avarice) Almamen
regarded with lofty though concealed repugnance; or whether it was, that
his philosophy did not interpret the Jewish formula of belief in the
same spirit as the herd,--the religion inculcated in the breast of Leila
was different from that which Inez had ever before encountered amongst
her proselytes. It was less mundane and material--a kind of passionate
rather than metaphysical theism, which invested the great ONE, indeed,
with many human sympathies and attributes, but still left Him the
August and awful God of the Genesis, the Father of a Universe though
the individual Protector of a fallen sect. Her attention had been
less directed to whatever appears, to a superficial gaze, stern and
inexorable in the character of the Hebrew God, and which the religion
of Christ so beautifully softened and so majestically refined, than to
those passages in which His love watched over a chosen people, and His
forbearance bore with their transgressions. Her reason had been worked
upon to its belief by that mysterious and solemn agency, by which--when
the whole world beside was bowed to the worship of innumerable deities,
and the adoration of graven images,--in a small and secluded portion of
earth, amongst a people far less civilised and philosophical than many
by which they were surrounded, had been alone preserved a pure and
sublime theism, disdaining a likeness in the things of heaven or
earth. Leila knew little of the more narrow and exclusive tenets of her
brethren; a Jewess in name, she was rather a deist in belief; a deist
of such a creed as Athenian schools might have taught to the imaginative
pupils of Plato, save only that too dark a shadow had been cast over
the hopes of another world. Without the absolute denial of the Sadducee,
Almamen had, probably, much of the quiet scepticism which belonged to
many sects of the early Jews, and which still clings round the wisdom of
the wisest who reject the doctrine of Revelation; and while he had not
sought to eradicate from the breast of his daughter any of the vague
desire which points to a Hereafter, he had never, at least, directed her
thoughts or aspirations to that solemn future. Nor in the sacred book
which was given to her survey, and which so rigidly upheld the unity of
the Supreme Power, was there that positive and unequivocal assurance
of life beyond "the grave where all things are forgotten," that might
supply the deficiencies of her mortal instructor. Perha