indeed!  I say nothing of those who are rather the Devil’s witnesses, but think of the host of Jews like myself who, whether they marry Christians or not, simply drop out, and whose absence of all religion escapes notice in the medley of creeds.  We no more give evidence than those old Spanish Jews—­Marannos, they were called, weren’t they?—­who wore the Christian mask for generations.  Practically, many of us are Marannos still; I don’t mean the Jews who are on the stage and the press and all that, but the Jews who have gone on believing.  One Day of Atonement I amused myself by noting the pretexts on the shutters of shops that were closed in the Strand.  ‘Our annual holiday,’ Stock-taking day,’ ’Our annual bean-feast.’  ‘Closed for repairs.’”

“Well, it’s something if they keep the Fast at all,” said Mr. Henry Goldsmith.  “It shows spirituality is not dead in them.”

“Spirituality!” sneered Sidney.  “Sheer superstition, rather.  A dread of thunderbolts.  Besides, fasting is a sensuous attraction.  But for the fasting, the Day of Atonement would have long since died out for these men.  ‘Our annual bean-feast’!  There’s witnesses for you.”

“We cannot help if we have false witnesses among us,” said Raphael Leon quietly.  “Our mission is to spread the truth of the Torah till the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

“But we don’t spread it.”

“We do.  Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of Judaism; through them we have won the world from Paganism and taught it that God is one with the moral law.”

“Then we are somewhat in the position of an ancient school-master lagging superfluous in the school-room where his whilom pupils are teaching.”

“By no means.  Rather of one who stays on to protest against the false additions of his whilom pupils.”

“But we don’t protest.”

“Our mere existence since the Dispersion is a protest,” urged Raphael.  “When the stress of persecution lightens, we may protest more consciously.  We cannot have been preserved in vain through so many centuries of horrors, through the invasions of the Goths and Huns, through the Crusades, through the Holy Roman Empire, through the times of Torquemada.  It is not for nothing that a handful of Jews loom so large in the history of the world that their past is bound up with every noble human effort, every high ideal, every development of science, literature and art.  The ancient faith that has united us so long must not be lost just as it is on the very eve of surviving the faiths that sprang from it, even as it has survived Egypt, Assyria, Rome, Greece and the Moors.  If any of us fancy we have lost it, let us keep together still.  Who knows but that it will be born again in us if we are only patient?  Race affinity is a potent force; why be in a hurry to dissipate it?  The Marannos you speak of were but maimed heroes, yet one day the olden flame burst through the layers of three generations of Christian profession and inter-marriage, and a brilliant company of illustrious Spaniards threw up their positions and sailed away in voluntary exile to serve the God of Israel.  We shall yet see a spiritual revival even among our brilliant English Jews who have hid their face from their own flesh.”