Philo’s position is, then, that man on the one hand owes loyalty to his nation, and on the other is not only a creature of spirit, but has a body and bodily passions.  He cannot, therefore, have a religion which is individual or merely spiritual, but he requires common forms and ceremonies that can bind him with the rest of the community, and train his body by good habit to obey his reason.  We do not reach the spirit by denying but by obeying the letter.  To the mere formal observance of the law and the unreasoning custom which blindly follows the practice of our fathers [Greek:  synetheia] Philo is equally opposed, and he protests, with the earnestness of an Isaiah, against superstitious sacrifice and against the lip-service of the materialist.[169]

“If a man practices ablutions and purifications, but defiles his mind while he cleanses his body; or if, through his wealth, he founds a temple at a large outlay and expense; or if he offers hecatombs and sacrifices oxen without number, or adorns the shrine with rich ornaments, or gives endless timber and cunningly wrought work, more precious than silver or gold—­let him none the more be called religious ([Greek:  eusebes]).  For he has wandered far from the path of religion, mistaking ritual for holiness, and attempting to bribe the Incorruptible, and to flatter Him whom none can flatter.  God welcomes genuine service, and that is the service of a soul that offers the bare and simple sacrifice of truth, but from false service, the mere display of material wealth, he turns away.”

Lot’s daughter, born of a pillar of stone, symbolizes this unthinking, hypertrophied religion; and custom, its mother, which always lags behind and has no seed of life, is the enemy of truth.  The religious man pursueth righteousness righteously, the superstitious unrighteously.

Thus Philo holds the balance between a formless spirituality and an unspiritual formalism.  The end of religious observance is the love of God, but the love of God requires more than feeling; it must impregnate life.  Dubnow, in his summary of Jewish history, formulates an epigram, which, like most of its kind, becomes in its conciseness and pointed antithesis a half-truth.  “At Jerusalem,” he says, “Judaism appeared as a system of practical ceremonies; at Alexandria as a complex of abstract symbols.”  No doubt it is true that at Jerusalem the practical side of the law was most prominent, but the spiritual exaltation to which it should lead was appraised as the true end by the great rabbis.  Witness Hillel, and indeed all the writers of the gnomic wisdom in the “Ethics of the Fathers.”  At Alexandria, again, while the philosophical principle underlying the outward practice was especially emphasized, the practice itself was loyally observed, and its value perceived, by those who most thoroughly understood Judaism.  Witness the writings of Philo, the Wisdom of Solomon, and the fourth book of the Maccabees.  The antithesis