of men contend appeared little and insignificant. His absence from the worship of the synagogue now began to be remarked; it was rumored that he neglected the prescribed fasts and he was openly charged with partaking of forbidden food. At first he was treated with great leniency. So high was his credit with the Rabbis, so impressed were they with his singular abilities, that they strove by every gentle means to win him back to his allegiance. They admonished him, held out prospects of honor and emolument; it is even stated that at last in despair of reclaiming him they offered an annual pension of a thousand florins to purchase his silence. Spinoza himself was keenly alive to the gravity of his position. It had been fondly hoped that he would shed new lustre upon the religion of Israel. He would be accused of vile ingratitude for deserting his people. He foresaw the inevitable rupture that would cut him off forever from friends and kinsmen, from the opportunities of wealth and honorable position, and deliver him over to privation and poverty. He himself tells us in the introduction of a work which had long been forgotten and has been only recently rescued from oblivion, that he saw riches and honor and all those goods for which men strive, placed before him on the one hand, and a sincere life serenely true to itself on the other; but that the former seemed veritable shams and evils compared with that one great good. Nay, he said, though he might never reach the absolute truth, he felt as one sick unto death, who knows but one balm that can help him and who must needs search for that balm whereby perchance he may be healed. Great was the commotion stirred up against him in the Jewish community of Amsterdam. One evening a fanatic assaulted him on the street and attempted his life. The stroke of the assassin's dagger was successfully parried. But Spinoza felt that the city was now no longer safe for him to dwell in. He fled and for some time frequently changed his place of residence, until at last he settled at the Hague where he remained until his death. In the mean time the lenient spirit of the Jewish leaders had changed into stern, uncompromising rigor. Observe now how persecution breeds persecution. It had been the pride of Judaism from of old that within its pale the practice of religion was deemed more essential than the theory; that it permitted the widest divergence in matters of belief, and granted ample tolerance to all. But these Jews of Amsterdam, fresh from the dungeons and the torture chambers of the Inquisition, had themselves imbibed the dark spirit of their oppressors. Uriel d'Acosta they had driven to the verge of insanity and to a tragic death by their cruel bigotry. And now the same methods were employed against a wiser and greater and purer man, far than he.