found himself once more exposed to the danger which he had so narrowly escaped in Morocco. A traveller from that country recognised in the official chief of the Hebrew community of Egypt his pseudo-Mohammedan friend of Fez, and denounced him as an apostate. The penalty for apostacy prescribed by the Laws of Islam is death. Maimonides, however, succeeded in convincing the Vizier of the Moorish visitor’s mistake, and thus was enabled to return to the calm pursuit of his labours, communal, medical and philosophical. Soon afterwards Palestine was re-conquered by Saladin, and the Jews were allowed to settle in Jerusalem--a boon for which Maimonides is supposed to be responsible. ♦1190♦ In the midst of his manifold duties, and his feud with a rival Rabbi of Baghdad, Maimonides found time to produce another philosophical work, the _Guide to the Perplexed_, a work which forms the crown of his intellectual achievement, and which has been pronounced “perhaps the most remarkable metaphysical _tour de force_ in the history of human thought.”[45] At any rate, it is a brave attempt at reconciliation between Aristotelian philosophy and Judaic religion, between Rationalism and Revelation, between Hellenic free-thought and Hebrew feeling. Therein is propounded the eternal problem of the origin and destiny of things, and solved in a manner that carried conviction at the time. The book has, indeed, been a guide to the perplexed for many generations, and, though it has not always commanded obedience among the Jews, it has served as a stimulus to enquiring minds and, through mediaeval scholasticism, has exercised an abiding influence over Christian theology. If metaphysical speculation be of any value to mankind, the world owes a great debt to the work of Maimonides. He died in 1204, at the age of seventy, full of years and honours, and his end was followed by a general outburst of grief. In Egypt both Jews and Mohammedans held a public mourning for three days, in Jerusalem a public fast was proclaimed, and similar funeral services and fasts were observed in many synagogues all over the world. The verdict of his contemporaries was, “From Moses the Prophet till Moses Maimonides there has never appeared his equal.” Posterity was not so unanimous in its appreciation. His tomb at Tiberias was adorned with the epitaph: “Here lies a man, and yet no man. If thou wert a man, Angels of heaven Must have overshadowed thy mother.” This inscription was in later times replaced by the following: “Here lies Moses Maimonides, the excommunicated heretic.”[46] The two epitaphs form an epitome of the sage’s posthumous career--characteristic, though hardly unique. Maimonides had to share the fate of all advocates of compromise ere he was accepted as the oracle of Jewish orthodoxy.[47] The condition of Israel across the Pyrenees must now engage our attention. ♦768–814♦