"The other day I made the acquaintance of a Russian Jew, Sigmund Ragolsky. He has a remarkable history. He married an English Jewess, was a rabbi in Glasgow for a long time, and is now a Baptist preacher, converted after a fourteen years' struggle against a growing belief in the truth of Christianity. The story of his life sounds like a romance. He was so strictly orthodox that he would not strike a match on the Sabbath. He would have starved before he would have touched food that had not been prepared according to ritual. He is here for the purpose of establishing a Hebrew mission. You should see the people who come to hear him. They are nearly all from that poor class in the tenement district. One can hardly believe they belong to the same race with Rabbi Barthold and his cultured friends. Ragolsky, though, is a scholar, and I should like to hear the two men debate. He says the Reform Jews are no Jews at all—that they are the hardest people in the world to convert, because they look for no Messiah, accept only the Scripture that suits them, and are so well satisfied with themselves that they feel no need of any mediator between them and eternal holiness. They feel fully equal to the task of making their own atonement. Rabbi Barthold says that the orthodox are narrow fanatics, and that the majority of them live two lives—one towards God, of slavish religious observances; the other towards man, of sharp practices and double-dealing. I want you to hear Ragolsky preach some night. I'll tell you his story some other time."
"Tell me this much now," said Bethany, as he picked up his overcoat again; "did he have to give up his family as Mr. Lessing did?"
"No, indeed. Happily his wife and children were converted also. He had two rich brothers-in-law in Cape Colony, Africa, who cut them off without a shilling, but he is not grieving over that, I can assure you. O, he is so full of his purpose, and is such a happy Christian! If we were all as constantly about the Master's business as he is, the millennium would soon be here."
Afterward, when the children had been taken home, and the feast and the tree, and the people who gave them, were only blissful memories in their happy little hearts, Bethany stood by the window in her room, holding aside the curtain.
Everything outside was covered with snow. She was thinking of Ragolsky and Lessing, and wondering which of the two fates would be David Herschel's, if he should ever become a Christian.
Would Esther's love for her people be stronger than her love for him?
She knew how tenaciously the women of Israel cling to their faith, yet she felt that it was no ordinary bond that held these two together.
Looking up beyond the starlighted heavens, Bethany whispered a very heartfelt prayer for David and the beautiful, dark-eyed girl who was to be his bride; and like an answering omen of good, over the white roofs of the city came the joyful clangor of the Christmas chimes.