this principle with the utmost _naïveté_: _e.g._, "A scribe will have no portion in the world to come, even should he be faithful to the law of God, and full of good works, if his teaching be not wholly in accordance with tradition." Our Lord's charge against them, that they made the word of God of none effect by their tradition, scarcely puts this point in a stronger light than their declaration "that it is highly perilous for any learned man to read the Bible, since he may be induced to trust to its guidance rather than to his teacher." For the more advanced disciple the rule was, "that for one hour given to the study of the Bible, two should be devoted to the Talmud." When we read of different schools of Rabbis, and learn that they represented different tendencies, we naturally suppose that there must have been some movements of spirit, some struggles of moral and intellectual spontaneity. And it is true that between the school of Shammai and that of Hillel and the Gamaliels there was a wide divergence, the one relaxing and the other enforcing rigorous observances, the one encouraging, the other condemning all genial culture; but when we compare the teaching of the two parties which is fully represented in the Talmud, we see that the liberality of the most advanced is bounded within very narrow limits. Hillel, the best of all, had the spirit of his caste. Eternal life, according to him, was the portion of those who had attained to a perfect knowledge of the unwritten and traditional system to which he devoted his own life.