round the school," he replied, " and I did not see them there." She reached to him a goblet, he praised the Lord at the going out of the Sabbath, drank and again asked: "Where are my sons, that they too may drink of the cup of blessing?" "They will not be far off," she said, and placed food before him that he might eat. He was in a gladsome and genial mood, and when he had said grace after the meal, she thus addressed him. "Rabbi, with thy permission I would fain propose to thee one question." "Ask it then, my love!" he replied. "A few days ago, a person entrusted some jewels to my custody, and now he demands them: should I give them back?" "This is a question," said Rabbi Meir, "which my wife should not have thought it necessary to ask. What, wouldst thou hesitate or be reluctant to restore to every one his own?" "No," she replied; "but yet I thought it best not to restore them without acquainting thee therewith." She then led him to their chamber, and stepping to the bed, took the white covering from the dead bodies. "Ah, my sons, my sons," thus loudly lamented the father, "my sons, the light of mine eyes and the light of my understanding. I was your father, but ye were my teachers in the law." The mother turned away and wept bitterly. At length she took her husband by the hand and said, "Rabbi, didst thou not teach me that we must not be reluctant to restore that which was entrusted to our keeping? See, the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord!" "Blessed be the name of the Lord!" echoed Rabbi Meir," and blessed be his name for thy sake too! For well it is written; whoso hath found a virtuous wife hath a greater treasure than costly pearls she openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness.* CONVERSATION OF A PHILOSOPHER WITH A RABBI. "Your God in his book calls himself a jealous God, who can endure no other god beside himself, and on all occasions makes manifest his abhorrence of idolatry. How comes it then that he threatens and seems to hate the worshippers of false gods more than the false gods themselves." "A certain king," replied the Rabbi, "had a disobedient son. Among other worthless tricks of various kinds, he had the baseness to give his dogs his father's names and titles. Should the king shew his anger on the prince or the dogs?" "Well turned," rejoined the philosopher: " but if your God destroyed the objects of idolatry he would take away the temptation to it." " Yea," retorted the Rabbi, "if the fools worshipped such things only as were of no further use than that to which their folly applied them, if the idol were always as worthless as the idolatry is contemptible. But they worship the * Prov. xxxi. 26.-Ed. sun, the moon, the host of heaven, the rivers, the sea, fire, air, and what not? Would you that the Creator, for the sake of these fools, should ruin his own works, and disturb the laws appointed to nature by his own wisdom? If a man steals grain and sows it, should the seed not shoot up out of the earth, because it was stolen? O no! the wise Creator lets nature run her own course; for her course is his own appointment. And what if the children of folly abuse it to evil? The day of reckoning is not far off, and men will then learn that human actions likewise reappear in their consequences by as certain a law as the green blade rises up out of the buried corn-seed." END OF VOL. II. C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, |