which we seek to reach by philosophical reasoning and logical conclusions.

JEHUDAH HALEVI.

Question: Although the prophets are no more, is the experience of which the poet-philosopher speaks quite unknown to us, altogether unattainable to us? Have we not lived through hours in which our souls seemed lifted into a higher sphere of thought and feeling? Why do we not treasure up these intimations for the strengthening of our faith and the deepening of our hope?

XXIV.

The Scaffolding.

Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth. But shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest Thou? Or the work (to the workman), His hands (have no cunning).—Isaiah xlv. 9.

HE scaffolding is kept around men long after the

fresco is commenced to be painted; and wondrous disclosures will be made when God shall take down this scaffolding body, and reveal what you have been doing. By sorrow and by joy; by prayer, by the influences of the sanctuary; by your pleasures, by your business, by reverses, by success and by failures, by what strengthened your confidence, and by what broke it down; by the things you rejoiced in and by the things you

mourned over; by all that God is working in you. And you are to be perfected, not according to the things that you plan, but according to the divine pattern.

URN, turn, my wheel, all things must change

To something new, to something strange;

Nothing that is can pause or stay;

This earthen jar

A touch can make, a touch can mar;

And shall it to the potter say:

What makest thou? Thou hast no hand?

As men who think to understand

A world by their Creator planned,
Who wiser is as they.

H. W. BEECHER.

-From The Potter's Wheel, by Longfellow.

XXV.

Tears.

My tears have been my meat day and night.Psalm xlii. 3.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.-Psalm cxxvi. 5.

And the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces.-Isaiah xxv. 8.

HANK God, bless God all ye who suffer not

More grief than ye can weep for. That is well

That is light grieving! lighter none befell,

Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.

Tears! What are tears? The babe weeps in its cot, The mother singing; at her marriage-bell

The bride weeps, and before the oracle

Of high-faned hills the poet has forgot

Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done

Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place

And touch but tombs-look up! those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

The heavenly gates which prayer and fasting cannot open, tears will unlock.-Rabbinical.

Shakespeare calls tears: heaven-moving pearls.

Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.-Psalms xxiii. 6.

OME one may say: Thou hast shown us what we hope of a future life is reasonable; now tell us also whither the departed souls go, where is their dwelling

place, what is their occupation, how are the good rewarded and the bad cleansed from the stains of their sins? I would answer: Friend, thou dost ask more than I ever promised to do. For my part, I content myself with the conviction that I shall always remain under Divine protection; that a holy and just Providence rules in the future world as it does in this, and that my true happiness consists in the beauty and perfection of my soul. These are: temperance, justice, freedom, love, benevolence, knowledge of God, laboring in the service of His purpose and an entire surrender to His will. These are the beatitudes which I expect to find in the future life, and more I need not to know in order to go cheerfully on the way that leads to it; thither you will all follow me when your hour shall

come.

HEY throng the silence of the breast,

We see them as of yore,—

The kind, the brave, the true, the sweet,
Though they are here no more.

More homelike seems the vast unknown,

Since they have entered there;

To follow them were not so hard,

Wherever they may fare.

They cannot be where God is not,

On any sea or shore :

Whate'er betides, Thy love abides,
Our God for evermore.

MOSES MENDelssohn.

XXVII.

The Hope of Salvation.

Harken unto me, ye that know righteousness, saith the Lord; ye people in whose heart is my law :

fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid

of their revilings.-Isaiah li. 7.

OUR question, why I do not try to make converts, your way, ne has, I must somewhat surprised me. The duty to proselytize springs clearly from the idea that outside a certain belief, there is no salvation. I, as a Jew, am not bound to accept that dogma, because according to the teachings of the Rabbis, the righteous of all nations shall have part in the rewards of the future world; your motive, therefore, is foreign to me; nay, as a Jew, I am not allowed publicly to attack any religion which is sound in its moral teachings.

The practice of these teachings I call Internal Service. of God; and not to assist in the dissemination of them would show an extreme want of interest in the welfare of my fellowmen: but as to dogmas and ceremonies (the External Service of God), how can I know which are the best for others? All I am convinced of is: that those I profess and practice are the best for me, and the fact that I believe these ordinances to have been commanded by God does not oblige me to assume that they needs must be the best for all the rest of the world. This also I do know: that I love all friends of virtue and of wisdom heartily, no matter what their External Service, and if you are in reality as good as you appear in your letter, I esteem you most sincerely.-From a letter of Moses Mendelssohn to a non-Jewish correspondent.