ool of Alexandria, on the contrary, and
Philo among the rest, mingling Greek with Jewish and Oriental notions,
and abandoning himself to his inclination to mysticism, personified the
logos, and represented it a distinct being, created by God, and
intermediate between God and man. This is the second logos of Philo,
that which acts from the beginning of the world, alone in its kind,
creator of the sensible world, formed by God according to the ideal
world which he had in himself, and which was the first logos, the first-
born of the Deity. The logos taken in this sense, then, was a created
being, but, anterior to the creation of the world, near to God, and
charged with his revelations to mankind.----Which of these two senses is
that which St. John intended to assign to the word logos in the first
chapter of his Gospel, and in all his writings? St. John was a Jew, born
and educated in Palestine; he had no knowledge, at least very little, of
the philosophy of the Greeks, and that of the Grecizing Jews: he would
naturally, then, attach to the word logos the sense attached to it by
the Jews of Palestine. If, in fact, we compare the attributes which he
assigns to the logos with those which are assigned to it in Proverbs, in
the Wisdom of Solomon, in Ecclesiasticus, we shall see that they are the
same. The Word was in the world, and the world was made by him; in him
was life, and the life was the light of men, (c. i. v. 10-14.) It is
impossible not to trace in this chapter the ideas which the Jews had
formed of the allegorized logos. The evangelist afterwards really
personifies that which his predecessors have personified only
poetically; for he affirms "that the Word became flesh," (v. 14.) It was
to prove this that he wrote. Closely examined, the ideas which he gives
of the logos cannot agree with those of Philo and the school of
Alexandria; they correspond, on the contrary, with those of the Jews of
Palestine. Perhaps St. John, employing a well-known term to explain a
doctrine which was yet unknown, has slightly altered the sense; it is
this alteration which we appear to discover on comparing different
passages of his writings.----It is worthy of remark, that the Jews of
Palestine, who did not perceive this alteration, could find nothing
extraordinary in what St. John said of the Logos; at least they
comprehended it without difficulty, while the Greeks and Grecizing Jews,
on their part, brought to it prejudices and preconcepti