It was just beginning to dawn when he left the Alijah, and walked up and down upon the roof. The stars were dim; the hills of Moab lay in darkness, and the Dead Sea was wrapt in vapour, but on the summits of the hills of Judah the first distant beam of light appeared to break. “What are they doing now in the temple?” he asked himself; “perhaps they are changing the watch, or clearing the altar, or opening the gates that Israel may come up and appear before Jehovah. And how is the venerable old man of the temple employed?” He remembered with gratitude how much light he had derived from his conversations with him, and then the warning recurred to his mind which he had received from him. He now fully comprehended its meaning. In the journey through the desert, in the visit to the Essenes, in the discourse of Elisama and Selumiel, and the conversation of the priests at the banquet, he had found abundant proofs of the truth of the old man’s assertions respecting the parties by which Israel was distracted. He grieved to think that the highest and the noblest in Israel were arrayed against each other in hostile sects; that simplicity of faith and purity of life were so little honoured, and heathen philosophy, in a Jewish garb, exalted to the throne. “Should the Messiah come,” said he, “I verily believe that, after having disputed about his claims, they would finish by all rejecting him. The priests themselves descend from their dignity, as the appointed conservators of divine knowledge, to the wranglings of human philosophy, and the light of heavenly truth, which they should transmit pure and direct, is absorbed or diverted by the gross medium through which it passes; and thus this unhappy land, so awfully chastised by the justice of God, so graciously received back to favour by his mercy, is deprived of the bliss which Providence designed for it. Who could have believed,” he continued, “when a few weeks ago I approached Jerusalem, when I saw for the first time the temple and the priests, and all my wish was to be enrolled among them and to dwell on the hill which Jehovah has chosen for his peculiar presence, who could have believed that so short a time would have made every thing appear to me so tame and common? Is the fault my own, that I pass too easily from the one extreme to the other; or am I disappointed, that, instead of a perpetual ministration before Jehovah, I am only called at long intervals and for a short time to appear in his temple? Yet surely even this might be sufficient to keep alive my zeal, were it not that the moment he quits the temple the dreams of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes again take possession of the mind of a priest, and seduce him into transgressions of the law. What hope then, under such circumstances, of becoming a Chasidean? There was another priesthood of which Elisama spoke, as we stood together at the foot of that pointed hill. O that I could but be assured that I was not