The Maccabaean

methods of agriculture were to be introduced, and the mental and moral as well as the physical welfare of the settlers was to be looked out for. Schools for instruction in practical agriculture were to be established, and the education of “infants, juveniles and adults” was to be carried on. Cresson declared that it was not only the privilege but the duty of all Israel to help him make his colony a success, as it would aid the poverty-stricken Jews of the Holy Land and would also tend to prevent apostasy. He himself was willing to become the leader of the colony for “no other motive than to promote good and not for self-aggrandizement.” Cresson also planned to found a soup- house to prevent attempts to force Jews into pretended conversion because of their dire need. The colony and the kitchen were to form a barrier to apostasy and a center for Israel’s restoration in the Holy Land. Cresson also ap-

pointed a committee with representatives in England, Germany and the United States, who were to further his plan and help gather funds. It is claimed that Cresson was “in a large degree instrumental in interesting Judah Touro and Sampson Simson and their associates in Palestine colonization projects, and in stimulating Sir Moses Montefiore, Adolphe Crémieux and Albert Cohn in their beneficent practical plans for Jewish amelioration.” . However, Cresson’s plans fell through, perhaps because of the other influential movements set on foot at this time by men so much more important, or perhaps because people felt a vague distrust of Cresson’s ability to manage the colony practically. To the end of his days, though, he never lost hope in the feasibility of his plan, and when he died in 1860, it was his firm conviction that the wilderness of Palestine was destined once more to blossom as the rose.

THE soul of a nation once took the form of a star. Now, you must know that a soul may take any form it wishes, and when this particular soul, of which I speak, had reached the point at which a soul takes shape, it was much put about to decide what that shape should be, for it desired to be beautiful, radiant, serene and aspiring. At it sat brooding one evening a gentle breeze wafted it upward and behold! it was the evening star. It hung there while all the other stars came out and until the last ray of the morning star was dimmed by the dawning day. Then it communed with itself thus: “The stars are deathless and I, too, have wished to live forever. They are spreaders of light and I, too, have wished to be radiant. They are of Heaven and I have wished to move Heavenward.” So this soul of a nation willing itself beautiful, radiant and aspiring became a star. And its body, the nation, frolicked, lived, struggled in its light.

Many years had passed when a strange thing happened. While the star-soul was dwelling for a brief space with its friends, the stars of Heaven, as was often its custom, its body, the nation, forgetful of its absent soul, went wandering. The star-soul returned to find its body gone and there being no clue as to its whereabouts, the poor soul, disembodied and homeless, was left to lament its thoughtless body.

Meanwhile, the body, on its journey through all the nooks and corners of the world, led a peculiar life, indeed. For can a body do well without a soul? It was not beautiful to look upon, because the beauty of the soul did not shine through its eyes. It shed no light, because the soul’s radiance was gone. It was not uplifted, because it had not that within it which points upward. The poor body lost all its serenity, and, cut loose from its soaring star-soul, fell depth upon depth.

The star-soul could not rest for longing. Each new century it thought of beginning a search for its errant body. The years of waiting had been fallow years. It must find its body, the. nation, to grow new rays. At length it gathered strength to set out upon its search. With trembling eagerness it approached each nation in its path, hoping it might be its long-lost body, only to be disappointed.

What had happened to the body that it was nowhere? The poor body, bereft of a soul, fell into a curious way. It was in no one place in the world because it was in every place. Its feet took to traveling and penetrated every spot on the globe. Its hands took to acquiring and were filled with more than they could hold. Its eyes took to reading and from much peering its head grew downward on bent shoulders. Its ears went about listening, seeking every kind of information. And as for the poor heart, it went about weeping for the body that had no guiding star.

At last the heart could weep no more and the mind grew tired of its purposeless study and, the day being as golden as the sun that shines on Mt. Zion and the sky as blue as the Sea of Galilee, they went together for a walk. They walked on and on and the dusk came and then the evening. When the darkness of night was over all things, they saw something silvery close by, and lo! after many weary years the heart and mind of the nation were facing its soul again. Together they flew to gather up the wandering feet and acquisitive hands, the bent shoulders and hearkening ears and together they journeyed, rejoicingly, back to their old homestead. From within the little home the rehabilitated star-soul flung its light far beyond the threshold, and its body, the nation, its confusion gone, its unity recovered, renewed its life by the light of its star.