for Greek philosophy was, of course,
not to favour its Pantheistic trend, where that existed, but much more
to convert such semi-Pantheism from a mere intellectual speculation to
contemplative devotion. For Hebraism itself had become almost as
intensely monotheistic as the later Islam. And, though monotheism may be
a stage in the progress of religion from Animism to Pantheism, it may,
also, by the peculiar intensity of the personal devotion it sometimes
inspires, cause the very idea of any farther expansion of faith to be
counted a sin.

[Sidenote: Philo, the Jew of Alexandria.]

Perhaps the influence of Hebraism on Hellenism may be illustrated by the
Alexandrian Philo's pathetic endeavour not only to trace the wisdom of
the Greeks to Moses, but to show that this derived lore is much mightier
for good when re-invested with the spiritual power and ardent devotion
of the Jewish faith.

"If any one will speak plainly," he writes,[12] "he might say that the
intelligible world is nothing other than the word (se. [Greek: logos],
reason) of the world-making God. For neither is the intelligible city
anything other than the thought [Greek: logismos] of the architect
already intending to build the city. This is the teaching of Moses, not
mine. At any rate in what follows, when he records the origin of man, he
declares outright that man was made in the image of God. But if a part
(of creation) reflects the type, so also must the entire manifestation,
this intelligible ordered world, which is a reproduction of the divine
image on a larger scale than that of man."[13]

[Sidenote: Motives Underlying his Distortion of Hebraism.]

[Sidenote: Not Pantheistic.]

How Philo managed to extort this out of the Pentateuch is a question of
interest, but one on which I cannot delay. Suffice it, that while he
thus showed his reverence for the traditions of his race, his whole aim
is to fire philosophy with religious devotion. But he was not, in any
strict sense of the word, a Pantheist, though he regarded the Logos as
an emanation from the Eternal, and the kosmos, the ordered world, as in
some way emanating from the Logos. Perhaps, indeed, if we could exclude
from emanation the idea of time, as Christians are supposed to do when
they speak of the "eternal generation" of the Divine Son or the
"procession" of the Holy Ghost, we might regard Philo, with the
succeeding Neo-Platonists and some of the Gnostics, as approximately
Pantheistic. But