sold it off similarly, but yet not to Jews, for these were interdicted from traffic, business being the mark of the unbeliever, and punishable by excommunication, pecuniary mulcts, or corporeal chastisements. Everybody prepared for the imminent return to Palestine, when the heathen should wait at the table of the Saints and the great Leviathan deck the Messianic board. In the interim the poor were supported by the rich. In Thessalonica alone four thousand persons lived on gifts; truly Messianic times for the Abraham Rubios. In Smyrna the authority of the Cadi was ignored or silenced by purses; when the Turks complained, the Seraglio swallowed gold on both sides. The _Chacham_ Aaron de la Papa, being an unbeliever and one of those who had originally driven him from his birthplace, was removed by Sabbataï, and Chayim Benvenisti appointed _Chacham_ instead. The noble Chayim Penya, the one sceptic of importance left in Smyrna, was wellnigh torn to pieces in the synagogue by the angry multitude, but when his own daughters went into prophetic trances and saw the glory of the Kingdom he went over to Sabbataï's side, and reports flew everywhere that the Messiah's enemies were struck with frenzies and madness, till, restored by him to their former temper and wits, they became his friends, worshippers, and disciples. Four hundred other men and women fell into strange ecstasies, foamed at the mouth, and recounted their visions of the Lion of Judah, while infants, who could scarcely stammer out a syllable plainly, repeated the name of Sabbataï, the Messiah; being possessed, and voices sounding from their stomachs and entrails. Such reports, bruited through the world by the foreign ambassadors at Smyrna, the clerks of the English and Dutch houses, the resident foreigners, and the Christian ministers, excited a prodigious sensation, thrilling civilized mankind. On the Exchanges of Europe men took the odds for and against a Jewish kingdom. Upon the Jews of the world the news that the Messiah had passed from a far-off aspiration into a reality fell like a thunderbolt; they were dazed with joy; then they began to prepare for the great journey. Everywhere self-flagellation, almsgiving, prophetic ecstasies and trances, the scholars and the mob at one in joyous belief. And everywhere also profligacy, adultery, incest, through the spread of a mystical doctrine that the sinfulness of the world could only be overcome by the superabundance of sin. XVI