r the painting by Gebhart Fuegel_.

ABRAHAM.

RELIGIOUS FAITH.

From a religious point of view, Abraham appears to us, after the lapse
of nearly four thousand years, as the most august character in history.
He may not have had the genius and learning of Moses, nor his executive
ability; but as a religious thinker, inspired to restore faith in the
world and the worship of the One God, it would be difficult to find a
man more favored or more successful. He is the spiritual father equally
of Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, in their warfare with idolatry. In
this sense, he is the spiritual progenitor of all those nations, tribes,
and peoples who now acknowledge, or who may hereafter acknowledge, a
personal God, supreme and eternal in the universe which He created.
Abraham is the religious father of all those who associate with this
personal and supreme Deity a providential oversight of this world,--a
being whom all are required to worship, and alone to worship, as the
only true God whose right it is to reign, and who does reign, and will
reign forever and ever over everything that exists, animate or
inanimate, visible or invisible, known or unknown, in the mighty
universe of whose glory and grandeur we have such overwhelming yet
indefinite conceptions.

When Abraham appeared, whether four thousand or five thousand years ago,
for chronologists differ in their calculations, it would seem that the
nations then existing had forgotten or ignored this great cardinal and
fundamental truth, and were more or less given to idolatry, worshipping
the heavenly bodies, or the forces of Nature, or animals, or heroes, or
graven images, or their own ancestors. There were but few and feeble
remains of the primitive revelation,--that is, the faith cherished by
the patriarchs before the flood, and which it would be natural to
suppose Noah himself had taught to his children.

There was even then, however, a remarkable material civilization,
especially in Egypt, Palestine, and Babylon; for some of the pyramids
had been built, the use of the metals, of weights and measures, and of
textile fabrics was known. There were also cities and fortresses,
cornfields and vineyards, agricultural implements and weapons of war,
commerce and arts, musical instruments, golden vessels, ornaments for
the person, purple dyes, spices, hand-made pottery, stone-engravings,
sundials, and glass-work, and even the use of letters, or something
similar