With all

And then

son of Sirach in a remarkable passage. Wisdom, he says, came forth from the mouth of the Most High. She covered the earth as a mist, and made her tabernacle in high places. She acquired a possession in all the earth, and in every people and nation. these she sought rest (apparently in vain). he who created her commanded her, and made her tabernacle to rest in Jacob. He settled her in the beloved city, and her authority was in Jerusalem. Then, after a figurative description of her excellence, the writer adds: "All these things are the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the Law which Moses commanded as an inheritance for the synagogues of Jacob." Here there is a progressive limiting of the range of Wisdom. First it appears as a cosmic power. Then it comes to the human race, and visits every nation. Disappointed, it pitches its tent in Israel; in Israel it chooses Jerusalem for its seat, and finally it seems to be identified with the Law. The order of thought in this passage, and its leading ideas, are so closely parallel to those in the Proem of the Fourth Gospel that one cannot help conjecturing that the later writer, though using such different

1 Ecclus. xxiv. 3-23.

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language, and marching to such a different conclusion, was influenced by a reminiscence of the earlier; and indeed it is possible that his doctrine is set forth in conscious opposition to the older teaching.1

Be this as it may, the Evangelist wrote amid these surroundings of Hebrew and Greek thought. His Gospel, so far as I can judge, gives no evidence of his having been educated in Greek philosophy, the characteristic phraseology of the schools being entirely absent; and in spite of some general resemblances, it would be impossible to prove that he was acquainted with Philo's writings. The cast of his style and thought is entirely his own; and when he appropriates old ideas, he dresses them up in a new language, and sends them forth with a new pomp and power to conquer fresh realms, and to change and renovate the philosophy from which they are supposed

1 There is little resemblance of language; but we may compare ἐν Ἰακὼβ κατασκήνωσον (Ecclus. xxiv. 8) with ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν (John i. 14); also the allusions to the dóga and to the vóμos. I cannot but notice also the contrast between Ecclus. xxiv. 21, oi ἐσθίοντές με ἔτι πεινάσουσι, καὶ οἱ πίνοντές με ἔτι διψήσουσιν, and John vi. 35, ὁ ἐρχόμενος πρός με οὐ μὴ πεινάσῃ καὶ ὁ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ οὐ μὴ διψήσῃ πώποτε, taken in connection with the language about eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood.

to have been borrowed. It seems probable, then, that he had only an indirect knowledge of Greek ideas; but the philosophy of any period gradually permeates the whole of society, and affects the habits of thought even of those who have never read a philosophical work. In Ephesus it would have been impossible to reason continually on the verities of Christian faith as though philosophy had never been; and if Paul discoursed "in the school of one Tyrannus," John can hardly have failed to encounter some of the philosophical teachers, and may have been forced to consider the relation between his own doctrine and that of the more thoughtful portion of the Greek community. We may assume his familiarity with the sacred Scriptures of his own people; and thus both from Greeks and Jews he would hear of the Logos,from the former, of Thought as the principle of reason in nature and in man; from the latter, of Thought enshrined as the Word of God in an inspired book. How were these related to one another, and to Christian truth?

As the Evangelist meditated on these things, he saw that the Word had become flesh. This was to him no

1 Acts xix. 9.

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idle and speculative dream, but a reality of experience; for the image of the Beloved had sunk into his heart, and changed his inmost being; and, as he gazed, the whole aspect of life, of truth, of duty, was transfigured. The Thought of God, his Thought or Word to mankind, had been graven in a human image, and had spoken in the pathetic and awful tones of a human life and death. But in proceeding to this further conception he did not deny any truth that had been already reached. For him, too, the creation bore the impress of Divine Thought, and without that Thought no single thing had been made. He does not dwell on this, for he is hastening to another theme; but how much is conveyed in the few words which he employs! Not only the mysterious pomp of heaven, marching with undeviating regularity from age to age, but each minutest flower, each insect that flitted its happy moment in the sunshine, was an expression of Divine power, and sprang into being in accordance with the laws of Eternal Reason. His spiritual ear caught a Divine melody as the waves of the Ægean broke at his feet, and heard amid the silence of the night the far-off music of the spheres ; and when, leaving details, he saw all things united

into one stupendous plan, he beheld, as in the speaking face of a statue, the cosmic Thought of the infinite Artist visibly portrayed. Yet this was not the Word of God which man most deeply craved. All was order and beauty without; but what of the disorder and vileness within? What of holiness and pity and love? How was their inner meaning to be revealed? How were God's tenderness and sympathy and forgivingness to be shed over the world, and made a living reality to the hearts of men? They could not be enshrined in mere material bulk; they could not gleam from the stony eyes of a mountain, or plead with us in the tempest's shriek. The heavens declare the glory of God, but to find his higher spiritual attributes you must see them in the expression of a holy face or the conduct of a devoted life. The Word made flesh, the Divine Thought for humanity making its tabernacle in the form of a Son of Man, satisfies our religious need as nature by itself can never do. In seeing nature we see the Creator, the unapproachable, many will say the unknowable, Cause; but in seeing Christ we see the Father, and "it sufficeth us," and our hearts are at rest.

Again, the Evangelist accepted the doctrine that