Real function of the Alexandrian theosophy. 71

But if Philo was not St. John's master, it is probable that his writings, or rather the general theosophic movement of which they are the most representative sample, may have supplied some contemporary heresies with their stock of metaphysical material, and in this way may have determined, by an indirect antagonism, the providential form of St. John's doctrine. Nor can the general positive value of Philo's labours be mistaken, if he is viewed apart from the use that modern scepticism has attempted to make of particular speculations to which he gave such shape and impulse. In making a way for some leading currents of Greek thought into the heart of the Jewish Revelation, hitherto wellnigh altogether closed to it, Philo was not indeed teaching positive truth, but he was breaking down some intellectual barriers against its reception, in the most thoughtful portion of the human family. In Philo, Greek Philosophy almost stood at the door of the Catholic Church; but it was Greek Philosophy endeavouring to base itself, however precariously, upon the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Logos of Philo, though a shifting and incomplete speculation, may well have served as a guide to thoughtful minds from that region of unsettled enquiry that surrounds the Platonic doctrine of a Divine Reason, to the clear and strong faith which welcomes the full Gospel Revelation of the Word made Flesh. Philo's Logos, while embodying elements foreign to the Hebrew Scriptures, is nevertheless in a direct line of descent from the Inspired doctrine of the Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs; and it thus illustrates the comprehensive vigour of the Jewish Revelation, which could countenance and direct, if it could not absolutely satisfy, those fitful guesses at and gropings after truth which were current in Heathendom. If Philo could never have created the Christian Doctrine which has been so freely ascribed to him, he could do much, however unconsciously, to prepare the soil of Alexandrian thought for its reception; and from this point of view, his Logos must appear of considerably higher importance than the parallel speculations as to the Memra, the Shekinah, the doctrine of the hidden and the revealed God, which in that and later ages belonged to the tradition of Palestinian Judaism y.

▾ Compare Dorner, Person Christi, Einleit. p. 59, on the Adam Kadmon, and p. 60, on the Memra, Shekinah, and Metatron. 'Zu der Idee einer Incarnation des wirklich Göttlichen aber haben es alle diese Theologumene insgesammt nie gebracht.' They only involve a parastatic appearance of God, are symbols of His Presence, and are altogether impersonal; or if personal (as the Metatron), they are clearly conceived of as created

72 Relevancy of the foregoing considerations.

'Providence,' says the accurate Neander, 'had so ordered it, that in the intellectual world in which Christianity made its first appearance, many ideas should be in circulation, which at least seemed to be closely related to it, and in which Christianity could find a point of connection with external thought, on which to base the doctrine of a God revealed in Christ z.' Of these ideas we may well believe that the most generally diffused and the most instrumental was the Logos of Alexandria, if not the exact Logos of Philo.

It is possible that such considerations as some of the foregoing, when viewed relatively to the great and vital doctrine which is before us in these lectures, may be objected to on the score of being 'fanciful.' Nor am I insensible, my brethren, to the severity of such a condemnation when awarded by the practical intelligence of Englishmen. Still it is possible that such a criticism would betoken on the part of those who make it some lack of wise and generous thought. Fanciful,' after all, is a relative term; what is solid in one field of study may seem fanciful in another. Before we condemn a particular line of thought as 'fanciful,' we do well to enquire whether a penetration, a subtlety, a versatility, I might add, a spirituality of intelligence, greater than our own, might not convict the condemnation itself of an opposite demerit, which need not be more particularly described. Especially in sacred literature, the imputation of fancifulness is a rash one; since a sacred subjectmatter is not likely, à priori, to be fairly amenable to the coarser tests and narrower views of a secular judgment. It may be that the review of those adumbrations of the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity, in which we have been engaged, is rather calculated to reassure a believer than to convince a sceptic. Christ's Divinity illuminates the Hebrew Scriptures, but to read them as a whole by this light we must already have recognised the truth from which it radiates. Yet it would be an error to suppose that the Old Testament has no relations of a more independent character to the doctrine of Christ's Godhead. The Old Testament witnesses to the existence of a great national belief, the importance of which cannot be ignored by any man who would do justice to the history of human thought. And

personalities. This helps to explain the fact that during the first three centuries the main attacks on our Lord's Godhead were of Jewish origin. Cf. Dorner, ubi sup. note 14. On the Rabbinical ascription of Divine attributes to the Metatron, as higher than all angels, see Drach, Harmonie, ii. p. 417. z Kirchen Geschichte, i. 3, p. 989.

Nations must have hope in a Future.

73

we proceed to ask whether that belief has any, and what, bearing upon the faith of Catholic Christendom as to the Person of her Lord.

II. There is then one element, or condition of national life, with which no nation can dispense. A nation must have its eye upon a future, more or less defined, but fairly within the apparent scope of its grasp. Hope is the soul of moral vitality; and any man, or society of men, who would live, in the moral sense of life, must be looking forward to something. You will scarcely suspect me, my brethren, of seeking to disparage the great principle of tradition ;—that principle to which the Christian Church owes her sacred volume itself, no less than her treasure of formulated doctrine, and the structural conditions and sacramental sources of her life;-that principle to which each generation of human society is deeply and inevitably indebted for the accumulated social and political experiences of the generations before it. Precious indeed, to every wise man, to every association of truehearted and generous men, must ever be the inheritance of the past. Yet what is the past without the future? What is memory when unaccompanied by hope? Look at the case of the single soul. Is it not certain that a life of high earnest purpose will die outright, if it is permitted to sink into the placid reverie of perpetual retrospect, if the man of action becomes the mere 'laudator temporis acti'? How is the force of moral life developed and strengthened? Is it not by successive conscious efforts to act and to suffer at the call of duty? Must not any moral life dwindle and fade away if it be not reaching forward to a standard higher, truer, purer, stronger than its own? Will not the struggles, the sacrifices, the self-conquests even of a great character in bygone years, if they now occupy its whole field of vision, only serve to consummate its ruin? As it doatingly fondles them in memory, will it not be stiffened by conceit into a moral petrifaction, or consigned by sloth to the successive processes of moral decomposition? Has not the Author of our life so bound up its deepest instincts and yearnings with His own eternity, that no blessings in the past would be blessings to us, if they were utterly unconnected with the future? So it is also in the case of a society. The greatest of all societies among men at this moment is the Church of Jesus Christ. Is she sustained only by the deeds and writings of her saints and martyrs in a distant past, or only by her reverent trustful sense of the Divine Presence which blesses her in the actual present? Does she not resolutely pierce the gloom of the future, and confidently

74

Nations must have hope in a Future.

reckon upon new struggles and triumphs on earth, and, beyond these, upon a home in Heaven, wherein she will enjoy rest and victory,—a rest that no trouble can disturb, a victory that no reverse can forfeit? Is not the same law familiar to us in this place, as it affects the well-being of a great educational institution? Here in Oxford we feel that we cannot rest upon the varied efforts and the accumulated credit even of ten centuries. We too have hopes embarked in the years or in the centuries before us; we have duties towards them. We differ, it may be, even radically, among ourselves as to the direction in which to look for our academical future. The hopes of some of us are the fears of others. This project would fain banish from our system whatever proclaims that God had really spoken, and that it is man's duty and happiness gladly and submissively to welcome His message; while that scheme would endeavour, if possible, to fashion each one of our intellectual workmen more and more strictly after the type of a believing and fervent Christian. The practical difference is indeed profound; but we are entirely agreed as to the general necessity for looking forward. On both sides it is understood that an institution which is not struggling upwards towards a higher future, must resign itself to the conviction that it is already in its decadence, and must expect to die.

Nor is it otherwise with that association of men which we call a nation, the product of race, or the product of circumstances, the product in any case of a Providential Will, Which welds into a common whole, for the purposes of united action and of reciprocal influence, a larger or smaller number of human beings. A nation must have a future before it; a future which can rebuke its despondency and can direct its enthusiasm; a future for which it will prepare itself; a future which it will aspire to create or to control. Unless it would barter away the vigorous nerve of true patriotism for the feeble pedantry of a soulless archæology, a nation cannot fall back altogether upon the centuries which have flattered its ambition, or which have developed its material well-being. Something it must propose to itself as an object to be compassed in the coming time; something which is as yet beyond it. It will enlarge its frontier; or it will develope its commercial resources; or it will extend its schemes of colonization; or it will erect its overgrown colonies into independent and friendly states; or it will bind the severed sections of a divided race into one gigantic nationality that shall awe, if it do not subdue, the nations around. Or perchance its

A Future necessary to the Chosen People. 75

attention will be concentrated on the improvement of its social life, and on the details of its internal legislation. It will extend the range of civil privileges; it will broaden the basis of government; it will provide additional encouragements to and safeguards for public morality; it will steadily aim at bettering the condition of the classes who are forced, beyond others, to work and to suffer. Thankful it may well be to the Author of all goodness for the enjoyment of past blessings; but the spirit of a true thankfulness is ever and very nearly allied to the energy of hope. Self-complacent a nation cannot be, unless it would. perish. Woe indeed to the country which dares to assume that it has reached its zenith, and that it can achieve or attempt no more!

Now Israel as a nation was not withdrawn from the operation of this law, which makes the anticipation of a better future of such vital importance to the common life of a people. Israel indeed had been cradled in an atmosphere of physical and political miracle. Her great lawgiver could point to the event which gave her national existence as to an event unique in human history a. No subsequent vicissitudes would obliterate the memory of the story which Israel treasured in her inmost memory, the story of the stern Egyptian bondage followed by the triumphant Exodus. How retrospective throughout

is the sacred literature of Israel! It is not enough that the great deliverance should be accurately chronicled; it must be expanded, applied, insisted on in each of its many bearings and aspects by the lawgiver who directed and who described it; it must be echoed on from age to age, in the stern expostulations of Prophets and in the plaintive or jubilant songs of Psalmists. Certainly the greater portion of the Old Testament is history. Israel was guided by the contents of her sacred books to live in much grateful reflection upon the past. Certainly, it was often her sin and her condemnation that she practically lost sight of all that had been done for her. Yet if ever it were permissible to forget the future, Israel, it should seem, might have forgotten it. She might have closed her eyes against the dangers which threatened her from beyond the Lebanon, from beyond the Eastern and the Southern desert, from beyond the Western sea, from within her own borders, from the streets and the palaces of her capital. She might have abandoned herself in an

a Deut. iv. 34.