he saw the sun rising, he said, 'This is my Lord. This is greater than the star or moon.' But when the sun went down, he said, 'O my people, I am clear of these things. I turn my face to Him who hath made the heaven and the earth.'" Thus was he educating himself for greater things. He was called to make a great sacrifice, and he obeyed. He might have argued that the summons was too indefinite; it assigned no limit to the migration. He was a childless man, and had no sons to send forth to other territories; his present substance was sufficient for his wants. The enmity of his countrymen might be overcome by some slight compromise or reticence concerning his opinions. Why should he leave ease and comfort, and go forth into unknown dangers and cares? Was it really the voice divine that claimed this sacrifice at his hands? But no such considerations influenced his actions. We do not indeed know anything of his character and feelings before this time; but there must have been a certain fitness in the recipient of this revelation; his antecedents must have prepared him for the demand; such claim on his obedience was not altogether strange and unexpected. And he was equal to the occasion. Like all noble minds, he rose higher with the emergency. When the call came it found him ready to hearken and obey. He had habituated himself to listen to the Divine voice in his heart; and he was thus well prepared for further measures of

grace.

This new revelation of God to Abram led to immediate results. It could not lie barren in his soul; it involved action, zeal, sacrifice. The old legend' tells how, like Gideon, he burned to the ground the idol temple of his native place (which may well be true), and how Haran perished in the flames as he tried to rescue the images of the gods whom he still served. This latter statement is so far confirmed by the sacred record, in that it says that Haran "died before his father in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees." Josephus (“Antiq.” i. 6. 6) adds that it was grief for this death of his son that impelled Terah to leave his native place. St. Jerome recounts a tradition of the Hebrews, which has been mentioned above, to the effect that for this outrage on the national religion Abram was cast into the fire, which he refused to adore, and was miraculously

"Book of Jubilees," chap. xii.

66

preserved. This story is founded on the rendering of Ur as fire," in Gen. xi. 28, thus-instead of "in Ur of the Chaldees," "in the fire of the Chaldees." This version is found in the Latin Vulgate-Neh. ix. 7 : "Qui elegisti Abram, et eduxisti eum de igne Chaldæorum."

Following the Divine impulse Abram left Ur and proceeded some three hundred miles northwards to Haran, accompanied by his father and his family and dependents. How Terah was induced to quit his old home we are not told. It may be that the son's faith had enlightened the father's mind, and made him loathe the superstitions that once held him captive, so that he was eager to free himself from the sight and chain of degrading associations; or it may be that Terah's act, in contradistinction to that of Abram, sprang from merely human motives, but, God so ordering it, coincided with the Divine summons, and made a way for its accomplishment. Whither this call was to lead finally seems not to have been disclosed at first. It is true that Terah is said (Gen. xi. 31) to have left Ur "to go into the land of Canaan ;" but this is probably mentioned from the writer's own knowledge and in anticipation of the more definite statement in the next chapter. At this time the destination of the movement was left uncertain. Abram was to depart unto a land which God would in due course show him (Acts vii. 3). As in God's providence we are led gradually on our course, and are bidden not too carefully to forecast the future, so Abram's part now was to leave his old home, and to trust to other revelation to teach him what to do hereafter. spiritual side of the movement. represent it as the migration of a clan with all its slaves and property. Thus Terah, the head, takes with him his son Abram with his wife Sarai, and his grandson Lot with his wife, and all his household effects, and advances slowly up the stream seeking new pastures, or a spot sufficiently clear of inhabitants where he might settle. Such a position he found at Haran, and arresting his further march, made for himself a second home, and remained here during the rest of his life.

This was the inward or The outward view would

Of the route taken by Terah and his family from Ur to Haran we have no account.1 The shorter way would lead

Mr. Allen's romance, "Abraham: his Life, Times, and Travels, as by a Contemporary," gives a lengthy account of this journey, from which I have derived some references.

them, keeping to the right bank of the Euphrates, through a district full of marshes and closely abutting on the Desert, till they left the river in the far north, somewhere near the spot where it is joined by the Balikh. The other road would take them up the eastern bank, through a populous and well-watered region, and past many celebrated cities, even in those early days of magnificent proportions, and strongly fortified. Larsa or Ellasar, a town now identified with the ruins of Senkereh, lay out of their course; but Erech or Warka, "the city" (Uruk) par excellence, with its huge temple of Anu, would stand in their path some forty miles from Ur. Standing upon the summit of the principal edifice, called the Buwariyya, in the centre of the ruins,” says Mr. Loftus, "the beholder is struck with astonishment at the enormous accumulation of mounds and ancient relics at his feet. An irregular circle, nearly six miles in circumference, is defined by the traces of an earthen rampart, in some places forty feet high. An extensive platform of undulating mounds, brown and scorched by the burning sun, and cut up by innumerable channels and ravines, extends, in a general direction north and south, almost up to the wall, and occupies the greatest part of the enclosed area. As at Niffar, a wide channel divides the platform into two unequal parts, which vary in height from twenty to fifty feet; upon it are situated the principal edifices of Warka. On the western edge of the northern portion rise, in solemn grandeur, masses of bricks which have accumulated around the lower stories of two rectangular buildings and their various offices, supposed to be temples, or perhaps royal tombs. Detached from the principal mass of platform are several irregularly-shaped low mounds between it and the walls, some of which are thickly strewn with lumps of black scoria, as though buildings on their summit had been destroyed by fire. At the extreme north of the platform, close to the wall, a conical mound rears its head from the surrounding waste of ruins—the barrow probably of some ancient Scyth. Warka, in the days of her greatness, was not, however, confined within the limits of her walls; her suburbs may be traced by ruined buildings, mounds, and pottery, fully three miles beyond the ramparts into the eastern desert. . . . The external walls of sun-dried brick assume the form of an irregular circle, five-and-a-half miles in circumference, with slightly perceptible angles towards the cardinal points."

The name of King Urukh is found impressed upon the bricks of the buttresses which supported the great central edifice, the tower, 200 feet square, called Buwariyya.

Through a country whose soil was a tenacious clay, crossed by many canals and aqueducts, fifty miles' journey would bring them to the neighbourhood of Calneh, the Cul-unu of the Inscriptions, and the modern Niffar. At one time the capital of this part of Chaldæa, the town had now sunk into comparative insignificance, its place being taken by Ur, and the worship of the god Bel being superseded by that of the Moon, who is called the eldest son of Bel.1 A modern traveller writes thus of the place : “The present aspect of Niffar is that of a lofty platform of earth and rubbish, divided into two nearly equal parts by a deep channel, apparently the bed of a river, about 120 feet wide. Nearly in the centre of the eastern portion of this platform are the remains of a brick tower of early construction, the débris of which constitutes a conical mound rising seventy feet above the plain. This is a conspicuous object in the distance, and exhibits, where the brickwork is exposed, oblong perforations similar to those seen at Birs-Nimrud, and other edifices of the Babylonian age. At the distance of a few hundred yards, on the east of the ruins, may be distinctly traced a low continuous mound, the remains, probably, of the external wall of the ancient city." Thence sixty miles more conducted them to Babylon, a city which is identified by an uninterrupted tradition with the extensive mounds and ruins on the Euphrates above Hillah, 150 miles from their old home. This city had not attained the eminence which it reached in after years, and was probably at that time inferior to Ur in extent and population. But the great temple was already in existence, and the wonderful building at Borsippa, which moderns call Birs-Nimrud, on the western side of the river, though already in ruins, showed its huge proportions and massive architecture, as they passed it at some fifteen miles' distance. Sepharvaim, afterwards named Sippara, and now Mosaib, would next be reached, about twenty miles from Babylon. Here, the legend tells, Xisuthrus buried the records of the antediluvian world, which were recovered by his posterity. The plural form of the city's name is explained by its division into two portions by the river on which it stands. G. Smith, "History of Babylonia," p. 70. Loftus, "Travels in Chaldæa," pp. 101, 164 ff.

Leaving now the rich alluvial plains of Shinar, the pilgrims would reach a wide region of upland country, dependent for water on the rains of heaven, and consequently often suffering from drought. Ivah or Ava, the modern Hit, with its copious springs of bitumen, and Hena, the modern Anat, whose ruins show it to have been a large city, some hundred miles further, would successively be passed. Next they would enter upon a high plateau, far above the Euphrates, which, no longer calm and sluggish as in Lower Chaldæa, where it falls only three inches in the mile, now rushed along with strong current, battling with the many islands which impeded its course; then they would descend to the lower plain, crossed by valleys, which were rich in pasture wherever they felt the effects of the refreshing river, but otherwise stony, barren, and treeless. Before proceeding northwards they had to cross the river Habor—the Chaboras of Ptolemy, and the modern Khabur, which joins the Euphrates where in later times stood the town Circesium. To find a ford across this stream they would have to ascend its left bank for some days' march, leaving the familiar Euphrates, and entering on a verdant and beautiful region, bounded by a range of gentle hills. The travellers might then follow the western branch of the Habor, which led in the direction of Haran, where the increasing infirmities of Terah caused them to end their wanderings.

Haran, a city whose name has remained attached to the spot up to this day, lay upon the river Balikh (the Balikhi of the Inscriptions, and the Bilichus of the Classics), an affluent of the Euphrates, in Upper Mesopotamia. The word Haran is probably the Accadian Kharran, “a road,” and would point to the town being situated on the great high-road from east to west. The Greek form Charran2 is identical. Standing where it did, and with many roads radiating from it to the great fords of the Tigris and Euphrates, it formed an important commercial station, and is naturally mentioned in Ezekiel (chap. xxvii. 23), as one of the places which supplied the marts of Tyre.3 It was dedicated to the same deity as the one honoured at Ur, the Moon-god, whose symbol was a conical stone with a star above

* Prof. Sayce, "Monthly Interpreter," iii. 462. "Fresh Light from the Monuments," pp. 46, 47.

2 Gen. xi. 31; xxvii. 43, Sept.; Acts vii. 44.

3 Kitto, "Cyclopædia," ii. 229, ed. 1864.