directly into contact with matter without losing something of his ineffable excellence. Hence he gave forth certain divine powers or influences, “incorporeal potencies,” which surround God as the members of a court surround an earthly monarch. The highest of these is the divine Logos or Word of God. Through this Word the world was created, and to the influence of the inferior potencies the evils of the world must be attributed. Again, borrowing the imagery of the Chaldeans, Philo conceives of God as the pure and absolute Light, the original source of effulgence, the Logos or Word as the nearest circle of light proceeding from it, and each separate power as a separate ray, fading more and more away into darkness, as it becomes removed from the original source and centre. From this philosophy was later developed that peculiar and incomprehensible form of thought known as Gnosticism. This Gnostic philosophy, which reached its climax in the second century after Christ, undertook to describe in detail all the emanations from the original inconceivable deity; Reason, the Word, practical Wisdom, theoretical Wisdom, Power, Light, Life, were all lesser deities. The God of the Jews was one of these lower deities; Jesus Christ was a higher deity--the Reason according to some, the Word according to others, who came to deliver the world from its subjection to the inferior deity, and who entered the body of Jesus at his baptism, and departed from it just before his crucifixion. Whether John was acquainted with the writings of Philo we do not know; but he was certainly familiar with this Gnostic philosophy. It had already begun to enter into and corrupt the Christian church during the lifetime of Paul, whose writings contain frequent references to different phases of it (e. g., Col. 2:18; 1 Tim. 4:1-4; 2 Tim. 2:16-18); Ephesus, a city of luxury, effeminacy and superstition (Acts, ch. 19, notes), was a centre of this philosophy; in Paul’s address to the elders of the church at Ephesus (Acts 20:29, 30), and in his letter to Timothy, first bishop of that church (subs. to 2 Tim.), he especially warns against it (2 Tim. 2:16-18; 3:8, 9); and Ephesus was John’s residence, and probably the city in which he wrote his Gospel. (See Introduction.)