mage of him in manifestation, it follows that John regarded
Christ, next in rank below God, as personal love, life, truth, and
light; and the belief that he was the necessary medium of
communicating these Divine blessings to men would naturally
result. Accordingly, we find that John repeats, as falling from
the lips of Christ, all the declarations required by and
supporting such an hypothesis. "I am the way, the truth, and the
life." "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." But Philo, too,
had written before in precisely the same strain. Witness the
correspondences between the following quotations respectively from
John and Philo. "I am the bread which came down from heaven to
give life to the world."11 Whoso eateth my body and drinketh my
blood hath eternal life."12 "Behold, I rain bread upon you from
heaven: the heavenly food of the soul is the word of God, and the
Divine Logos, from whom all eternal instructions and wisdoms
flow."13 "The bread the Lord gave us to eat was his word."14
"Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life

10 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. ii. p. 128.

11 John vi. 33. 41.

12 Ibid. 54.

13 Quoted by G. Scheffer in his Treatise "De Usu
Philonis in Interpretatione Novi Testamenti," p. 82.

14 lbid. p. 81.

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