Not less conclusive was the form of illustration employed by Rabbi Joshuah in answer to the emperor Trajan.  “You teach,” said Trajan, “that your God is everywhere.  I should like to see him.”  “God’s presence,” replied the Rabbi, “is indeed everywhere, but he cannot be seen.  No mortal can behold his glory.”  Trajan repeated his demand.  “Well,” said the Rabbi, “suppose we try, in the first place, to look at one of his ambassadors.”  The emperor consented, and Joshuah took him into the open air, and desired him to look at the sun in its meridian splendour.  “I cannot,” said Trajan; “the light dazzles me.”  “Thou canst not endure the light of one of his creatures,” said the Rabbi, “yet dost thou expect to behold the effulgent glory of the Creator!”

* * * * *

Our selections from the sayings of the Hebrew Fathers might be largely extended, but we shall conclude them with the following:  A Rabbi, being asked why God dealt out manna to the Israelites day by day, instead of giving them a supply sufficient for a year, or more, answered by a parable to this effect:  There was once a king who gave a certain yearly allowance to his son, whom he saw, in consequence, but once a year, when he came to receive it; so the king changed his plan, and paid him his allowance daily, and thus had the pleasure of seeing his son each day.  And so with the manna:  had God given the people a supply for a year they would have forgotten their divine benefactor, but by sending them each day the requisite quantity, they had God constantly in their minds.

* * * * *

There can be no doubt that the Rabbis derived the materials of many of their legends and tales of Biblical characters from foreign sources; but their beautiful moral stories and parables, which “hide a rich truth in a tale’s pretence,” are probably for the most part of their own invention; and the fact that the Talmud was partially, if not wholly, translated into Arabic shortly after the settlement of the Moors in Spain sufficiently accounts for the early introduction of rabbinical legends into Muhammedan works, apart from those found in the Kuran.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

ADAM AND THE OIL OF MERCY.

In the apocryphal Revelation of Moses, which appears to be of Rabbinical extraction, Adam, when near his end, informs his sons; that, because of his transgression, God had laid upon his body seventy strokes, or plagues.  The trouble of the first stroke was injury to the eyes; the trouble of the second stroke, of the hearing; and so on, in succession, all the strokes should overtake him.  And Adam, thus speaking to his sons, groaned out loud, and said, “What shall I do?  I am in great grief.”  And Eve also wept, saying:  “My lord Adam, arise; give me the half of thy disease, and let me bear it, because through me this has happened to thee; through me thou art