In April is the most important of all the festivals—that of the Passover and of unleavened bread, when the doors of the house are left open for all, even the very poorest of the poor. In June is held the feast of Pentecost, to commemorate the giving of the law. The synagogues on that occasion are decorated with flowers, and in their houses the tables and floors are also dressed with flowers, sweet briar, and other fragrant herbs. A conscientious Jew must have a life of intense labour and self-denial, nor can he evade his duties nor impose them on another. How welcome to them of old must have been the Master’s kindly words, “Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, and ye shall find peace unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” To appreciate these words aright you must fancy yourself a Jew, weighed down to the earth by the daily routine of painful ceremonial and the rigid requirements of inelastic law. CHAPTER IV. THE GREEK CHURCH. In the dark ages of Christianity, when the zeal and purity of the early professors and martyrs of the new creed had died away; when Constantine, anxious to fix his throne on a permanent basis, entered into an alliance with priests and bishops, not satisfied with the humble position assigned them in the Church, only by courtesy at that time to be called Apostolical; there was a revival of an old abuse, or rather, of a Pagan principle—the alliance of Church and State. Dr. Arnold, the truest Churchman in modern times, believed that the national conversions to Christianity, which then became the fashion, were productive of immense evil. This is the opinion long held by Dissenters, and latterly by an increasing number of independent inquirers. If so, Constantine was an arch-heretic; for surely, when Christ had taught that His kingdom was not of this world, it was heresy to disbelieve it, and, in the very teeth of such a declaration, to introduce an ecclesiastical system founded upon compulsion, ignoring altogether the Divine power of Christianity, and assuming that it could only be maintained by the sword and pay of the State.