, O Lord, lovest all things that are,
And thou dost not abhor any of the things which thou hast made,
For thou wouldest never have formed anything that thou didst hate.
And how would anything have endured, if thou didst not wish it?
Or how could that which was not called into being by thee have been
preserved?
But thou sparest all things, because they are thine,
O Sovereign Lord, thou lover of men's lives!
For thine incorruptible spirit is in all things.
Therefore thou convictest the fallen little by little,
And, reminding them of the things in which they sin, thou dost warn them,
That freed from wickedness, they may believe on thee, O Lord.

[Sidenote: Wisd. of Sol. 15:1-3]
But thou, our God, art gracious and true,
Long suffering, and in mercy directing all things.
For even if we sin, we are thine, since we know thy might.
But we shall not sin, knowing that we have been counted as thine;
For to know thee is perfect righteousness,
And to know thy might is the root of immortality.

I. Conditions of the Jews in Antioch and Asia Minor. Seleucus Nicanor,
who in 311 B.C. founded the city of Antioch, like Alexander, granted many
privileges to the Jewish colonies whom he thus sought to attract hither.
They not only possessed the rights of citizenship, but lived in their
separate quarter. Their synagogue was one of the architectural glories of
the city. There they engaged in trade and undoubtedly grew rich, taking on
largely the complexion of that opulent Hellenic city. Later the Jewish
colony was enlarged by the apostates who fled from Judea when the
Maccabean rulers gained the ascendancy. The corrupt and materialistic
atmosphere of Antioch doubtless explains why its Jewish citizens
apparently contributed little to the development of the thought and faith
of later Judaism. Similar colonies were found throughout the great
commercial cities of Asia Minor. In many of these cities--for example,
Tarsus--they seem to have enjoyed the same privileges as those at Antioch.

II. The Jews in Egypt. The chief intellectual and religious center of
the Jews of the dispersion, however, was in Alexandria. It is probable
that fully a million Jews were to be found in Egypt during the latter
part of the Maccabean period. Industry and commerce had made many of them
extremely wealthy and had given them the leisure to study not only their
own scriptures but also the literature of the Greeks. The prevailingly
friendly way in which the Ptolemai