hear the angels as they leaned forward out of their clouds my priests are v doing splendidly the fat of this beast is delicious in our nostrils were the attributed to michael r and he said would reply it is indeed as thou o v r joseph that priests could speak like this and t tried to forget the vile things they said but they were j he in his heart for he could i not do else and when he did speak it was at first cautiously though there was little need for caution for he found to his surprise that everybody knew that the did not v k believe in a future life and very little in the that the v jews were the chosen by god he was their god and had the race but for all practical purposes it was better to put their faith henceforth in the who would defend against all it was necessary to observe the sabbath and to preach its and to punish those who it for on the sabbath rested the entire of the temple itself x the brook and all belief might if the sabbath was not maintained and in the houses of the joseph heard these very words and their crude his tender soul he was drawn back to his own th lor however narrow minded and they might be he could not deny to them the virtue of sincerity it was with a delightful sense of community of spirit that he returned to them and in the conviction that it would be well to let pass without protest the which himself long ago in began to look upon with amusement a sudden recollection of the discussion that had arisen in the yard behind the counting house whether an egg could be eaten if it had been laid the day after the sabbath brought a smile to his face but a different smile from of for he understood now better than he had understood then that this in itself a ridiculous question was no more serious than a that might for a moment the garment of a of little account was the delay if the feet were on the right road now the scruple of conscience that the question had awakened might be considered as a desire to live according to a law which observed for generations had become part of the national sense and spirit on this he fell to thinking that it is only by laws and traditions that we may know ourselves � whence we have come and whither we are going he attributed to these laws and traditions the love of the race for their god and their desire to love god and to form their lives in obedience to what they believed to be god s will without these rites and their love of god would not have survived it was not by exaggeration of these laws but by the of j the that the temple was if the priests degraded religion and made a vile thing of it there were others that the temple by their piety and as these thoughts passed through joseph s mind his eyes went to the simple folk who never asked themselves v the brook whether they were or but were content to pray around the temple that the lord would not take them away till they witnessed the triumph of never asking if the promised would be obtained in this world � if not in each individual case by the race itself � or whether they would all be lifted by angels out of their graves and carried away by them into a happy immortality the simple folk on whom joseph s eyes rested prayed by difficult questions they were v nt god and captured by their simple faith which he felt to be the only spiritual value he was glad away from both sa and mix with them sometimes and to his great regret he brought about involuntarily the very religious that it was his object to quit for ever when he withdrew himself from the society of the a chance word was enough to set some of them by the ears asking each other whether the soul may or can descend again into the body and it was one day when this question was being disputed that a v pressing forward announced his belief that the soul being alone immortal does not attempt to regain the temple of the body a doctrine which astonished joseph so simple did it seem and so reasonable and as he stood wondering why he had not thought of it himself his eyes telling his perplexity he was awakened from his dream and his awakening was caused by the word he asked for a meaning to be put upon it to the great astonishment of the people who were not aware that the fame of this third of t he jews was not yet spread into were many willing to instruct him and almost the first thing he learnt about them was that they were not viewed with favour in for they did not send animals to the temple for sacrifice blood letting a m e a still more this was its denial of private v n x n m the brook property all they had belonged to one brother as much as � o another and they lived in various places avoiding cities and setting up villages of their own accord one on the eastern bank of the from whence sometimes came forth for the marriage and relied on for the maintenance of the order the rule of the however did not marriage because they believed the end of the world was drawing nigh but because they wished to all pleasure from life to do this to conceive the duty of man to be a cheerful of all pleasure seemed to joseph wonderful an exaltation of the spirit that 