be acknowledged sole monarch of the universe, with the capital and head-quarters of his kingdom fixed in a restored and beautified Jerusalem. =4. How the News was received.=――The news of a Messiah having arisen spread like wildfire through all the cities of Turkey. Business of every sort was suspended, and men and women abandoned their ordinary occupations, and gave themselves up entirely to what they called good works. Believing that they were about ‘to inherit all things,’ rich and poor alike refused to labour. Those who had led self-indulgent lives now fasted and scourged themselves, and became so lavish in their charity, and were so urgent to make amends, that the beggars had an extremely good time. There must have been something very persuasive about Sabbatai Zevi, for a certain Samuel Pennia who began by making a strenuous stand against all this folly, ended by becoming a violent convert to it. Sabbatai presently went to his birthplace, Smyrna. In that city early recollections stirred some of the people to just sufficient doubt to make them ask their old townsman to perform a miracle in proof of his Messiahship. Sabbatai, says the same old chronicle, ‘was horribly puzzled for a miracle,’ but his effrontery was equal to the credulity of his dupes. In an audience before the cadi or judge of the city, Sabbatai suddenly and gravely exclaimed, ‘See you not a pillar of fire?’ Many of the crowd, in the hysterical excitement of the moment, really believed that they saw something of the sort, and those who did not see were silent, hardly liking to proclaim their want of faith or their defective sight. Sabbatai was triumphant, and men who refused to acknowledge him were actually, in some cases, excommunicated by the synagogues. =5. The Sultan interferes.=――But an end was coming to this extraordinary imposture. The Sultan of Turkey, Mahomed IV., thought it time to put a stop to the tumult and confusion which the man was creating in his dominions. So when Sabbatai, shortly after the visit to Smyrna, made a mission, as he would have called it, to Constantinople, he was seized by order of the sultan upon his arrival, and imprisoned in a dungeon. It was an unpleasant experience for Sabbatai, and it made a very great difference in his way of looking at things, but on his infatuated followers, strange to say, his reverse of fortune made little or no impression. In a dungeon or in a palace, as martyr or as prince, they believed in their Messiah. Poor deluded people, there is something very pathetic about their enthusiasm; it seems to suggest so plainly how few objects in life they must have had worthy of belief or of reverence.