uch touched by the expression--'I believe with my father's heart.'"

"It is a good epigram," said Sidney, impressed. "But what is to be said
of a rich community which recruits its clergy from the lower classes?
The method of election by competitive performance, common as it is among
poor Dissenters, emphasizes the subjection of the shepherd to his flock.
You catch your ministers young, when they are saturated with suppressed
scepticism, and bribe them with small salaries that seem affluence to
the sons of poor immigrants. That the ministry is not an honorable
profession may be seen from the anxiety of the minister to raise his
children in the social scale by bringing them up to some other line of
business."

"That is true," said Raphael, gravely. "Our wealthy families must be
induced to devote a son each to the Synagogue."

"I wish they would," said Sidney. "At present, every second man is a
lawyer. We ought to have more officers and doctors, too. I like those
old Jews who smote the Philistines hip and thigh; it is not good for a
race to run all to brain: I suppose, though, we had to develop cunning
to survive at all. There was an enlightened minister whose Friday
evenings I used to go to when a youth--delightful talk we had there,
too; you know whom I mean. Well, one of his sons is a solicitor, and the
other a stockbroker. The rich men he preached to helped to place his
sons. He was a charming man, but imagine him preaching to them the
truths in _Mordecai Josephs_, as Mr. Saville suggested."

"_Our_ minister lets us have it hot enough, though," said Mr. Henry
Goldsmith with a guffaw.

His wife hastened to obliterate the unrefined expression.

"Mr. Strelitski is a wonderfully eloquent young man, so quiet and
reserved in society, but like an ancient prophet in the pulpit."

"Yes, we were very lucky to get him," said Mr. Henry Goldsmith.

The little dark girl shuddered.

"What is the matter?" asked Raphael softly.

"I don't know. I don't like the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. He is eloquent,
but his dogmatism irritates me. I don't believe he is sincere. He
doesn't like me, either."

"Oh, you're both wrong," he said in concern.

"Strelitski is a draw, I admit," said Mr. Montagu Samuels, who was the
President of a rival synagogue. "But Rosenbaum is a good pull-down on
the other side, eh?"

Mr. Henry Goldsmith groaned. The second minister of the Kensington
synagogue was the scandal of the community. He wasn't expect