in His time’ and his word is good; but alas! I fear that ours is better: _Hope deferred maketh the heart sick_.” Said his friend, “I also--thou knowest it, Judah--am not of the dreamers, and know well that they who in our days see visions are prophets in name and not in truth. And the true prophets did not live for ever. Nevertheless their word liveth; and have not we that are Wise learnt from them that fear of Jehovah which is to turn from evil and do good, so that in measure their mantle is fallen upon us and we are become their successors, and according to their commandments so we teach? Yea, I say that their word _hath_ overtaken this people, not for evil but for good; since of all the Jews who is there that doth not from the heart know that the Lord our God is one God, and that the gods of the heathen are nought and their images wood and stone? Wherefore, Judah, I fear not the Greeks so much as thou. For if a Jew from among us go forth unto them and learn their skill and follow their fashions, yet he will not reverence their gods. Moreover, remember, Judah, those that fight for us in the strife. If God hath not raised up a prophet in Israel these many years, are not the Priests and Levites become a strong tower of defence? In all their interpretation of the Law of Moses, they do well: for they seek to establish justice and mercy between a man and his brethren, and to confirm the fear of Jehovah’s Name. It is written, _The Law of the Lord is perfect, making clean the heart_; and these men love its statutes wholly. Thou dost not think that _they_ will become Greeks?” “Not all of them, Joseph; yet of the great priests many are evil. They live for place and power, not for the pure service of their God, and if the day come when it shall profit them these would surpass the Greeks in the fashions of the Greeks. But concerning the Levites and the Scribes thou sayest right; for they truly have set their hearts upon their work: albeit zeal for the Law will not save Israel. If only the ritual be observed and the services in the Temple maintained, if the feasts be duly kept, they deem all things are well. They would have all men more Levite than themselves. But what answer is that to the young who crave for fortune, favour, and fulness of pleasures like the unbridled heathen? Some it may satisfy, but thou knowest that more turn empty away; and all of them understand that the Greeks will feed their desires full. Come now: tell me, I pray thee: this very year how many are gone hence to seek fortune in the markets of Ptolemais? How many to the court of Antiochus, aye! from the noblest of our families? How many to be made captains in his armies and in Ptolemy’s? Perchance it is well for thee, Joseph, whose son is a scribe well spoken of and one day will be counted a Wise-man and a fearer of God even as thou, his father, art: but my son, my son, is in Alexandria, though I besought him with tears that he would not go.”