Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/237

Rh shall we fly in our great distress and misery? Ah! were it but morning, and this dreadful night were passed!"

"Leave off your lamentations, ye foolish and untoward ones!" cried Philip Moses. "The Lord has struck ye with imbecility, and with blindness, and with corruption of heart. He has scattered ye abroad among all the tribes of the earth, because of your perversity; he has given thee a timorous hearty oh Israel! so that the sole of thy foot cannot find rest, and thou feelest that thy life is in jeopardy, and goest about groaning night and day; and in the morning thou sayest, Would that it were evening! and in the evening, Would that it were morning! because of the terror of thy heart, and the visions that are before thine eyes. But hearken what the Lord declares unto you by the mouth of His servants from the tabernacle in your foreign synagogue. If your affliction and your humiliation be greater than your transgressions, shake the dust from your feet, and go forth from the place where ye are treated with ignominy and oppression! Leave the iniquitous Mammon in the hands of the evil-doers, and take only with you that to which there cleaves no curse in the sight of Jehovah! Come! I will lead ye from city to city, and from land to land, until we find some spot on earth where Jehovah may veil our disgrace, and grant us freedom among the children of mankind, or else, like our fathers of old, among the wild beasts of the wilderness!"

"What are you dreaming of, old man?" exclaimed his rich kinsmen, in dissatisfied chorus. "Should we leave our hard-won gains, and go forth like beggars into the world, with old sacks on our shoulders? Where shall we find a more commercial town than this? And in what part of the world would we not be exposed to annoyances and persecutions? No path leads back to the promised land, and were we to be guided by your dreams, we should neither be able to feed our wives and our little ones, nor to gather golden pieces and silver ducats."

"If ye believed in Jehovah," replied Philip Moses, "ye would also believe that there is a way to the promised land; but that thought is too grand for your contracted souls. The flesh-pots of Egypt are dearer to you than the manna from heaven in the wilderness; and if the Lord God were to call up Moses among you, ye would stone him as your fathers stoned the prophets."

"What avails all this long discourse, poor, foolish old man?" said his son, the rich jeweller, interrupting him. "Sit down there in your comfortable arm-chair, and amuse yourself with the children, Moses, while the rest of us consult together what is best to be done. He is going into his dotage," added he, turning to the other Jews, "and sometimes he is not quite in his right senses. He has quarrelled with all his family, and I keep him here, out of charity, in my house, as you see; but for all that I have to put up with many hard words, and much abuse from him."

Then there commenced a mumbling in the room, and a buzzing sound as in a beehive, every one giving his opinion as to the best way of quieting the people of Hamburg, and making up matters with them. Some proposed that a deputation should be sent to the Senate to demand the protection of the military for their houses.

"It would be of no use," said others. "These mean, abominable members of the Hanseatic League are our worst enemies; these stupid,