makes the Psalms and the Proverbs his models of literary form. "Love
righteousness," he begins, "ye that be judges of the earth; think ye
of the Lord with a good mind and in singleness of heart seek ye Him."
His appeal for godliness is addressed to the Gentile world in a
language which they understood, but in a spirit to which most of them
were strangers. The early history of the Israelites in Egypt comes
home to him with especial force, for he sees it "in the light of
eternity," a striking moral lesson for the godless Egyptian world
around him in which the house of Jacob dwelt again. With poetical
imagination he tells anew the story of the ten plagues as though he
had lived through them, and seen with his own eyes the punishment of
the idolatrous land. He ends with a pæan to the God who had saved His
people. "For in all things Thou didst magnify them, and Thou didst
glorify them, and not lightly regard them, standing by their side in
every time and place."

At this epoch, and at Alexandria especially, Judaism was no
self-centred, exclusive faith afraid of expansion. The mission of
Israel was a very real thing, and conversion was widespread in Rome,
in Egypt, and all along the Mediterranean countries. The Jews, says
the letter of Aristeas, "eagerly seek intercourse with other nations,
and they pay special care to this, and emulate each other therein."
And one of the most reliable pagan writers says of them, "They have
penetrated into every state, and it is hard to find a place where they
have not become powerful."[27] Nor was it merely material power which
they acquired. The days had come which the prophet Amos (viii. 11) had
predicted, when "God will send a famine in the land, not a famine of
bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of
the Lord." The Greek world had lost faith in the poetical gods of its
mythology and in the metaphysical powers of its philosophical schools,