the bauble!  The years I have expended on thy mind and comfort have cost me money.  From that crucifix, one by one, I have plucked the precious stones for thy education.  Here, from the side, where they say the soldier’s spear was thrust, I have sold the costly ruby.  The nail in the feet, a sapphire, paid thy Jewish matron.  The emerald in this right hand purchased thy books.  I send thee abroad with the price of the diamonds in the crown.”

“Father,” said young Abraham, “the image is hallowed to me for thy piety.  It is Humanity, O my father! that has made me devoutly a Jew, and thee, unsuspectingly, a Christian.”

He sailed away upon the Eli.  His parting words had affected old Issachar so much that his mind returned along the course of years to the Christmas night he had passed in the outcast preacher’s hut, and the curious story of Jesus he had read there in the New Testament and in the presence of the dead.

“To-morrow is Christmas,” said the Jew; “a hallowed day to me, because it brought me a son whose obedience and piety have gratified the exile of my old age.  Although these Christians have covered him with their despite, his excellent charity remembers it not.  I will be no less magnanimous, and I will cross the bay and attend the Methodist worship at Snow Hill on Christmas morning, that I may communicate its frivolity to my son.”

He kept his word; and for fear thieves might discover and steal the valuable crucifix, he hid it beneath his vesture and carried it to the mainland.  The little plank meeting-house at the edge of Snow Hill was filled with whites on the floor, but in the end gallery, amongst the negroes, Issachar haughtily took his seat, an object of wonder to both races, for his face and reputation were generally recognized.  Perhaps it was for this reason that the young preacher, a gentle, graceful person, adapted his sermon to the sweetness of the Christian story rather than bear upon those descriptions which might antagonize his Jewish auditor.

He told the story of the world’s selfishness when Christ appeared; how the Jews, living in the straitest of sectarian aristocracies, inviting and receiving no accessions, had finally fallen under the dogmatism of the uncharitable Pharisees, who esteemed themselves the only righteous devotees and doctrinaires amongst the millions of people on the earth.  Jesus, a youth of good Jewish extraction, and honorable family, had been bold enough to denounce Phariseeism and make its votaries ridiculous.  He was scorned by them, if for no other crime, for the cheap offence, in a bigoted age, denominated blasphemy.  Here the preacher, looking toward the Jew, paid a tribute to the antiquity and loyalty of the better class of Jews, and said that it was well known that one of his own forerunners in the Christian ministry, dying in penury from the consequences of a marital mistake, had been befriended in his death and in his posterity by a gallant follower of the House of Israel.