the author, his morality might be equal to the standard of his humility. He abolished the Mosaical command of the ordeal of bitter waters, immorally isolating a passage in Isaiah from its context. Finally, to fill up the measure of his honesty, he became one of the lewdest courtiers of Titus, and the destroyer of his country. But while obsequious to human grandeur, he was obdurate to the warnings of God, and died proud and impenitent. ("Talmud," "Rosh Hashanah," or "of the New Year," fol. 20, recto; 31, recto; "Sotah," or "of the Woman Suspected," etc., IX. 9; "Yoma," or "the Day of Atonement," fol. 39, recto, and 43; "Gittin," or "of Divorce," fol. 56, verso and recto; "Succa," or "of the Festival of Tabernacles," fol. 28, verso; Mishna, Chapter, "Egla arupha"; "Sepher Juchasin," or "the Book of Ancestors," fol. 20, recto; "Seph. Hakkabalah"; Otthonis, "Hist. Doct. Misn.," pp. 93-103; Hosea iv. 14; Jos., "Wars," VI. V. 3; De Champagny, "Rome et la Judée," T. i. p. 158.) ABBA SAUL. He was of prodigious height, and had the charge of superintending the burials of the dead, that everything might be done according to the law. The rabbins, who delight in the marvelous, affirm that in the exercise of his duties he found the thigh bone of Og, the King of Bashan, and the right eye of Absalom. By virtue of the marrow extracted from the thigh of Og, he was enabled to chase a young buck for three leagues; as for the eye of Absalom, it was so deep that he could have hidden himself in it as if in a cavern. These stories, no doubt, appear very puerile; and yet, according to a Talmudical book (Menorath-Hammoer, "the lighted candlestick"), which is considered of great authority even in the modern [orthodox] synagogue, we must judge of these matters in the following manner: "Everything which our doctors have taught in the Medrashim (allegoric or historical commentaries) we are bound to consider and believe in as the law of Moses our master; and if we find anything in it which appears exaggerated and incredible, we must attribute it to the weakness of our understandings, rather than to their teachings; and whoever turns into ridicule whatever they have said will be punished." According to Maimonides, Abba Saul died before the destruction of the Temple. (Mishna, "Middoth," or "of the Dimensions of the Temple," Chapter, "Har habbaith"; "Talmud," "Nidda," or "the Purification of Women," C. III. fol. 24, recto; Maimonides, "Proef ad zeraim"; Drach, "Harmonies entre l'Eglise et la Synagogue," T. ii. p. 375.)