long sundered from the Eternal Unity.

But there is nothing on which a free man will meditate less than on
death. Desirous to write down what was in his mind, Spinoza turned
from the sea and pursued his peaceful path homewards.

THE MASTER OF THE NAME

I

Now that I have come to the close of my earthly days, and that the
higher circles will soon open to me, whereof I have learned the
secrets from my revered Master--where there is neither eating nor
drinking, but the pious sit crowned and delight themselves with the
vision of the Godhead--I would fain leave some chronicle, in these
confused and evil days, of him whom I have loved best on earth, for he
came to teach man the true life and the true worship. To him, the ever
glorious and luminous Israel Baal Shem, the one true Master of the
Name, I owe my redemption from a living death. For he found me buried
alive under a mountain of ashes, and he drew me out and kindled the
ashes to fire, so that I cheered myself thereat. And since now the
flame is like to go out again, and the Master's teaching to be choked
and concealed beneath that same ash-mountain, I pray God that He
inspire my unready quill to set down a true picture of the Man and his
doctrine.

Of my own history I do not know that it is needful to tell very much.
My grandfather came to Poland from Vienna, whence he had been expelled
with all the Jews of the Arch-Duchy, to please the Jesuit-ridden
Empress Margaret, who thus testified her gratitude to Heaven for her
recovery from an accident that had befallen her at a court ball. I
have heard the old man tell how trumpeters proclaimed in the streets
the Emperor's edict, and how every petition proved as futile as the
great gold cup and the silver jug and basin presented by the Jews to
the Imperial couple as they came out of church, after the thanksgiving
ceremony.

It was an ill star that guided my grandfather's feet towards Poland.
The Jews of Poland had indeed once been paramount in Europe, but the
Cossack massacres and the disruption of the kingdom had laid them low,
and they spawned beggars who wandered through Europe, preaching and
wheedling with equal hyper-subtlety. My father at any rate escaped
mendicancy, for he managed to obtain a tiny farm in the north-east of
Lithuania, though what with the exactions of the Prince of the estate,
and the brutalities of the Russian regiments quartered in the
neighborhood, his life was bitter as the waters of