrates on Christianity. He argues that Socrates rejected the Olympic gods and thus left his followers searching for "a god of purity and a god of justice ", and he suggests that Christianity was successfully established in Greece due to this legacy.

During September of 480 B.C. in the waters between the Island of Salamis and the harbor of Athens the great fleet of the Persians was defeated, and Xerxes returned to Asia leaving his foremost general with a huge army to subdue the small and divided forces of Greece, but the next summer this huge army was utterly destroyed,—so utterly that assurance was given to Athens...