ols, in the Temple, of fast-days and feast-days, in public
and in private, the national teachers expounded and kept expounding
until all the children of Abraham, wherever their lots were cast,
bore the Messiah in expectation, and by it literally, and with
iron severity, ruled and moulded their lives.

Doubtless, it will be understood from this that there was much
argument among the Jews themselves about the Messiah, and so
there was; but the disputation was all limited to one point,
and one only--when would he come?

Disquisition is for the preacher; whereas the writer is but telling
a tale, and that he may not lose his character, the explanation he
is making requires notice merely of a point connected with the
Messiah about which the unanimity among the chosen people was
matter of marvellous astonishment: he was to be, when come,
the KING OF THE JEWS--their political King, their Caesar.
By their instrumentality he was to make armed conquest of
the earth, and then, for their profit and in the name of God,
hold it down forever. On this faith, dear reader, the Pharisees
or Separatists--the latter being rather a political term--in the
cloisters and around the altars of the Temple, built an edifice of
hope far overtopping the dream of the Macedonian. His but covered
the earth; theirs covered the earth and filled the skies; that is
to say, in their bold, boundless fantasy of blasphemous egotism,
God the Almighty was in effect to suffer them for their uses to nail
him by the ear to a door in sign of eternal servitude.

Returning directly to Ben-Hur, it is to be observed now that there
were two circumstances in his life the result of which had been
to keep him in a state comparatively free from the influence and
hard effects of the audacious faith of his Separatist countrymen.

In the first place, his father followed the faith of the Sadducees,
who may, in a general way, be termed the Liberals of their time.
They had some loose opinions in denial of the soul. They were
strict constructionists and rigorous observers of the Law as
found in the books of Moses; but they held the vast mass of
Rabbinical addenda to those books in derisive contempt. They were
unquestionably a sect, yet their religion was more a philosophy
than a creed; they did not deny themselves the enjoyments of
life, and saw many admirable methods and productions among the
Gentile divisions of the race. In politics they were the active
opposition of the Sep