tremulous and supplicating inquiry, he burst into tears. The father seized the moment. He grasped the arms of his son, “My child, I gave you life, and you may repay the gift—my life is in your power. You think me a Catholic—I have brought you up as one for the preservation of our mutual lives, in a country where the confession of the true faith would infallibly cost both. I am one of that unhappy race every where stigmatized and spoken against, yet on whose industry and talent the ungrateful country that anathematizes us, depends for half the sources of its national prosperity. I am a Jew, “an Israelite,” one of those to whom, even by the confession of a Christian apostle, “pertain the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh—” Here he paused, not willing to go on with a quotation that would have contradicted his sentiments. He added, “The Messias will come, whether suffering or triumphant(2). I am a Jew. I called you at the hour of your birth by the name of Manasseh-ben-Solomon. I called on you by that name, which I felt had clung to the bottom of my heart from that hour, and which, echoing from its abyss, I almost hoped you would have recognized. It was a dream, but will you not, my beloved child, realize that dream? Will you not?—will you not? The God of your fathers is waiting to embrace you—and your father is at your feet, imploring you to follow the faith of your father Abraham, the prophet Moses, and all the holy prophets who are with God, and who look down on this moment of your soul’s vacillation between the abominable idolatries of those who not only adore the Son of the carpenter, but even impiously compel you to fall down before the image of the woman his mother, and adore her by the blasphemous name of Mother of God,—and the pure voice of those who call on you to worship the God of your fathers, the God of ages, the eternal God of heaven and earth, without son or mother, without child or descendant, (as impiously presumed in their blasphemous creed), without even worshipper, save those who, like me, sacrifice their hearts to him in solitude, at the risk of those hearts being PIERCED BY THEIR OWN CHILDREN.”

PIERCED BY THEIR OWN CHILDREN

“At these words, the young man, overcome by all he saw and heard, and quite unprepared for this sudden transition from Catholicism to Judaism, burst into tears. The father seized the moment, “My child, you are now to profess yourself the slave of these idolaters, who are cursed in the law of Moses, and by the commandment of God,—or to enrol yourself among the faithful, whose 

 Prev. P 3/133 next