“Why should I deny it?—­In the hour when my lost wife presented me with my first-born son.”

“And you called him?”

“You know his name is Benjamin.”

“Like the favorite son of our forefather Jacob, for in the hour when you thus named him you were honestly yourself, you felt thankful that it had been vouchsafed to you to add another link to the chain of your race—­you were a Jew—­you were confident in our God—­in your own God.  The birth of your second son touched your soul less deeply and you gave him the name of Theophilus, and when your third male child was born you had altogether ceased to remember the God of your fathers, for he is named after one of the heathen gods, Hephaestion.  To put it shortly:  You are Jews when the Lord is most gracious to you, or threatens to try you most severely but you are heathen whenever your way does not lead you over the high hills or through the dark abysses of life.  I cannot change your hearts—­but the wife of my brother’s son, the daughter of Ben Akiba, must be a daughter of our people, morning, noon, and night.  I seek a Rebecca for my daughter and not an Ismene.”

“I did not ask you here,” retorted Apollodorus.  “But if you quit us to-morrow, you as will be followed by our reverent regard.  Think no worse of us because we adapt ourselves, more, perhaps, than is fitting, to the ways and ideas of the people among whom we have grown up, and in whose midst we have been prosperous, and whose interests are ours.  We know how high our faith is beyond theirs.  In our hearts we still are Jews; but are we not bound to try to open and to cultivate and to elevate our spirits, which God certainly made of stuff no coarser than that of other nations, whenever and wherever we may?  And in what school may our minds be trained better or on sounder principles than in ours—­I mean that of the Greek sages?  The knowledge of the Most High—­”

“That knowledge,” cried the old man, gesticulating vehemently with his arms.  “The knowledge of God Most High and all that the most refined philosophy can prove, all the sublimest and purest of the thinkers of whom you speak can only apprehend by the gravest meditation and heart-searching—­all this I say has been bestowed as a free gift of God on every child of our people.  The treasures which your sages painfully seek out we already possess in our scriptures, our law and our moral ordinances.  We are the chosen people, the first-born of the Lord, and when Messiah shall rise up in our midst—­”

“Then,” interrupted Apollodorus, “that shall be fulfilled which, like Philo, I hope for, we shall be the priests and prophets for all nations.  Then we shall in truth be a race of priests whose vocation it shall be to call down the blessing of the Most High on all mankind.”

“For us—­for us alone shall the messenger of God appear, to make us the kings, and not the slaves of the nations.”

Apollodorus looked with surprise into the face of the excited old man, and asked with an incredulous smile:  “The crucified Nazarene was a false Messiah; but when will the true Messiah appear?”