with holiness, upon his breast the mystic Urim and Thummim and the
ephod with its twelve brilliant jewels, upon his tunic golden
pomegranates and silver bells, which for the mystic ear pealed the
harmony of the world as he moved. Little wonder that, inspired by the
striking gathering and the solemn ritual, Philo regarded the temple as
the shrine of the universe,[55] and thought the day was near when all
nations should go up there together, to do worship to the One God.

Sparse as are the direct proofs of Philo's connection with Palestinian
Judaism, his account of the temple and its service, apart from the
general standpoint of his writings, proves to us that he was a loyal
son of his nation, and loved Judaism for its national institutions as
well as its great moral sublimity. His aspiration was to bring home
the truths of the religion to the cultured world, and therefore he
devised a new expression for the wisdom of his people, and transformed
it into a literary system. Judaism forms the kernel, but Greek
philosophy and literature the shell, of his work; for the audience to
which he appealed, whether Jewish or Gentile, thought in Greek, and
would be moved only by ideas presented in Greek form, and by Greek
models he himself was inspired.

Philo's first ideal of life was to attain to the profoundest knowledge
of God so as to be fitted for the mission of interpreting His Word:
and he relates in one of his treatises how he spent his youth and his
first manhood in philosophy and the contemplation of the universe.[56]
"I feasted with the truly blessed mind, which is the object of all
desire (_i.e._, God), communing continually in joy with the Divine
words and doctrines. I entertained no low or mean thought, nor did I
ever crawl about glory or wealth or worldly comfort, but I seemed to
be carried aloft in a kind of spiritual inspiration and to be borne