thus named him you were honestly yourself, you felt thankful that it had
been vouchsafed to you to add another link to the chain of your race--you
were a Jew--you were confident in our God--in your own God. The birth of
your second son touched your soul less deeply and you gave him the name
of Theophilus, and when your third male child was born you had altogether
ceased to remember the God of your fathers, for he is named after one of
the heathen gods, Hephaestion. To put it shortly: You are Jews when the
Lord is most gracious to you, or threatens to try you most severely but
you are heathen whenever your way does not lead you over the high hills
or through the dark abysses of life. I cannot change your hearts--but
the wife of my brother's son, the daughter of Ben Akiba, must be a
daughter of our people, morning, noon, and night. I seek a Rebecca for
my daughter and not an Ismene."

"I did not ask you here," retorted Apollodorus. "But if you quit us
to-morrow, you as will be followed by our reverent regard. Think no
worse of us because we adapt ourselves, more, perhaps, than is fitting,
to the ways and ideas of the people among whom we have grown up, and in
whose midst we have been prosperous, and whose interests are ours. We
know how high our faith is beyond theirs. In our hearts we still are
Jews; but are we not bound to try to open and to cultivate and to elevate
our spirits, which God certainly made of stuff no coarser than that of
other nations, whenever and wherever we may? And in what school may our
minds be trained better or on sounder principles than in ours--I mean
that of the Greek sages? The knowledge of the Most High--"

"That knowledge," cried the old man, gesticulating vehemently with his
arms. "The knowledge of God Most High and all that the most refined
philosophy can prove, all the sublimest and purest of the thinkers of
whom you speak can only apprehend by the gravest meditation and heart-