“But,” said Elisama, “they never appear in the temple.” “That is what the Pharisees condemn in them, and I will not undertake to decide upon the question: but thus much is certain, that they fulfil all the other precepts of the law so much the more zealously, and appeal, on this point, to passages of holy writ, which teach the inefficacy of any ritual of sacrifice. But I will not defend them for not coming to mount Moriah; and I am so far from agreeing with them in this respect, that I am, as you know, a punctual visiter at all the festivals. Let us rather consider what both Sadducees and Pharisees blame in them, and see whether this blame does not really redound to their praise. You know that the Sadducees in their folly maintain, that the whole course of the events of life depends upon man’s own free will, that fate has no influence over human affairs, and that it rests with ourselves to be the authors of our own weal or woe. The Pharisees, with more reason, teach that some things in our lives are the work of fate, but not all, and that in some cases it depends upon ourselves whether events shall happen or not. But how many rulers of the world must they then suppose to exist, or how would they contrive to keep this host of rulers in order and in harmony? How much more just and consistent is the doctrine of the Essenes, that fate disposes of all events, that nothing happens to man without its appointment, and that the great and the trifling in events, what is necessary and what is apparently arbitrary, all is alike subject to a predestined order!” “Nay,” Elisama exclaimed, “these are subjects on which only the Messiah when he comes can instruct us fully—but this doctrine is horrible.” “Myron would say,” observed Helon, “that the Essenes were Jewish Pythagoreans; as the Pharisees might be called Jewish Stoics; and the Sadducees, Jewish Epicureans.” Their conversation broke off here, all parties being a little out of humour, an effect to which the desert on which they had now entered perhaps contributed. It was a long, hilly, dreary waste. Deep ravines without verdure opened beside serrated cliffs, sometimes of a chalky whiteness, sometimes of sand. No fountain, no shrub, was to be discerned, as far as the eye could reach; scarce here and there a stunted plant or a dry blade of grass. The rocks were rent and thrown in such wild confusion, that Helon thought an earthquake must have torn up the bowels of the earth, in this abode of desolation and of death. Towards the east, between the ragged summits of the hills, the thick clouds of smoke from the Dead Sea arose, as from the bottom of the abyss. From the higher ground the region around Jericho might indeed be seen, but it served by the contrast rather to aggravate the dreariness of the nearer scene.