the fountain of wisdom, whereof they who drink obtain eternal life. The Logos is also "the Divine Word," the "first begotten Son" of God, his High Priest and Ambassador to man, and is a second God "that must be God of us imperfect beings."

Philo lived and wrote in the first half of the first century, and we have admitted the probability that Paul in his youth obtained through Gamaliel (or was it only in later life, through Apollos?) some acquaintance, if not with the writings of Philo, at least with the Alexandrian mode of treating the Scriptures. We see, anyhow, that the apostle of the Gentiles pressed allegorical interpretation of the sacred writings into his service, and made, in this way, the most unlikely passages serve his turn and support the conclusions which in the main were derived by reflection from his own subjective experiences.

Then, too, another great teacher of that century, familiar with both Philonian and Pauline ideas and methods (we are presuming that Apollos was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews), constructed an argument for the abolition of Judaism out of Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures themselves.* For the Epistle to the Hebrews does away with the continuance of the law and of sacrifices, by deeming all the ordinances mere types of something higher, which now takes their place. Paul had already spoken of "Christ" as a Passover or Paschal Lamb, a sacrifice

* Apollos is called in the Acts a Jew of Álexandria. Paul calls him a fellow-apostle, 1 Cor. iv. 6-9.

and propitiation for the sins of the world. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, taking this as his main idea, represents all the sacrifices of the Judaistic worship as mere types of this great sacrifice, having their consummation and end in him.*

The Epistle is evidently written, not to Jews in general, but to the Jew-Christians. Speaking of the new covenant, he argues † that "new" being antithetical to "old," the former covenant is evidently worn out, and we have done with it. Moses was the mediator of the old covenant, and Jesus is of the new. He was offered in sacrifice, and is gone into the heavens to act as priest and intercessor. "For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." +

For his greatness, see also the first chapter. By him God made all things, he therefore answers to the Logos of Philo. The author quotes the sixth and seventh verses of the forty-fifth Psalm, which he regards as saying of the Son, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, and the sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God (or O God) thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows."

The Apocalypse, as we have seen, describes the Christ as a superhuman being-as the Lamb, who *See Heb. x. 8, 9. † Heb. viii. 13. Heb. iv. 15.

though slain, is yet King of kings, and Lord of lords, and as the Word of God.

And as Philo had said of "the Word," that he is the "first begotten Son of God," and "the likeness of God, by which the universe was created," so, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, verses 15, 16, the Son "is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation, for in him were all things created."

Now, doubtless, there were many churches in Asia Minor and elsewhere whose members were taught to regard as genuine and apostolic the Epistles known as Paul's, or most of them, and of these members some would be most attracted by one portion of the Pauline doctrine, and some by another; and when the controversy respecting the Jewish law had died out, it would come to be believed by all as a matter of course, that Paul had always been in accord with the other apostles. Pfleiderer thinks the Acts was certainly written by a Pauline Christian who thus believed. Among these Churches there would be a minority of Hebrew parentage (Hellenist Jews), who were doctrinally assimilated to the Church in which they and their parents had been reared.

Let us, then, fix our attention on one of these Christians of Hebrew parentage (say of Asia Minor, for example), taught to regard as apostolic and worthy of great reverence (though not as Holy Scripture, for only the Old Testament was, in the early years of the second century, so regarded) the Epistles published

as Paul's, whether genuine or not; also the Epistle to the Hebrews, and likewise the Apocalypse.

He has not only been educated in Pauline Christianity, but without any knowledge of an antagonism between it and the Judaic Christianism of the older Apostles.

He has not "known (Jesus) after the flesh," but has always been trained to regard him as the Christ; as a spiritual Lord; as quite a superhuman being, higher than all angels; as having existed in heaven before his birth on earth; as having existed, indeed, before all other created things and beings; as having been present at the creation, God having, by him, made the worlds.

The mind of this our Pauline Christian of Hebrew extraction is of no common order. He is studious, thoughtful, and of a philosophic tendency; he may even have studied Plato; he is perhaps likely to have studied Philo, though, to have produced the fourth Gospel, it is surely sufficient that he should have well known the Old Testament and the already written Christian writings; he is almost certain to have read the book of Wisdom ;-but, of course, his chief studies have been in the Canonical Scriptures, which were to Paul, as well as to the Jew-Christians, the great fount of divine wisdom.

Having been taught, then, that God created all things by Christ Jesus, does he regard the Scriptures as, by implication, denying this when he reads,*

*Ps. xxxiii. 6.

"By the word of the Lord were the heavens made” ? Nay, but he regards it as a full confirmation, since he has learnt from John* that the Christ, the Son of God, is also his Word.

And when he reads in Prov. iii. 19 that "The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens," he stumbleth not, for he has already learned from Paul that Christ is both the power of God and the wisdom of God.†

Hence, whatever wondrous things are spoken of "the Word of God," or of the Divine Wisdom, are regarded by our philosophizing Christian as predicated also of the Son. Thus, in Prov. viii. 22-30, where Wisdom personified says of herself, "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. . . . When he prepared the heavens, I was there . . . when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him : and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." All this, then, is true of the Incarnate Wisdom, the Word, the Logos.

...

So likewise that grand description in the book of Wisdom: "For Wisdom . . . is the worker of all things

having all power. . . . she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the breath of the power of God, a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty . . . for she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted † I Cor. i. 24. Wisd. vii. 22-27.

*Rev. xix. 13.