the mouth of a captive at Nineveh." He hastened to his harp, and placing the footstool under his foot, turned towards the Holy Land as he sung O Jehovah, thou art my God, early will I seek thee. Would that I might see thy sanctuary, To behold thy power and glory.-Ps, lxiii. He knew by heart all the psalms which had any relation to Jerusalem, and no sooner had he finished one, than his fingers and his voice, unbidden, began another. When Israel went out of Egypt, The house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah was his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.-Ps. cxiv. His own pilgrimage to Jerusalem seemed to him like the departure of Israel from Egypt fourteen hundred years before, and he was transported at once to those remote ages with so lively a feeling, that the psalm seemed to him to spring fresh from his own soul, and to have been dictated by his own emotions. The forty-third Psalm occurred to his mind, and with the raised look, but subdued voice of humble devotion, he sung Send out thy light and thy truth and let them guide me! Let them bring me to thy holy hill and to thy tabernacles! Then will I go unto the altar of God, Unto God my exceeding joy. Yea upon the harp will I praise thee, Why art thou cast down, O my soul, Who is the health of my countenance and my God. The tones of the harp gradually died away, and Helon remained absorbed in gratitude and devotion towards Jehovah. At length he arose to perform his evening prayer. Since his return to the law of his fathers, he had been rigid in the performance of this duty, and without discriminating accurately, in the fervour of his new zeal, between the commands of God, and the usages established by tradition, he would gladly even have added to their length and frequency. There was at this time a distinction commonly made among the Aramæan Jews between the righteous man, who only aimed to fulfil the law as it was left by Moses; and the pious man, who, not content with this, endeavoured by the performance of other ordinances to attain a still higher degree of the divine favour. At an earlier period of Helon's life, it would have seemed to him a superfluous trouble, to endeavour to deserve the character of the righteous man; now, nothing could satisfy him, but to aspire to the rank of a pious man. The washing of the hands preceded prayer, because nothing impure was to appear before the purest of Beings. Helon next covered his head with his mantle, a sort of tallith. This mantle had at the four corners fringes, which were called zizis, consisting of eight double twisted threads of wool, whose azure colour had a reference to the heavens, with five tassels for the five books of the law. The use of these fringes had been commanded by God himself to the children of Israel, "That they might look upon them and remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and seek not after their own heart and their own eyes. *Num. xv. 38. 22 He next bound the phylacteries, called tephillim, on his forehead and his left arm, in such a way, that the strings of the first hung upon his breast, and the latter were wound seven times round the fore-arm, then across the fore-finger and the thumb, and finally three times round the middle finger. These phylacteries were little cases, containing strips of parchment, on which the following sentences of the law were written. Deut. v. 11, 13—21. Exod. xiii. 11-16. Deut. vi. 4-9. and Exod. xiii. 1-10. of which the Lord had commanded 66 They shall be for a token upon thine hand and for frontlets between thine eyes."* In the phylactery for the forehead there were four strips, in that for the left arm only one. He now placed himself with his face towards Jerusalem and prayed the Kri-schma, a prayer which consisted of these three passages from the books of Moses; Deut. vi. 4-9. in which it is commanded to love and honour God alone; Deut. xi. 13-21. where the promises are given *Deut. vi. 8. for the fulfilling of the law; and Numb. xv. 37-41. where it is required that the commandments be diligently kept. He concluded all with a prayer to God, as being, in every act of religious worship, the beginning and the end, the centre to which every thing tends. Having performed his devotions, he descended with a cheerful heart from the roof, and laid himself beside Elisama in the portico, At the first cock-crowing he arose; for strengthened and animated by hope he had little need of sleep. He went first to the alija, and having repeated the ceremonies of the preceding evening, and again concluded with an act of praise to God, he roused the slaves and bade them lead the laden camels to the gate. His mother came, with eyes red with weeping, from the apartment of the women. The sun was rising at that moment, and Elisama approaching her, tried to console her with the words of the eighty-fourth Psalm, The Lord God is a sun and shield, |