ehold a glory where I behold it." They came now with
gathered pathos. Before him stood, as a living, suffering reality, what
hitherto he had only seen as an effort of imagination, which, in its
comparative faintness, yet carried a suspicion, of being exaggerated: a
man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease, consciously
within the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense life in an
invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, except for its
possible making some obstruction to a conceived good which he would
never share except as a brief inward vision--a day afar off, whose sun
would never warm him, but into which he threw his soul's desire, with a
passion often wanting to the personal motives of healthy youth. It was
something more than a grandiose transfiguration of the parental love
that toils, renounces, endures, resists the suicidal promptings of
despair--all because of the little ones, whose future becomes present
to the yearning gaze of anxiety.

All eyes were fixed on Mordecai as he sat down again, and none with
unkindness; but it happened that the one who felt the most kindly was
the most prompted to speak in opposition. This was the genial and
rational Gideon, who also was not without a sense that he was
addressing the guest of the evening. He said--

"You have your own way of looking at things, Mordecai, and as you say,
your own way seems to you rational. I know you don't hold with the
restoration of Judea by miracle, and so on; but you are as well aware
as I am that the subject has been mixed with a heap of nonsense both by
Jews and Christians. And as to the connection of our race with
Palestine, it has been perverted by superstition till it's as
demoralizing as the old poor-law. The raff and scum go there to be
maintained like able-bodied paupers, and to be taken special care of by
the angel Gabriel when they die. It's no use fighting against facts. We
must look where they point; that's what I call rationality. The most
learned and liberal men among us who are attached to our religion are
for clearing our liturgy of all such notions as a literal fulfillment
of the prophecies about restoration, and so on. Prune it of a few
useless rites and literal interpretations of that sort, and our
religion is the simplest of all religions, and makes no barrier, but a
union, between us and the rest of the world."

"As plain as a pike-staff," said Pash, with an ironical laugh. "You
plu