reverence for the sanctity of the Temple and abandon many religious observances. But, on the contrary, both the inner truth contained in the Law, and the Law itself, should be equally prized--the one as the soul, the other as the body. Just as we take care of the body, looking upon it as the habitation of the soul, so also should we value the letter of the Law. By strict observance of the Law we shall attain a clearer insight into its deepest meaning, and shall likewise escape the remarks and reproaches of the people." It is in the Hebrew Scriptures, according to Philo, that the most profound wisdom is contained. All that is taught by the sublimest philosophy the Judæans found in their precepts and customs--the knowledge of the eternal God, the vanity of idols, and the universal laws of humanity and kindness. "Is not the highest honor due," he exclaims, "to those laws which teach the rich to share their wealth with the needy, which console the poor by enabling them to look forward to the time when they will no longer beg at the rich man's door, but will have recovered their alienated property; for, at the opening of the seventh year, prosperity would return again to the widow and the orphan, and would restore to well-being those whom fortune had disinherited?" In opposition to the abuse hurled against Judaism by a Lysimachus and an Apion, Philo brings forward the spirit of humanity which breathes through the Judæan Law, and which affects even the treatment of animals and plants. "And yet, though Judaism is founded in truth on love, these miserable sycophants accuse it of misanthropy and egotism." In order to ensure a better comprehension of the Judæan ethics by the cynics and lawbreakers of his own race, as also by the Greeks, who had only a false conception of Judaism, Philo arranged his writings so that they should form a kind of philosophical commentary on the Pentateuch, with the further object that the truths of Judaism might be brought within the province of philosophy.