was to leave
his father's family, and all his kinsfolk, and live _a separated life_,
both from them and from all others. It is almost impossible for the West
to realize how close and strong family ties are in the Orient. Separation
meant an unusual, sad break in holiest ties. God was trying a new step in
His fight against sin. He had separated the leader of sin from all
others.[112] He had removed all the race except a seed of good.[113] Both
of these plans had failed, through man's failure. Now a new,
farther-reaching plan is begun. A man is separated from all others, to
become the seed of a new nation, a _faith_ nation, which should be a
different people from others, embodying in themselves God's ideals for
all.

Abraham is asked to become a separated man in a peculiar sense, separate
outwardly, separate in his worship of the true God, and separate in living
a _faith_ life. It was to be a life dependent wholly on God regardless of
outer circumstance or difficulty. There was a training time of twenty-five
years before Abraham was ready for the next step,--the bringing of the
next in line of this new faith stock. Separation, then still further
separation, an open stand for God in the land of strangers, then a series
of close personal tests, each entering into the marrow of his life,--this
was the training to get the man ready to be a _faith_ father to his son,
the next in line of a faith people. And the hardest test of all came
after the child of faith had grown to manhood. Then he became a child of
faith in his own experience, as well as in his father's. Following meant
separation. It meant believing God against the unlikeliest circumstances,
against nature itself, hoping in the midst of hopelessness. Everything
spelled out "hopelessness." God alone spelled out "hope." He took God
against everything else. It meant going to school to God, until he could
be used as God planned. And Abraham consented. He followed. He helped God
in His need. He befriended God; he became His friend in His need.

But _every_ generation needs men. Each new step in the plan needs a new
man. In a sore crisis of that plan, long after, another man's name,
_Moses_, is known to us, _only_ because he singled himself out as being
willing to let God use him. In his unconscious training, the training of
circumstances into which it was natural to fit, he was peculiarly prepared
for the future task. Bred in Egypt as the son of the ruler's household, he