Not for one moment did Sabbathai hesitate. A man’s behaviour at a supreme crisis in his life is not determined by the sudden need. It is not to a single, sudden trumpet-call that character responds, but to the tone set by daily uncounted matin and evensong. Sabbathai was as incapable of the heroic death as of the heroic life. It had been all a game to him; the people’s passionate enthusiasm, that pitiful power of theirs for seeing visions, were just points in the game--points in his favour. And now the game was lost; he was cool enough to realise this at a glance, and to seize upon the one move which he might yet make to his own advantage. With a startling burst of calculated candour he owned to it all, that he was no prophet, no Saviour, no willing ‘witness’ even; only a historical Jew, and very much at the Sultan’s service. Mahomet smiled. The tragedy of the situation was for the Jews; the comedy, and it must have been irresistible, was his. Then after due pause he gravely proceeded, that insomuch as Sabbathai’s pretensions to Palestine were an infringement on Turkish vested rights in that province, the repentant prophet must give an earnest of his recovered loyalty as a Turkish subject by turning Turk and abjuring Judaism altogether. And cheerfully enough Sabbathai assented, audaciously adding that such a change had been long desired by him, and that he eagerly and respectfully welcomed this opportunity of making his first profession of faith as a Mahometan in the presence of Mahomet’s namesake and temporal representative. And thus the scene, at which one knows not whether to laugh or cry, was over; and when the curtain rises again it is on the merest and most exasperating commonplace--on Sabbathai, fat and turbaned, living and dying as a respectable Turk. For the actors behind the scenes, there was never any call, neither to hail a Saviour nor to mourn a martyr. For them, this puzzling bit of passion-play was just a mirage in the wilderness of their lives; and for many and many a weary year foolish and faithful folk debated whether it was mirage or reality. For his dupes survived him, this sorry impostor of the seventeenth century; and their illusion, hoping all things, believing all things, withered into delusion and died hard. Such faculty perhaps, for all its drawbacks, gives staying-power to man or nation. It is where there is no vision that the people perish. NOW AND THEN A COMPOSITE SKETCH