excellent discovery, that all things are due to the grace of God." "To
those who ask the origin of creation, one could most easily reply that
it is the goodness and grace of God which He bestowed on the race that
is after His image."[183] "For all that is in the universe and the
universe itself are the gift and bounty and grace of God."[184] Again,
"God is omnipotent; He could make all evil, but He wills only what is
best."[185] "All is due to God's grace, though nothing is worthy of
it;[186] but God looked to His own eternal goodness, and considered
that to do good befitted His own blessed and happy nature."

Philo's life-aim, as we have seen,[187] was to see God in all things
and all things in God. He is the sole principle of being, exercising
continuous causality; and yet He is always at rest, for His energy is
the expression of His being. "He never ceases to create, for creation
is as proper to Him as it is proper to fire to burn and to snow to
cause cold."[188] Further, to Him all human activity and excellence
are directly due. He fertilizes virtue by sending down the seed from
Heaven,[189] and He brings forth wisdom from the human mind by His own
Divine effluence. "It is the distinctive feature of Jewish thought,"
said Spinoza, "never to make account of particular and secondary
causes, but in a spirit of devotion, piety, and godliness to refer all
things directly to the Deity." No Jewish thinker ever applied this
principle more thoroughly than Philo; and it gives an unique color to
his work in the history of ancient philosophy. All our lives are one
unceasing miracle, due to the constant manifestation of God's power;
and the miracles of the Bible are examples of the universal working of
Divine care rather than exceptions from it.

The dominant feeling behind Greek thought is that man is the measure
of all things: Plato, attacking the standpoint of his nation, had
declared that God is the measure, and Philo repeats his maxim with a
new intensity. It means for him that man's mind is a fragment or
particle of the Divine universal mind, which, however, is impotent
till called into activity by the further Divine gift of inspiration.
Knowledge and happiness, therefore, come not through God, but from
God.[190] "The Divine Word streams down from the fount of wisdom, and
waters the plants of virtuous souls."[191] "To God alone is it fitting
to use the word 'my,'"[192] or, put in another way, man has only the
usufruct and