The Jew under his common clothing wears a mystic garment. Why he wears it, or when the practice arose, neither wise nor simple can tell. In vain is the Rabbi appealed to, the Talmudist consulted to explain the _Tisit_, which from Archangel to Suz, every Israelite puts on in the morning and takes off at night; or of the _Talith_ which he wears in the synagogue when he prays.[273] Yet the meaning is as plain as if printed in an Encyclopædia. These names do not occur in the Old Testament, and no mention is made of them in the “Six hundred and thirteen Fundamental precepts of Judaism,” promulgated after the return from the Babylonish captivity to enforce and maintain the ceremonial law, and which continue to be their code of life and manners. No mention of them is made in the New Testament, or in Josephus, or Hecateus, or any writer who treats of the Jews. Yet as this practice is universal, its date must have been antecedent to their dispersion: what more clear than that, when forbidden to appear in their costume, they preserved it in the sanctuary, and in secret bound an image of it to their hearts? What more touching record of the sorrows of an exiled people?[274] Linked together by oppression, they have since clung to a practice which they have ceased to comprehend, and the token handed down by their fathers they respect as a religious observance or cabalistic sign, and venerate the stuff for its fringes,[275] not for its former memory or future promise.[276] The Tisit is a small Talith, the Talith a miniature haïk.[277] The only difference is in the distribution of the fringes, and in the borders: the haïk has the fringe at the ends and no border. A blue border was enjoined by the ceremonial law. The Abyssinians wear it still.[278]