is sometimes spoken of by the Stoie term ἀπόσπασμα, but Philo carefully guards against the supposition that any portion could ever be detached from the Supreme Divine Being. He explains it as an expansion from God, and calls the mind (voûs) which it confers on the scul of man, the nearest image and likeness of the eternal and blessed Idea.

We must not however expect a strictly consistent terminology in Philo, nor allow ourselves to be misled when we sometimes find him using mind or nous in the more general sense of soul (vxn). What is important to us is that when it is necessary, he does distinguish between the two. But even then he hesitates between the philosophical opinion of the Stoics, that the mind after all is material, though not made of the four ordinary elements, but of a fifth, the heavenly ether, and the teaching of Moses that it was the image of the Divine and the Invisible 1.

But even if the soul is conceived as material, or at all events, as ethereal, it is declared to be of heavenly origin, and believed to return to the pure ether as to a father 2.

If, on the contrary, the mind is conceived as the breath (veua) of God, then it returns to God, or rather it was never separated from God, but only dwelt in man. And here again the Biblical idea comes in, that some chosen men such as prophets are

1 De plantat. Noe, 5 (1, 332): Οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τῆς αἰθερίου φύσεως τῶν ἡμέτερον νοῦν μοῖραν εἰπόντες εἶναι, συγγένειαν ἀνθρώπῳ πρὸς αιθέρα ἀνῆψαν· ὁ δὲ μέγας Μωϋσῆς οὐδενὶ τῶν γεγονότων τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς τὸ εἶδος ὁμοίως ὠνόμασεν, ἀλλ ̓ εἶπεν αὐτὴν τοῦ θείου καὶ ἀοράτου εἰκόνα.

2 Quis rer. divin. heres, 57 (1, 514 : Tù dè roepòv kai ovpárov Ts ψυχῆς γένος πρὸς αἰθέρα τὸν καθαρώτατον ὡς πρὸς πατέρα ἀφίξεται.

full of the divine spirit, and different so far from ordinary mortals.

Yet with all his admiration for the Logos as of divine origin, Philo seldom went so far as the Platonists. He never allowed that the soul even in its highest ecstasy could actually see God, as little, he says, as the soul can see itself (De Mut. nom. 2, p. 579). But in every other respect Reason was to him the supreme power in the world and in the human mind. If therefore an Alexandrian philosopher, familiar with Philo's philosophy and terminology, became a Christian, he really raised Christ to the highest position, short of primary Divinity, which he could conceive. He declared ipso facto his belief that the Divine Logos or the Word was made flesh in Christ, that is to say, he recognised in Christ the full realisation of the divine idea of man, and he claimed at the same time for himself and for all true Christians the power to become the sons of God. This was expressed in unmistakable language by Athanasius, when he said that the Logos, the Word of God, became man that we might be made God, and again by St. Augustine, Factus est Deus homo, ut homo fieret Deus 1. Whatever we may think of these speculations, we may, I believe, as historians recognise in them a correct account of the religious and intellectual ferment in the minds of the earliest Greek and Jewish converts to Christianity, who, without breaking with their philosophical convictions, embraced with perfect honesty the religion of Christ. Three important points were gained by this combination of their ancient philosophy with their new re

1 See the remarks of Cusanus, in Dür's Nicolaus Cusanus, vol. ii.

p. 347.

ligion, the sense of the closest relationship between human and divine nature, the pre-eminent position of Christ as the Son of God, in the truest sense, and at the same time the potential brotherhood between Him and all mankind.

How far this interpretation of the Logos, as we find it not only in Philo, but among the earliest converts to Christianity, may be called orthodox, is not a question that concerns the historian. The word orthodox does not exist in his dictionary. There is probably no term which has received so many interpretations at the hands of theologians as that of Logos, and no verse in the New Testament which conveys so little meaning to modern readers as the first in the Gospel of St. John. Theologians are at liberty to interpret it, each according to his own predilection, but the historical student has no choice; he must take every word in the sense in which it was used at the time by those who used it.

Jupiter as Son of God.

That the intellectual process by which the Greek philosophy adapted itself to the teaching of Christianity was in accordance with the spirit of the time, is best shown by an analogous process which led NeoPlatonist philosophers to discover their philosophical theories in their own ancient mythology also. Thus Plotinus speaks of the Supreme God generating a beautiful son, and producing all things in his essence without any labour or fatigue. For this deity being delighted with his work, and loving his offspring, continues and connects all things with himself, pleased both with himself and with the splendours his off

spring exhibits. But since all these are beautiful, and those which remain are still more beautiful, Jupiter, the son of intellect, alone shines forth externally, proceeding from the splendid retreats of his father. From which last son we may behold as an image the greatness of his Sire, and of his brethren, those divine. ideas that abide in occult union with their father 1.

Here we see that Jupiter, originally the Father of Gods and men, has to yield his place to the Supreme Peing, and as a phenomenal God to take the place of the son of God, or as the Logos. This is Greek philosophy trying to pervade and quicken the ancient Greek religion, as we saw it trying to be reconciled with the doctrines of Christianity by recognising the divine ideal of perfection and goodness as realised in Christ, and as to be realised in time by all who are to become the sons of God. The key-note of all these aspirations is the same, a growing belief that the human soul comes from God and returns to God, nay that in strict philosophical language it was never torn away (ànóσлаσμа) from God, that the bridge between man and God was never broken, but was only rendered invisible for a time by the darkness of passions and desires engendered by the senses and the flesh.

1 Plotinus, Enneads, II; Taylor, Platonic Religion, p. 263.

LECTURE XIII.

ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY.

I

Stoics and Neo-Platonists.

TRIED to show in my last lecture how Philo, as the representative of an important historical phase of Jewish thought, endeavoured with the help of Greek, and more particularly of Stoic philosophy, to throw a bridge from earth to heaven, and how he succeeded in discovering that like two countries, now separated by a shallow ocean, these two worlds formed originally but one undivided continent. When the original oneness of earth and heaven, of the human and the divine natures has once been discovered, the question of the return of the soul to God assumes a new character. It is no longer a question of an ascension to heaven, an approach to the throne of God, an ecstatic vision of God and a life in a heavenly Paradise. The vision of God is rather the knowledge of the divine element in the soul, and of the consubstantiality of the divine and human natures. Immortality has no longer to be asserted, because there can be no death for what is divine and therefore immortal in man. There is life eternal and peace eternal for all who feel the