and excellence held in the balance of things. We know that work is
needful, that winter is as necessary as summer, that night is as useful as
day, that death is a manifestation of life, and just as good. We believe
in the Now and Here. We believe in a power that is in ourselves that makes
for righteousness.

These things have not been taught us by a superior class who have governed
us for a consideration, and to whom we have paid taxes and tithes--we have
simply thought things out for ourselves, and in spite of them. We have
listened to Coleridge, and others, who said: "You should use your reason
and separate the good from the bad, the false from the true, the useless
from the useful. Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your
conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the
opinions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping
you in ignorance. You grow through the exercise of your faculties, and if
you do not reason now you never will advance. We are all sons of God, and
it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Claim your heritage!"

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

The stimulus subsided. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some
took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated
between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury
bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not
unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of
exhausted volcanoes; not a flame flickers on a single pallid
crest; but the situation is still dangerous: there are occasional
earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings of the sea.
--_Speech at Manchester_

[Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI]

Since Disraeli was born a Jew, he was received into the Jewish Church with
Jewish rites. But Judaism, standing in the way of his ambition, and his
parents' ambition for him, the religion of his fathers was renounced and
he became, in name, a Christian. Yet to the last his heart was with his
people, and the glory of his race was his secret pride.

The fine irony of affiliating with a people who worship a Jew as their
Savior, but who have legislated against, and despised the Jew--this
attracted Disraeli. With them he bowed the knee in an adoration they did
not feel, and while his lips said the litany, his heart repeated Ben
Ezra's prayer. In temperament he belonged with the double-d