“By Heracles!”

A faint mocking smile crossed Gamaliel’s lips and interrupting the Alexandrian he said: 

“Is there any particularly worthy man among our Alexandrian fellow-believers whose name is Heracles?”

“No one” cried the Alexandrian “ever thinks of the son of Alcmene when he asseverates—­it only means ‘really,—­truly—­’”

“To be sure you are not fastidiously accurate in the choice of your words and names, and where there is so much to be seen and enjoyed as there is here one’s thoughts are not always connected.  That is intelligible—­quite, peculiarly intelligible!  And in this city folks are so polite that they are fain to wrap truth in some graceful disguise.  May I, a barbarian from Judea, be allowed to set it before you, bare of clothing, naked and unadorned.”

“Speak, I beg you, speak.”

“You are Jews; but you had rather not be Jews, and you endure your origin as an inevitable evil.  It is only when you feel the mighty hand of the Most High that you recognize it and claim your right to be one of His chosen people.  In the smooth current of daily life you proudly number yourselves with his enemies.  Do not interrupt me, and answer honestly what I shall ask you.  In what hour of your life did you feel yourself that you owed the deepest gratitude to the God of your fathers?”

“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—­”