Is Mustapha really persuaded--convinced of all that he has told us? Is he perfectly sure that Mahomet was sent by God, as he is sure that the city of Stamboul exists? as he is sure that the Empress Catherine II. sent a fleet from the remotest seas of the North to land troops in Peloponnesus--a thing as astonishing as the journey from Mecca to Jerusalem in one night--and that this fleet destroyed that of the Ottomans in the Dardanelles? The truth is that Mustapha believes what he does not believe. He has been accustomed to pronounce, with his mollah, certain words which he takes for ideas. To _believe_ is very often to _doubt_. "Why do you believe that?" says Harpagon. "I believe it because I believe it," answers Master Jacques; and most men might return the same answer. Believe me fully, my dear reader, when I say one must not believe too easily. But what shall we say of those who would persuade others of what they themselves do not believe? and what of the monsters who persecute their brethren in the humble and rational doctrine of doubt and self-distrust? BETHSHEMESH. _Of the Fifty Thousand and Seventy Jews Struck with Sudden Death for Having Looked Upon the Ark; of the Five Golden Emeroids Paid by the Philistines; and of Dr. Kennicott's Incredulity._ Men of the world will perhaps be astonished to find this word the subject of an article; but we here address only the learned and ask their instruction. Bethshemesh was a village belonging to God's people, situated, according to commentators, two miles north of Jerusalem. The Phœnicians having, in Samuel's time, beaten the Jews, and taken from them their Ark of alliance in the battle, in which they killed thirty thousand of their men, were severely punished for it by the Lord: _"Percussit eos in secretiori parte natium, et ebullierunt villæ et agri.... et nati sunt mures, et facta est confusio mortis magna in civitate."_ Literally: "He struck them in the most secret part of the buttocks; and the fields and the farmhouses were troubled.... and there sprung up mice; and there was a great confusion of death in the city." The prophets of the Phœnicians, or Philistines, having informed them that they could deliver themselves from the scourge only by giving to the Lord five golden mice and five golden emeroids, and sending him back the Jewish Ark, they fulfilled this order, and, according to the express command of their prophets sent back the Ark with the mice and emeroids on a wagon drawn by two cows, with each a sucking calf and without a driver. These two cows of themselves took the Ark straight to Bethshemesh. The men of Bethshemesh approached the Ark in order to look at it, which liberty was punished yet more severely than the profanation by the Phœnicians had been. The Lord struck with sudden death seventy men of the people, and fifty thousand of the populace.