Spinoza. Auerbach Berthold

was boundless. Gabriel came to Amsterdam, submitted to every precept, and entered our faith. Henceforth he bore the name of Uriel Acosta. He followed zealously what is written: 'Thou shalt search therein day and night.' I have often been told that it was affecting to see how the stately man was not ashamed to be instructed in Hebrew or the Holy Scriptures by the merest boy. But an unclean spirit entered into him, and he began to scoff at our pious Rabbis. You have heard here that he was one of those who deny the foundations of our faith; he has set down the sins of his heart in his writings, and would prove them from the Holy Word. Rabbi Solomon de Silva, our celebrated physician, has refuted his errors. Acosta was excommunicated, but freed himself by recantation. The contrary spirit in him, however, rested not. He not only opposed our holy religion, in that, as his own nephew said, he violated the Sabbath, and enjoying forbidden meats, and dissuaded two Christians, who would have changed to Judaism, but he spoke openly, as a very apostate, against all religion. For seven years he refused to live according to the precepts of our faith, or undergo the penance laid upon him. He should have been laid forever under the greater excommunication, and expelled from among our people. On ​the persuasion of his former friend, the pious Rabbi Naphthali Pereira, he submitted to the sentence of the Beth-Din (the court of Rabbis), and bore all the hard penances to which they subjected him. My father often said, if Acosta had entered the field in defence of our religion he would have cheerfully and courageously gone to his death for it, but he could not live for it. Domestic disunion, the breaking off of his engagement to a daughter of Josua di Leon, disordered his mind entirely. He left as his last will the story of his life, wherein he sought to justify himself; if you remain in Amsterdam you may hear many other things about him. For a long time he had not spoken with any one, contrary to his former ways; men took it for repentance, but he brooded over new misdeeds. He shunned the Rabbi Naphthali Pereira, for he held him to be the first cause of his sorrows and misfortunes. Early yesterday, as the Rabbi passed Acosta's house on his return from the synagogue, the apostate shot at the holy man with a pistol. He was once a good shot, and renowned for it in his native town; but an angel from heaven must have held his arm, for it is wonderful that he did not wound the holy man! He seems to have premeditated the deed, for he immediately seized a second loaded pistol, and shot himself in the mouth, so that his brains are said to have been blown even to the roof. For this, therefore, is he now infamous—"

      ​"Baruch," interrupted a long lank youth who now approached them, "Baruch, come; all is finished, and we return home with our master."

      "I am coming, Chisdai," answered Baruch; and bowing to the stranger he crossed to where those assembled prayed in the Aramaic language for the resurrection of the dead and the restoration of Jerusalem. On leaving the graveyard each one plucked grass three times from the ground, and throwing it over his head said the following verse in Hebrew: "And they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth" (Ps. lxxii. 11). Three times, in front of the graveyard, each one washed his hands in the water brought for the purpose, to cleanse himself from the touch of the demons who haunt God's acre. While so doing they said the verse (Is. xxv. 8), "He will swallow up death in victory." Only then could they proceed on their homeward way, but even on the road the verses of Ps. xc. 15 and Ps. xci. must be three times repeated. According to custom, they seated themselves while commencing the verses on a stone, or sod; the first verse being spoken they renewed their march. Thus departed Baruch and Chisdai, with their teacher Rabbi Saul Morteira between them.

      "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord!" (Judges V. 31) said Chisdai at last. "On this haughty man the judgment of the Lord has declared itself in all its might. Thou didst not see his ​penance, Baruch. I hope that mine eyes may never see such another. A sinful pity arose in me until I perceived with sorrow that men are constrained to wield the lash of God. All is fixed in my memory. I see the apostate before me as he read out his recantation in the synagogue, in a white winding-sheet, not in his former imperious tone; he carried his front less audaciously high: but what good was it that he, like the Prophet Isaiah, bowed his head like a reed to the wind? And when they led him to the corner, and bound his Samson-like arms to the pillar, and bared his broad back—I see it all before me as plainly as if it were before these eyes now. The Chacham stood near the sexton, and read out the verse (Ps. lxxviii. 38): "But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath." Three times he repeated the thirteen words, and at each word the sexton laid his lash on the bare back. Not the slightest sign of pain did he give, and when he had received the required number, he still lay there motionless, his mouth kissing the ground his feet had refused to tread. At last he was reclothed and led to the entrance of the synagogue: there in the doorway he was forced to kneel, the sexton holding his head, that each as he went out might set his foot on the scarred back, and step over him in his way; I made myself heavier as I stepped, that he ​might feel my foot also. I tell thee it is a shame that thy father should have taken thee away with him just on that day. I saw him, when all the rest were gone, rise, and go back into the synagogue; he tore the holy chest furiously open, and gazed long on the scroll of laws, till the sexton reminded him to go. "Are the gates of heaven again opened to me?" he asked—and he seemed to me to laugh scornfully. He wrapped himself in his mantle and sneaked home. The ways of God are just! He has fallen into the pit which he digged for others. Thus must all such perish: he is lost both here and there." Chisdai glanced at his teacher to read in his looks the approval of his holy zeal; he, however, shook his head thoughtfully, and repeated the prayer before him quietly.

       Baruch had twice opened his mouth to answer his schoolfellow, but fearing to express his pity for the sinner's fate too warmly, he had remained silent. Now when he perceived the displeasure of his teacher, he said, "Thou dost not appear to imitate the Rabbi Myer's wife," alluding to a narrative in the Talmud in which the woman changed the word sinner in Ps. civ. 35, "Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more," into

       sins

       and continued, "for there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not" (Ec. vii. 20).

      ​"I too abominate the teaching that led to the perplexities of Uriel—"

      "Name him no more: he is damned," interrupted Chisdai; while Baruch continued:

      "He has overthrown even his teachings, since it drove him to suicide. While he lived men judged him; now he is dead God alone can judge him."

      The Rabbi nodded to Baruch without saying a word, being still busied with the Psalms.

      "But it is written," said Chisdai defiantly (Prov. x. 7), "'The name of the wicked shall rot.'"

      The three walked on for some minutes in silence, each engrossed by his own thoughts. At last the Rabbi broke the stillness, and explained that the revealed law admitted of no denial, for God had written it with His own hand, and delivered it to us all that we might live according to it.

      "Whoever desires to live according to the suggestions of his reason, denies the necessity of revelation, denies its truth, and thereby mocks the laws that must rule him."

      "There are men," concluded the Rabbi, "who say: 'Let each think and believe as he can answer it to himself.' They are themselves, without knowing it, fallen away. We dare not leave any one born in our faith to perdition, for it would be our perdition also. If we can bring him with discourse to repentance and penance, we sing 'Hallelujah!' ​but if he remain obdurate and stubborn, we rend our garments; he is dead; he must die, or kill the Satan in his heart. We constrain him with all the power that God has given us."

      "They constrain him until he says 'I will,'" interrupted Chisdai from the Talmud; and the Rabbi continued:

      "If we cannot exorcise the lying spirit in him, we exterminate him, and his devil also. When words no longer reach, the Lord has given us the stone wherewith to stone. Let not yourselves be led by those who are now soft-hearted over the fate of the apostate, and say, 'They should have saved him—not driven him so far.' It is well for him that he can sin no longer."

      A singular train of thought must have risen in Baruch's mind, for he asked after a pause:

      "Where in Holy Scripture is suicide forbidden?"

      "What a question!" replied