precepts—except from sheer perverseness. They failed to realise that any one who did not accept the divine origin of such customs, and did not see any very obvious moral purpose in them, would simply not think it worth while sacrificing time or anything else on their account. And Spinoza himself was almost equally unsympathetic when he failed to realise that customs which seemed a burden to him were nevertheless felt to be a blessing and a privilege by those who sincerely regarded them as divine ordinances, as opportunities of serving God; while the apparent indecorum of the Synagogue was largely the outcome of Israel's feeling of familiarity with God. Such mutual misunderstandings neither began nor ended in the days of Spinoza. At all events trouble was brewing. After his father's death Spinoza probably became less cautious than before. He did not entirely sever his connection with the Synagogue, for the Synagogue accounts show that he was present in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, the 5th of December 1655, and made an offering. It was the Sabbath of the Feast of Lights, in memory of the Maccabean uprising against Antiochus Epiphanes, and Spinoza had a warm admiration for all enemies of tyranny—did he not actually picture him self in the guise of Aniellos, the Neapolitan rebel against the tyranny of Spain? That Spinoza should have kept up his connection with the Synagogue stands to reason. He could hardly resist the call of filial piety to recite the mourner's prayer for his father, even as, in the days of his childhood, he had done for his mother. The prayer was innocent enough. Though a "mourner's prayer," it was not a prayer for the dead, in fact it contained no reference what ever to the dead. It was a prayer for peace, and its ground-note was that of praise of God, which, coming at the moment of profoundest sorrow, was regarded as the finest expression of resignation and faith. Spinoza could scarcely have taken any serious objection to it, at that time, and on such
