ce the germ of the plant, which should grow into a great 'ershadowing all nations, in one narrow plot, that there it be carefully tended and watered and cultivated, sheltered irm, exposed to ripening influences, and in the end bring auch fruit. Jewish bigotry indeed narrowed the blessing i muram's natural descendants, but to the patriarch himself the promise was not so limited; to him in progressive revelation it was unfolded that all the world should share in the favour and reap the benefits of God's merciful condescension. Many legends touching Abram's early life are found in the writings of Jew and Moslem, and possibly have some historical basis on which they were erected. The "Book of Jubilees" I tells how that from his early years he was filled with loathing for the vices of those among whom he lived. When only fourteen, he separated himself from his father, refusing to worship his idols, and praying to the great Creator to save him from being led astray by the evil practices of his countrymen. At his command, and reverencing his sanctity, the ravens refrained from devouring the seed that was sown in the fields; more than this, he improved upon the practice of scattering seed broadcast over the ground, and invented a kind of drill, which was attached to the plough, and covered up the seeds as they were deposited in the soil. As he grew older, he remonstrated with his father upon the worship of idols, and showed the folly and wickedness of this practice. Terah assented to his words, but dared not openly avow his sentiments for fear of his relations, who would slay without scruple all who presumed to oppose the prevailing religion. Other legends tell how a wonderful star heralded his birth; and how Nimrod, the king of Babylon, fearing that one so favoured might hereafter rise to a dangerous eminence, required his father to surrender him to death. Terah substituted a slave's child for his own son, and thus Abram escaped. He was hidden for some years in a cave; on emerging from this, and for the first time beholding the heavens, he began to ask who had made all this wonderful scene. When the sun arose, he fancied that bright orb must be the Creator, and prayed to it all day long; but when it set 2 • The original is lost. An Ethiopic version was published by Dillmann in 1859, and a translation by Ewald in "Jahrbücher" ii. and iii. See also Rönsch, "Das Buch der Jubilaen." Ap. Beer, "Leben Abrah." he thought it could not have made all the world and yet itself be subject to extinction. The moon rose, and the stars shone out. "Surely," he cried, "the moon is the Lord of the Universe, and the stars are his ministers." But the moon sank, the stars faded, and the sun again appeared on the horizon. Then he said: "These celestial bodies could not have created the world; they all obey an invisible Ruler, to whom they owe their existence; and Him only henceforward will I supplicate, to Him alone will I bow." Abram's growth from infancy to boyhood was so rapid that his mother, who had been some short time separated, did not recognize him when she met him again, and could scarcely believe in his identity when he assured her that he was her son. "How is it possible," she asked, that thou hast so grown in this little while?" "Ah, mother," answered Abram, "learn from this that there is an Almighty, everlasting God, who seeth all things and is Himself unseen, who is in heaven, and whose majesty filleth all the earth." "What!" cries the mother; "Is there any God save Nimrod?" "Certainly," he says, "the God of heaven and earth, who is also the God of Nimrod. Go thou to Nimrod and tell him this." His mother carried this conversation to Terah, and Terah acquainted the king with this and other wonderful matters concerning his son. Nimrod was uneasy at this report, and sent a body of his warriors to arrest the youth. Abram prayed to the God of heaven, and Gabriel shrouded him suddenly in a cloud, and so terrified the warriors that they fled to Babylon, a journey of forty days, leaving their errand undone. They were followed by Abram riding on the angel's shoulders. Arrived at the city gates, the youth exclaimed with a loud voice: "The Eternal is the only true God; there is none like Him. He is the God of heaven, God of all gods, God of Nimrod himself. Bear record, all ye inhabitants of Babylon; I, Abram, worship Him, and Him alone." Informed of these circumstances Nimrod is sorely perplexed what to do; but at length he ordains a festival of seven days in which all his people are to come and worship him. Abram comes boldly before the king, lays hold of his throne and tosses it about, denouncing, in stern language, Nimrod's idolatry and infidelity. As he speaks, a wonderful thing happens: the idol temples in the city suddenly fall to the ground with a crash; Nimrod is seized with death-like trance; all his courtiers are panic-stricken. On recovering his senses, the king asks: "Was it thy voice which I heard, or the voice of thy God?" Abram answers: “It was the voice only of one of the meanest of God's creatures.” "In sooth," says Nimrod, thy God is great and mighty, and indeed King of kings." And he dismisses Terah and his son in safety. All these legends agree in making Abram to have early arrived at a purer notion concerning God than his contemporaries. Some say that he obtained this knowledge from Shem, who survived to his day; but most stories tell how the more he thought on these things, the more convinced was he of the truth of monotheism, and the more resolved to spread this belief among mankind. According to another Jewish legend Terah was an idolater, and going one day on a journey he appointed Abram to sell his idols in his stead. As often as a purchaser came, Abram asked his age, and when he replied, "I am fifty or sixty years old," he said, "Woe to the man of sixty who would worship the work of a day." And the would-be purchasers went away ashamed.1 Other Mahommedan myths tell how, staying at home on one occasion, when his fellow townsmen had gone on a pilgrimage to some shrine, he destroyed seventy-two idols which were set up in a temple, obtaining from this adventure his honourable title of Khulil Allah, "Friend of God." Accused before Nimrod of this offence, he was condemned to be burnt alive. Previously the following conversation is reported to have taken place: "Let us worship the fire," said the king. "Rather," replied Abram, "the water that quenches the fire." "Well, the water.” "Rather the cloud that carries the water." "Well, the cloud." "Rather the wind that scatters the cloud." "Well, the wind." "Rather man, for he endures the wind." "Thou art a babbler,” cried Nimrod. "I worship the fire, and will cast thee into it. May the God whom thou adorest deliver thee thence." He was accordingly thrown into the burning pile. All the inhabitants of heaven and the creatures of earth were eager to save him; but God sent Gabriel to cool the flame, which miraculously lost all its heat; and though Abram remained seven days in the furnace he was unharmed, and sat amid the flames as in a blooming garden. Is there not a great truth lurking beneath these fantastic * Weil, “The Bible, The Koran, and the Talmud,” p. 49 f. legends? All that will live godly must suffer persecution. It is the law of God's kingdom. The disciple is not above his master. "If they have persecuted Me," said Christ to His followers, "they will also persecute you." The sacred narrative, indeed, gives no hint of any such trials; but we know from the necessities of the case that it must have been so; nor would the character of the patriarch have shown such patience, courage, steadfastness, without a training of danger and difficulty. What is meant by Isaiah's expression (chap. xxix. 22): "The Lord who redeemed Abraham?" Does it not point to a rescue from perils, such perils as met him at the hands of idolaters whom his pure life, if not his actual teaching, rebuked? We read of no such hazards undergone after his migration. He encounters no religious opposition in Haran, or Canaan, or Egypt. In those stages of his career he is a mature believer, who unhesitatingly enunciates his sentiments, and whose utterances are received with respect and submission. Assuredly, he had had to do battle for the faith before he arrived at this calm maintenance of his religious convictions, and this power of impressing others. In his early home he must have had many such conflicts as legendary history relates-conflicts with the secular power, as represented by Nimrod; conflicts with popular superstition, as represented by the priests; and, what was harder to bear, conflicts with his own family, who did not share his faith, and who derided his enthusiasm—when his foes were those of his own household. Such trials he endured with the constancy of a Christian saint. "Not wondering, though in grief, to find Ewald, History of Israel," i. p. 318, Eng. Transl. CHAPTER II. FIRST CALL. Causes of the migration-The call; its nature; Abram's obedience→ Journey from Ur to Haran-Erech-Calneh-Babylon-Sepharvaim— Ivah-Hena-The river Habor-Haran; its neighbourhood-Arrival of Nahor-Death of Terah. THE history of Abram's call is not fully given in Genesis. There is much more in the matter which we should like to know, much that, if told, would enable us better to estimate his religious character in this stage of his life, and to understand what advance he had made in the knowledge of God. But one part of Scripture supplements another; details that are wanting here are supplied there; hints are cursorily given which complete the sketch otherwise imperfect. Of the hand that led him, and the voice that first called him, St. Stephen speaks; of the blind obedience that followed that Divine direction the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us (chap. xi.), when it teaches that he "went out, not knowing whither he went." Had we the record of Genesis alone, we should not know what was the impulse which led to this migration. For we read merely: "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." This might have been merely the movement of a nomadic tribe, restless in confinement, and not altogether weaned from ancestral habits, seeking new pastures and a new sphere of activity. Or it might have been the unwilling departure of a conquered horde, whom some superior power had |