philosopher and the author of the Book of Wisdom. A semi-inspired work cannot, in his view, draw, as Philo draws, from foreign sources. If a phrase of Plato's is adopted, it is in a different sense: "the author uses philosophical terms to express orthodox doctrine."*

It is a pity that a scholar of Mr. Deane's industry and capacity should have needlessly hampered himself in this commentary. He was under no obligation to defend the infallibility of the book, but, as it seems, from courtesy to an old Church tradition, he has felt himself bound to consider it as an expression of truth, imperfect because not proved to be inspired, but never actually false. It seems almost to imply a contempt for the intelligence of our readers to insist on the fact that the value of the Book of Wisdom does not gain by this treatment. The interest of the book is primarily that which belongs to a transitional period in the history of Jewish religion. Its retrospect to the Hebrew literature, which it knows only through a version, is subsidiary; not so its view as a development, under foreign influence, of Hebrew thought. In this relation no work has greater value, expressing as it does a phase of Alexandrian philosophy, soon to be absorbed into the Christianity of the Fourth Gospel, and partly into that of the Epistle to the Hebrews. How does Mr. Deane handle this, the most important question with reference to his book, the relation of the wisdom of Solomon to the older philosophy of Israel, to the philosophy of Greece, and to the philosophy of Christianity?

We open his introduction with a sanguine expectation of an exhaustive study, for the first chapter comprises a "Sketch of the Progress of Greek Philosophy." Nor do we complain of its being professedly a compilation from George Henry Lewes and other authorities, including, oddly enough, Mosheim's translation Mosheim's translation of Cudworth's

* Comm. on vii. 22, p. 150; cf. proleg. p. 10.

"Intellectual System of the Universe." An intelligent summary of this sort we may expect to draw to a focus the various lines of thought that found their home in the heterogeneous schools of Alexandria. But Mr. Deane hardly attempts any application of the facts he adduces. He gives us merely an abstract, careful enough in itself, but irrelevant, because he does not attempt to trace the bearing of Greek philosophy, in its Alexandrian development, upon the book with which he is engaged. The next section on the "Jewish-Alexandrian Philosophy" is quite inadequate. The Book of Wisdom is just alluded to, as displaying Greek learning and "the writer's acquaintance with Western Philosophy," but only to show "that he was well acquainted" with certain opinions of the schools, while his statements are "grounded on the language of Scripture. Mr. Deane quickly gets to Philo -a full century and a-half, according to the editor's dates, later than the Book of Wisdom-and forthwith addresses himself to those who are anxious to be persuaded that Christianity has adopted nothing from pagan systems; and treats at length of Philo and his connection, or want of connection, with the New Testament. This is no doubt an interesting inquiry, but it is, as we have said, totally irrelevant, and has, moreover, been done far better, and in a calmer and more philosophic spirit, by Mr. Jowett in his invaluable dissertation on "St. Paul and Philo."+ It is like writing an introduction to St. Augustine's City of God which should contain a comparison of Plato's Republic and More's Utopia, without a mention of the Bishop of Hippo.

The Book of Wisdom indeed stands in a double relation, and its direct descent is plainly traceable to that school of

*Proleg., p. 10. The references in Note 7 to support the belief in the pre-existence of souls by Jeremiah and the younger Isaiah are eminently patristic.

The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans. Vol. I., pp. 363-417.

Sages-if we may follow Jeremiah and the Book of Proverbs in giving a collective name to what was perhaps really so detached and indefinite-which flourished in Israel from the early days of the Hebrew monarchy. From the two, often conflicting, classes of Prophets and Prieststhe preachers whose allegiance was to the ever-expanding "spirit" of the religion, and the ministers of the traditionary "letter"-these Humanists, as they have been happily designated, held somewhat aloof. They busied themselves rather with the deeper problems of ethics that underlay the religion. Much of their teaching took the shape of wise saws and adages, such as form the bulk of the collections that make up the Book of Proverbs, and are plentifully distributed through the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach. In the universal spirit of the sages of antiquity, it was their special pride to observe the phenomena of nature, the signs and prognostics of the outer world equally with the moral and social action of the world of man. Here, as in so much else, they claimed descent from the wise king who "spake three thousand fables, and his songs were a thousand and five," who "spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." Thus, too, the writer of the Book of Wisdom says:

He hath given me true knowledge of the things that are,To know the constitution of the world and the operation of the elements,

The beginning, and the ending, and mean of time,

The alterations of the solstices and the change of seasons,

The cycles of years and the positions of stars,

The natures of animals and the passions of wild beasts,

This is probably the meaning of mashal here. In the English version it

is indifferently rendered "proverb" and "parable."

+1 Kings iv. 32 f. (in the Hebrew, v. 12 f.).

The powers of spirits and the reasonings of men,
The diversities of plants and the virtues of roots,
And whatsoever things are secret or manifest, them I know.*

But natural philosophy was but a part of the business of the Wise Men, whose aim was to pursue knowledge everywhere. Speculation on the nature of man and his relation to God matured, if it did not create, a new element in theology. The striving towards wisdom was felt to be due to the working in man of a divine energy, the wisdom of God. It is important for our understanding of the Book of Wisdom to see how far this process of discriminating the energy from the person of the deity had gone, before Hebrew thought came into contact with that of Greece.

Once the Israelite had felt the human breath, the sign of life, or speech, the power which distinguished him from the brutes, to be the fittest symbol of God's communication with man. "It is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty, that giveth them understanding," says Elihu;† even as "while the spirit of God is in my nostrils" is a synonym for remaining in life. The "spirit of God" gives skill to the craftsman § and nerve to the warrior, Othniel or Gideon or Jephthah. But it is on the prophets that it is poured out in peculiar measure, and to them chiefly is revealed the "word of God." Here the two symbolical expressions seem to run together, but there is always this difference, that the " spirit" is the revealing agency, the

"word" the revelation itself. Both are in time overtaken and absorbed by the conception of "wisdom." We see

* Wisdom vii. 17-21. It is a great advantage to be able to arrange the parallelisms of the text-that most interesting note of the writer's Hebrew genius-according to a consensus of ancient authority. Mr. Deane prints the Greek in the σTixo of the Codex Alexandrinus.

+ Job xxxii. 8.

§ Ex. xxxi. i. 3, xxxv. 31.

Job xxvii. 3.

¶ Judges iii.10, vi. 34, xi. 29.

this process already begun in the Book of Job, where Wisdom appears as the creative energy of God—

Where shall wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the way thereof,

Neither is it found in the land of the living.
The depth saith It is not in me :

And the sea saith It is not with me
Whence then cometh wisdom?

And where is the place of understanding?
God understandeth the way thereof,
And he knoweth the place thereof. . .
When he made a decree for the rain,
And a way for the lightning of the thunder;
Then did he see it and declare it;

He prepared it, yea, and searched it out.

We may notice incidentally for future application, that this Wisdom discovered in the prime ordering of the universe, has, like all the other attributes of God, its reflection in the nature of man-the "image "image" of him; and human wisdom only exists in so far as its reflection of the divine is true. Wisdom in man is purely religious and ethical, as the next lines proceed to state

And unto man he said,

Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom:
And to depart from evil is understanding.†

One of the Books of Proverbs recognises the activity of the Wisdom of God in a sense similar to that in Job, but more distinct. Wisdom speaks as a person—

The Lord formed me in the beginning of his way,
Before his works of old.

I was wrought from everlasting,

From the beginning, or ever the earth was

When he prepared the heavens, I was there;
When he set a compass on the face of the depth.

* Reading with the Septuagint,

instead of

+ Job xxviii. 12-14, 20, 23, 26-28.

(Dillmann).