‘rejoice before the Lord.’ In one place it is, in truth, gravely set forth that ‘he who increaseth the number of his servants’ increaseth the amount of sin in the world, but this somewhat ascetic-sounding statement is clearly susceptible of a good deal of common-sense interpretation, and when another Master tells us that ‘charity is the salt which keeps wealth from corruption,’ a thought, perhaps, for the due preservation of the wealth may be read between the lines. On the whole, it looks as if these old-world Rabbis set to work at laying down the law in much the spirit of Robert Browning’s Rabbi-- ‘Let us not always say, Spite of this flesh to-day, I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole. As the bird wings and sings Let us cry, ‘All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh helps soul.’ After this manner, at any rate, are set forth, and in this sense are interpreted in the Talmud, the Biblical injunctions to _tzedakah_, to that charity of alms-deeds which, as society is constituted, must, as we said, be considered somewhat of a class distinction. But for the charity which should be obligatory all round, and as easy of fulfilment by the poor as by the rich, the Talmud chooses the other synonym חסד (_chesed_), and coining from it the word _Gemiluth-chesed_, which may be rendered ‘the doing of kindness,’ it works out a supplementary and social system of charity--a system founded not on ‘rights,’ but on sympathy--dealing not in doles, but in deeds of friendship and of fellowship, and demanding a giving of oneself rather than of one’s stores. And greater than _tzedakah_, write the Rabbis, is _Gemiluth-chesed_, justifying their dictum, as is their wont, by a reference to Holy Writ. ‘Sow to yourselves in righteousness (_tzedakah_),’ says the prophet Hosea (Hos. x. 12); ‘reap in mercy (_chesed_)’; and, inasmuch as reaping is better than sowing, mercy must be better than righteousness. To ‘visit the sick,’ to promote peace in families apt to fall out, to ‘relieve all persons, Jews or non-Jews, in affliction’ (a comprehensive phrase), to ‘bury the dead,’ to ‘accompany the bride,’ are among those ‘kindnesses’ which take rank as religious duties, and one or two specimens may indicate the amount of careful detail which make these injunctions practical, and the fine motive which goes far towards spiritualising them.