the month Adar, on which it became due. Footnote 131: Exod. xxx. 11. Footnote 132: Numb. iii. 47. The Cyrenian had brought the sum which was due from his Jewish brethren in Cyrene, and was about to deposit it in the chest. But it was necessary that it should be paid in shekels, and he had only foreign coin. As this was a case of frequent occurrence, the receivers of the shekel were also money-changers, and had their tables beside the chests. For a certain premium they gave Jewish shekels for the Cyrenian coins. Helon witnessed the proceeding with no small dissatisfaction. He had the true Mosaic dislike of commerce and trade, of which, in the whole law, no single instance of encouragement is found. Though Canaan lay on the shore of the Mediterranean, and the example of their nearest neighbours, the Phœnicians, encouraged the Israelites to commerce, it was not the will of Jehovah that his people should devote themselves to traffic; agriculture, on the contrary, was consecrated by its union with religion, and all the great national festivals were as much agricultural as historical. In this respect Israel resembled the Greeks more than the Orientals, among whom commerce is usually held in high estimation, constitutes an order of nobility, and engages even the prime ministers of the state. The Greek, on the contrary, at least in the earliest and purest times, considered such occupations as a surrender of his dignity, and inconsistent with the magnanimity of a free man. Helon would fain have seen the same spirit continuing to animate the Israelites, though for a different reason. The constant intercourse with foreigners, necessarily produced compromises and conformity, which diminished their attachment to the law and usages of their forefathers. He disliked the mercantile character of the Hellenists of Alexandria, as much as their love of allegories, and deduced indeed from the former their neglect of the law, their indifference to the temple on Moriah, and their endeavour to pacify their conscience by allegorizing those precepts, which in their literal acceptation too obviously rebuked their practices. If the children of the captivity, he thought, had not taken up the pursuit of commerce on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, they would have returned in much greater numbers, and so many of them would not have been induced to prefer gain in a foreign land to the recovery of their own. “And had they returned in greater numbers,” he exclaimed, “how soon would the Samaritans have been expelled, Galilee purified, and the Philistines been forced to bow their necks! Jerusalem would have been inhabited by a totally different race of men, and the days of Solomon might have returned!”