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JOSHUA DAVIDSON

JOSHUA DAVIDSON

I.

THE ORIGIN OF JOSHUA DAVIDSON.

His Mother. His Father. They find their Holy Grail.

THERE was living in Hamburg, Europe, in 1818, a young German Jew, named Moses Mordecai. The conditions of his family in that rich, commercial city, were highly favorable; and he had grown to his twenty-fifth year educated and cultivated both in the ancient lore of his own race, and in the best German literature of the time. Especially was he powerfully affected by the writings of Lessing, and his mind developed into a capacity for breadth of view concerning history, philosophy, and human life, which made him almost as isolated in soul as his great race-man of two centuries before, Spinoza: only he never lost his deep heart-hold upon the vital things of the God of his fathers. He was always profoundly religious, and faithful in his life to the Shekinah of God in his heart, while in the light of that Shekinah he pondered on the deepest truths of philosophy. But he never forsook the light, or wavered from walking in it.

There was a tradition, sacredly cherished in his family, that they were descended in a direct line from Mordecai the Jew, who sat at the king's gate in the reign of Ahasuerus, the Persian; and that he was descended from Moses, the giver of the Law; and that it was because Mordecai was so learned in the lore of Israel, and so gifted withal, and so trained and developed thereby to quick, clear sight, wise judgment, and a grave demeanor, as to be invaluable in affairs, that he was set in that high place and kept there, in spite of all that Haman, his enemy, could do. Be this as it may, the family

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