From all these remarks it will easily be seen that in olden times the boy enjoyed almost all the rights of majority long before the day of his being “The Son of the Law.” The condition of the novice is hardly distinguishable from that of the initiated priest. The Talmud, the Gaonim, and even R. Isaac Alfasi and Maimonides knew neither the term “The Son of the Law” (in our sense of the word) nor any ceremony connected with it. There is only one slight reference to such an institution, recorded in the Tractate _Sopherim_, with the quotation of which I shall conclude this paper. We read there: “In Jerusalem there was the godly custom to initiate the children at the _beginning_ of the thirteenth year by fasting the whole Day of Atonement. During this year they took the boy to the priests and learned men that they might bless him, and pray for him that God might think him worthy of a life devoted to the study of the Torah and pious works.” For, this author says, “they were beautiful, and their lives harmonious and their hearts directed to God.” XIII. WOMAN IN TEMPLE AND SYNAGOGUE The learned Woman has always been a favourite subject with Jewish students; and her intellectual capabilities have been fully vindicated in many an essay and even fair‐sized book. Less attention, however, has been paid to woman’s claims as a devotional being whom the Temple, and afterwards the Synagogue, more or less recognised. At least it is not known to me that any attempt has been made to give, even in outline, the history of woman’s relation to public worship. It is needless to say that the present sketch, which is meant to supply this want in some measure, lays no claim to completeness; but I venture to hope that it will help to direct the attention of the friends of research to the matter, and that it may induce others to deal more fully with the subject and do it the justice it deserves. The earliest allusion to women’s participation in _public_ worship, is that in Exodus xxxviii. 8, to the women who assembled to minister at the door of the “tent of meeting,” of whose mirrors the lavers of brass were made (cf. 1 Sam. ii. 22). Philo, who is not exactly enamoured of the emancipation of women, and seeks to confine them to the “small state,” is here full of their praise. “For,” he says, “though no one enjoined them to do so, they of their own spontaneous zeal and earnestness contributed the mirrors with which they had been accustomed to deck and set off their beauty, as the most becoming first‐fruits of their modesty, and of the purity of their married life, and, as one may say, of the beauty of their souls.” In another passage Philo describes the Jewish women as “competing with the men themselves in piety, having determined to enter upon a glorious contest, and to the utmost extent of their power to exert themselves so as not to fall short of their holiness.”