From the earliest ages the ablest minds have been perplexed by the problem how to reconcile faith in an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-benevolent Creator, with the fact of a creation full of sin and suffering. One of the ablest thinkers of modern times (John Stuart Mill) has declared the problem insoluble, and from the facts of creation has deduced the conclusion that the Creator is neither all-wise, all-powerful, nor all-good; to use his own words respecting the Creator, “his wisdom is possibly, his power certainly limited, and his goodness, though real, is not likely to have been the only motive which actuated him in the work of creation.”--(_Three Essays in Religion._) Oriental philosophy, pondering this problem, proposed for its solution an hypothesis which to a Western mind seems singularly puerile and fantastic, and yet which, in slightly different forms, gained, at one period in the world’s history, an acceptance quite as widespread as any form of philosophy or theology of to-day. This hypothesis, however modified in form, was in essence this, that the evil in the world came not from the Creator, but from some other and inferior Being. In the Persian religion there were two deities, a good and an evil god, Ormuzd and Ahriman, struggling with each other for the supremacy. In the Chaldean philosophy Light was the soul of the universe and the Original First Cause; in the lower realms, far below the space filled with pure and unapproachable light, were darkness, night, and all forth-springing evils, which either the Supreme Light regarded it beneath his dignity to contend with, or which were indestructible and could only be confined within narrow limits, not destroyed. In the Hindoo philosophy, the Great First Cause, the beatific Brahm, lived in perpetual repose, in a supreme and serene indifference to all things. From him, by emanations, proceeded lesser deities, and from these, by a process more or less remote, a corrupt creation. At the beginning of the Christian era, Alexandria, founded by and named in honor of Alexander the Great, was one of the intellectual centres of the world. Here was gathered a library of over 700,000 volumes; here congregated Oriental dreamers, Greek philosophers, and Jewish religionists. Here, in the third century before Christ, was translated into the Greek language the Old Testament Scriptures. Here about 20 B. C., was born Philo, a Jew, of a priestly family, a philosopher and _litterateur_, and a voluminous writer. He was not an original thinker; his works are therefore all the more valuable as a reflection of the current mystical philosophy of his age and school. This dreamy philosophy it is difficult to translate into modern forms of thought. So far as this can be done, it may be said to have involved the following statements: God is simply the absolute, unchangeable Existence, incomprehensible, inconceivable, yet ever to be the object of our thoughts and meditations. He could not come