Then, again, when it came to the offering of the sacrifice, I must needs wait for the space of an hour whilst others were offering up their sacrifices; and the Levites and priests seemed all in haste, and did their work rather as an handicraft than as worship; and many others were sacrificing at the same time, and the cries and struggles of the victims, and the smoke and reek of the fat, and the blood flowing on all sides, caused the place to seem rather like a butcher’s shambles than like the House of the Lord. Now all this I had known and seen aforetime, yet had I never taken it to heart. But now there came to my mind certain words of Philo touching the sect called the Essenes, how they worship the Lord with an exceeding carefulness of purity: wherefore they think it not meet to sacrifice the blood of beasts unto the Lord, but they offer up their own hearts, purified so as to be a fit offering for Him. Also at this time (perchance because I was but freshly come from the lecture‐rooms of the philosophers of Alexandria, or belike because the Lord would have it so to be, willing by easy degrees to open mine eyes, and to reveal unto me His Messiah) so it was that I could think of naught but the words of Isaiah the Prophet wherein the Lord saith, “I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he‐goats.” These words, I say, so possessed my soul that, even when the victim was being slain, I could not refrain from repeating them to myself again and again; albeit against my will, being fearful to pollute the sacrifice of the Lord. But though I made shift to dissemble my trouble until the sacrifice was ended, for fear of offending the priests, yet when I had returned to my lodging in the city, I could not forbear weeping; for behold, all worship seemed as vanity, and the children of men were in mine eyes as beasts of the field, void of understanding and given over to all folly; and God was He that had made them thus. Therefore I cried aloud in the fervency of my passion and said, “It is written, ‘On three things the world is stayed: on the Law, and on the Worship, and on the Bestowal of Kindnesses;’ and lo, I know not the interpretation of the Law; and worship is naught but vanity; and as for kindness, my heart is dry and empty of love, so that there is no kindness in me.”