form. The active principle was therefore conceived as having for its substratum the nature of external fire, but to protect this representation from the misconception of ordinary minds, they also called it spirit.

The first expression of the working of the active principle is in forming the primary elements from the original matter; the second, in forming bodies. The active principle thus working externally in unorganized nature Chrysippus calls the binding power, and supposes the air to be its substratum or substance. This power acting in its higher operations producing the life of nature, and animating all forms of organism from the humblest plant to the highest spirit-life he calls the ether, but though the one active principle has many powers and functions, it is still but one, as the human mind with all its faculties is an undivided unity. This active principle is again considered as the original source of all right and morality-the principle of law-giving the world order. The moral order is therefore of the essence of God, or in other words, this moral order is our divinest conception of the nature of God, for in this God appears as the unchangeable and the eternal, the absolute Being whose existence implies the highest rectitude, wisdom, and perfection. Tiedemann says of the Stoics-" Among all the philosophers of antiquity, none defended the existence of God with so warm a zeal or so many and so powerful arguments." The chief of these was the undeniable existence of right in the world. This shows a relationship between man and God, and the existence of a Deity as a moral Being, as the principle of moral lawgiving and world order, that is, of right and morality. In the last analysis there is in reality but one Being existing. We may call Him God, or we may call Him the universe. The one is God active, the other is God passive. The one is the life, the other is the body which is animated by the life. The one is the creative energy, the other is the ground or substratum in which this energy is at work, and to which it is united. God is the soul of the great animal world. He is the universal Reason which rules over all, and permeates all. He is that gracious providence which cares for the individual as well as for the all. He is infinitely wise. His nature is the basis of law, forbidding evil and commanding good. By the very order of creation He punishes them that do evil, and rewards them that do well, being in Himself perfectly just and righteous. He is not a spirit, for that is nothing; as we have no idea corresponding to such an existence, but He is the

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GOD THE ONLY REAL BEING.

subtlest element of matter. He is in the world as those wonderworking powers and ever-creating energies which we see in all nature, but whose essence baffles our reason to penetrate. He is the most mysterious of all things we know, and more mysterious than all mysteries. He is the divine Ether. He is the breath that passes through all nature; He is the fire that kindles the universe. From Him issues forth that stream of divine life in which nature lives, and which flowing forth into all her channels makes her rejoice to live. Seneca, the Roman representative of the philosophers of the porch, calls God the Maker of the universe, the Judge and Preserver of the world the Being upon whom all things depend-the spirit of the world; and then he adds, "Every name belongs to Him-all things spring from Him. We live by His breath; He is all, in all His parts; He sustains Himself by His own might. His divine breath is diffused through all things small and great. His power end his presence extend to all. He is the God of heaven and of all the gods. The divine powers which we worship singly are all subject to Him."

That the ground of all things is one reality, and that that reality is God, is the burden of nearly all the speculations of the Greeks, and the end of all their enquiries. They deny reality to created things lest two realities existing together might imply two everlasting beings, which is contradictory to the utterances of reason concerning being. The individual things proceed from God, and so far as they are real they are of God, but in their individuality they are distinct from God, what that reality of things is, each school has tried to express, but all the expressions involve a contradiction as they express something definite, while God is beyond definition-the undefined and the infinite.

The Materials of this Chapter are gathered from Schweglers's History of Philosophy, Mr. Lewes' Biographical History, Mr. Maurice's volumes on Greek Philosophy in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, Archer Butler's Lectures on Philosophy, Mackay's Progress of the Intellect among the Greeks; the Histories of Brucker, Ritter, and Tennemann; with the Translations of Plato in Bohn's Library, and Thomas Taylor's Translations of Aristotle.

CHAPTER IV.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE JEWS.

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THE Hebrew Scriptures begin with the creation of the world. The creating God or gods is called Elohim, a name," says Gesenius, "retained from Polytheism and which means the higher powers or intelligences." That the sacred writer should use a word borrowed from Polytheism will not surprise those who understand the nature of language, but that the writer himself had passed from Polytheism to the belief of the One God is evident from the whole of the record of creation, and confirmed by the succeeding history. To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the name of God was El Shaddai. To Moses God revealed Himself by the new name Jehovah or I AM. The God of Moses was pure Being. It was the name Jehovah which kept the Jews from idolatry. In proportion as they ceased to think of their Deliverer as the unspeakable Being they were in danger of worshipping the gods of the nations. "This new name," as Dean Stanley says," though itself penetrating into the most abstract metaphysical idea of God, yet in its effect was the very opposite of a mere abstraction." The old Jews did not speculate about the Essence of God, though they had reached the highest conception of that Essence. Guarded by the declaration once for all that the nature of God was mysterious and His name ineffable, they were free to make Him a person-to ascribe to Him attributes and to represent Him as made in the image of man. He has hands and feet. He rules as a king, dwelling with Israel in Canaan, protecting them with His mighty arm, and watching over them with ever open eyes, which are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. All the mighty objects of nature are summoned to express God. The great mountains are the mountains of God; the

* Hebrew grammarians find a similar plurality in the Godhead indicated by the title Jehovah Sabaoth, Lord of hosts. Jehovah is not here in the construct state, so that the proper translation should be without the "of." The words are in apposition, and the meaning is, that in Jehovah, all hosts are comprized. He is all in all. By the Rabbinical writers, God is called Makom, place, because He is the place of everything.

tall trees are the trees of God; and the mighty rivers the rivers of God. He is the Rock of safety, whose way is perfect. He maketh Lebanon and Sirion to skip like a young unicorn. It is His voice that roars in the raging of the waters; His majesty that speaks in the thunder; and when the storm and tempest break down the mighty cedars, it is the voice of the Lord, yea, it is the Lord who breaketh the cedars of Libanus. This psalm* expresses the full extent to which the old Hebrews went in the identification of God and nature. They never surpassed this even in poetry; and never forgot that the Lord sitteth above the water floods, and that the Lord is king for ever. The personifying tendency natural to a race of men who had to fight for their own national existence, as well as for the doctrine of the divine Unity, interfered with all speculation concerning the divine Essence. It exposed them however to the idolatry against which their national existence was meant to be a continual witness. The search for symbols led them to liken God to things in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth. The world, according to Josephus, is "the purple temple of God," and to imitate this temple, the Jews built the tabernacle, and after wards the great temple of God at Jerusalem. The symbols permitted them by Moses and David and Solomon became objects of worship. The images borrowed from nature to express God prepared them for the worship of Baal and Ashteroth, the sun, moon, and stars, the gods of the Sidonians, of Chaldea, and the nations round about them.

We may perhaps fairly date the origin of Jewish philosophy from the time of the Captivity. The metaphysical idea involved in the name of Jehovah becomes prominent and acts its part as the personifying idea had done before it. The sin of the Jews is no longer idolatry. They are henceforth without Teraphim. The unity of God was not unknown either to the Chaldeans or the Persians. Abraham only conserved a doctrine well-known to his ancestors of Chaldea, but in his day almost hidden by the prevailing idolatry. When the Jews went into Babylon and Persia, did they hear again from the sages the philosophical notion of God, or did the idea implied in the name I AM come naturally to its proper development? The answer is immaterial. The Jewish Rabbis who prosecuted the metaphysical idea of God, maintained that their speculations were familiar to learned Jews, and that though the Scriptures

* Psalm xxix. † Hosea iii, 4.

JUDAISM AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

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speak of God as a person, which was a necessity of the popular mind, yet we are to distinguish between the popular aspect of Jewish theology and that theology itself. The latter was the Esoteric teaching, the former simply Exoteric. To the Rabbis was confided the hidden philosophy which the multitude could not receive. How far Rabbinical philosophy agreed with the Scriptures or differed from them must be left for the present an open question. The Hellenist Jews may have borrowed from the Greeks and Orientals, or the Greeks and Orientals may have borrowed from the Jews. Or, again, it may have been that the philosophies of each were natural developments. Some thoughts belong universally to the soil of the human intellect, and have an independent growth among nations that have no intercourse with each other. But even when a doctrine is borrowed, there must be previously a disposition to receive, for a borrower will only borrow what is congenial to his own mind. Religious teachers, as Schleiermacher says, do not choose their disciples, their disciples choose them. The many points of agreement between Judaism and the philosophies of the Greeks and Orientals, leave it open for us to say either that the Heathen got their wisdom from the Jews or that the roots and germs of Christian doctrines are revealed to the universal reason. The speculative Jews have maintained that the philosophy of Judaism as they understand it was the source and beginning of all philosophies. Plato is with them but an Attic Moses, and Pythagoras a Greek philosopher who borrowed the mysteries of Monads and Tetrads from the chosen people.

We have supposed that from the time of the Captivity, the Jews had a philosophy of religion; but of this philosophy the traces are few, and the authorites uncertain, until near the beginning of the christian era. Eusebius has preserved some fragments of Aristobulus supposed to be the Alexandrian Jew mentioned in the Maccabees as King Ptolemy's instructor. In these fragments Aristobulus clearly distinguishes between God Himself, as the first God, the ineffable and invisible, and God as manifested in the phenomenal world. And in the letter ascribed to Aristeas, librarian to Ptolemy Philadelphus, we see Judaism and Hellenism forming so near an alliance that each regards the other as but a different form of itself. Aristeas informs Ptolemy that the same God who gave him his kingdom gave the Jews their laws. "They worship Him," says Aristeas, "who created all, provides for all, and is prayed to by all, and especially by us, only under another name." And Eleazar, the