that
their hearts should have remained untouched by the contagion of
universal depravity. The soil to which any seed, however good, is to be
committed, would never respond to the expectations of the husbandman, if
it were not cleared from weeds and thistles. Those individuals had,
therefore, to be drawn aside from the general society of men; and from
their infancy educated and prepared, so as to receive within their
virgin souls the seeds that were afterwards to produce in them, and
through them, the spiritual regeneration of all mankind. But here
another difficulty presented itself; who would have undertaken the
charge of watching over those individuals from their infancy, and
keeping them in such an isolation, as to make them inaccessible to the
general depravity? It was, then, necessary to begin by a single
individual, whose descendants should receive from that stock the
education capable of fitting them for their future mission.

LIV. The providential measure once decreed, of selecting an individual
as guardian of the revealed truths, and making him the father of a
posterity, whose duty was to preserve them and to make them fructify, it
remained only to determine the selection of the person. And here it is
obvious that not a capricious hazard, not an indulgent predilection, but
only a strict justice and wise impartiality could determine the
important choice. Whoever would have aspired to such a glory--and
everybody could have aspired to it--by no other means could he have
attained it than his own merits. Such a man must have, of his own accord
and spontaneously, withdrawn himself from the general current of
depravity; opposed, by his own impulse, the absurd ravings of his
contemporaries; displayed a lively attachment to virtue, and a steady
abhorrence of evil; cultivated, above all, justice, charity, and
righteousness, in his every action; that man must have thrown off the
subjection of the senses, and all cupidity of earthly things, and,
almost assuming a second nature, have soared towards the eternal Source
of truth, the Creator of the universe, offering as a sacrifice to Him
his own dearest personal interests, and, if required, his life itself.

CHAPTER VIII.

LV. SUCH a man did appear on the stage of the world. It was the
patriarch Abraham. The rarest qualities of mind and heart concurred
admirably to render him fit for the high mission. By the superiority of
his intelligence, he arrived at the rej