“Like a king, it announces by decree what men ought to do; like a teacher, it instructs its disciples in what will benefit them; like a counsellor, it suggests the wisest plans, and so greatly benefits those who do not of themselves know what is best; like a friend, it tells many secrets which it is not lawful for the uninitiated to hear.”[483] And standing midway between God and man, it not only reflects God downwards to man, but also reflects man upwards to God. “It stands on the border-line between the Creator and the creation, not unbegotten like God, not begotten like ourselves, and so becomes not only an ambassador from the Ruler to His subjects, but also a suppliant from mortal man yearning after the immortal.”[484] The relation of the _Logos_ to God, as distinguished from its functions, is expressed by several metaphors, all of which are important in view of later theology. They may be gathered into two classes, corresponding to the two great conceptions of the relation of the universe to God which were held respectively by the two great sources of Philo’s philosophy, the Stoics and the Platonists. The one class of metaphors belongs to the monistic, the other to the dualistic, conception of the universe. In the former, the _Logos_ is evolved from God; in the other, created by Him.[485] The chief metaphors of the former class are those of a phantom, or image, or outflow: the _Logos_ is projected by God as a man’s shadow or phantom was sometimes conceived as thrown off by his body,[486] expressing its every feature, and abiding as a separate existence after the body was dead; it is a reflexion cast by God upon the space which He contains, as a parhelion is cast by the sun;[487] it is an outflow as from a spring.[488] The chief metaphor of the second class is that of a son; the _Logos_ is the first-begotten of God;[489] and by an elaboration of the metaphor which reappears in later theology, God is in one passage spoken of as its Father, Wisdom as its Mother.[490] It hence tends sometimes to be viewed as separate from God, neither God nor man, but “inferior to God though greater than man.”[491] The earlier conception had already passed through several forms: it had begun with that which was itself the greatest leap that any one thinker had yet made, the conception that Reason made the world: the conception of Reason led to the conception of God as Personal Reason: out of that grew the thought of God as greater than Reason and using it as His instrument: and at last had come the conception of the Reason of God as in some way detached from Him, working in the world as a subordinate but self-acting law. It was natural that this should lead to the further conception of Reason as the offspring of God and Wisdom, the metaphor of a human birth being transferred to the highest sphere of heaven. B. THE IDEA AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.