in you."15 "He alone can become the heir of incorporeal and divine things whose whole soul is filled with the salubrious Word."16 "Every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall have everlasting life."17 "He strains every nerve towards the highest Divine Logos, who is the fountain of wisdom, in order that, drawing from that spring, he may escape death and win everlasting life."18 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever."19 "Lifting up his eyes to the ether, man receives manna, the Divine Logos, heavenly and immortal nourishment for the right desiring soul."20 "God is the perennial fountain of life; God is the fountain of the most ancient Logos."21 "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me."22 Does it not seem perfectly plain that John's doctrine of the Christ is at bottom identical with Philo's doctrine of the Logos? The difference of development in the two doctrines, so far as there is a difference, is that the latter view is philosophical, abstract; the former, practical, historical. Philo describes the Logos ideally, filling the supersensible sphere, mediating between the world and God; John presents him really, incarnated as a man, effecting the redemption of our race. The same dignity, the same offices, are predicated of him by both. John declares, "In him [the Divine Logos] was life, and the life was the light of men."23 Philo asserts, "Nothing is more luminous and irradiating than the Divine Logos, by the participation of whom other things expel darkness and gloom, earnestly desiring to partake of living light."24 John speaks of Christ as "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father."25 Philo says, "The Logos is the first begotten Son of God," "between whom and God nothing intervenes."26 John writes, "The Son of man will give you the food of everlasting life; for him hath God the Father sealed."27 Philo writes, "The stamp of the seal of God is the immortal Logos."28 We have this from John: "He was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin."29 And this from Philo: "The Divine Logos is free from all sins, voluntary and involuntary."30
The Johannean Christ is the Philonean Logos born into the world as a man. "And the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." The substance of what has thus far been established may now be concisely stated. The essential thought, whether the subject be metaphysically or practically considered, is this. God is the eternal, infinite personality of love and truth, life and light. The Logos is his first born Son, his exact image, the reproduction of his being, the next lower personality of love and truth, life and light, the instrument for creating and ruling the world, the revelation of God, the medium of communication between God and his works. Christ is that Logos come upon the earth as a man to save the perishing, proving his pre existence and superhuman nature by his miraculous knowledge and works. That the belief expressed in the last sentence is correctly attributed to John will
15 John vi. 53.
16 Philo, vol. i. p. 482.
17 John vi. 40.
18 Philo, vol. i. p. 560.
19 John vi. 51.
20 Philo, vol. i. p. 498.
21 Ibid. pp. 575, 207.
22 John vi. 57.