We have seen how these were the manifest germs of Justin’s teaching.  Now, if at the time when Justin wrote the Fourth Gospel, as we shall shortly prove, must have been in use in the Church in every part of the world, why should Justin be supposed to derive from Philo a truth which he, being a Jew, would repudiate?  Justin himself most certainly was not the first to identify the Logos with Jesus.  The identification was asserted long before in the Apocalypse, which the author of “Supernatural Religion” shows to have been written about A.D. 70, or so.  In fact, he ascertains its date to “a few weeks.”  Supposing, then, that the Apocalypse was anterior to St. John, on whose lines, so to speak, does Justin develope the Logos doctrine?  Most assuredly not on Philo’s lines (for his whole terminology essentially differs from that of the Alexandrian), but on the lines of the fourth Gospel, and on no other.

Let the reader turn to some extracts which the author of “Supernatural Religion” gives out of Philo.  In p. 265, he gives some very striking passages indeed, in which Philo speaks of the Logos as the Bread from heaven:—­

“He is ‘the substitute ([Greek:  hyparchos]) of God,’ ’the heavenly incorruptible food of the soul,’ ‘the bread from heaven.’  In one place he says, ’and they who inquire what nourishes the soul ... learnt at last that it is the Word of God, and the Divine Reason’ ...  This is the heavenly nourishment to which the Holy Scripture refers ... saying, ’Lo I rain upon you bread ([Greek:  artos]) from heaven’ (Exod. xvi. 4).  ’This is the bread ([Greek:  artos]) which the Lord has given them to eat.’” (Exod. xvi. 15)

And again:—­

“For the one indeed raises his eyes to the sky, perceiving the Manna, the Divine Word, the heavenly incorruptible food of the longing soul.”  Elsewhere ... “but it is taught by the initiating priest and prophet Moses, who declares, ’This is the bread ([Greek:  artos]), the nourishment which God has given to the soul.’  His own Reason and His own Word which He has offered; for this bread ([Greek:  artos]) which He has given us to eat is Reason.” (Vol. ii. p. 265.)

Now the Fourth Gospel also makes Jesus speak of Himself as the “Bread of Life,” and “given by the Father;” but what is the bread defined by Jesus Himself to be?  Not a mere intellectual apprehension, i.e. Reason, as Philo asserts; but the very opposite, no other than “His Flesh;” the product of His Incarnation.  “The bread that I will give is My Flesh,” and He adds to it His Blood.  “Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you.”

Now this also Justin reproduces, not after the conception of Philo, which is but a natural conception, but after the conception of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, which is an infinitely mysterious and supernatural one.