The Study Circle
GREAT MEN OF JEWISH HISTORY.I. ABRAHAM.
There was a little boy who lived with his father Terah in the land of Chaldea. This was a country between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Asia. I wonder how many of you could find it on the map. All the people of this country worshipped idols, which were the work of their own hands. Terah lived in the city of Ur, and was a maker of idols as well as a believer in them. His little son, however, would not worship them. "How," he said, "can you pray to a God that you make yourself? Why, you could have made an earthen vessel of the same material."
One day, while his father was away, this boy broke all the idols except the largest of them, in the hand of which he put a hammer and around which he put all the broken gods. When his father returned he was very angry and asked his son how this dreadful thing had happened. His son replied that the idols had quarreled, and so the largest of all had broken the other ones with his hammer.
"Do you expect me to believe that," asked the father, "how can helpless pieces of wood and stone quarrel and break each other?"
This was just the answer that the son was waiting for, and he replied: "Why, then, do you pray to pieces of wood and stone." This boy's name was Abram, who was the father of all the Hebrew race, and whose name became Abraham. He was never satisfied with the worships of idols. "God must be greater than things which my father can make," he would say. "We cannot make Him; it is He who must make us." So he tried to imagine who God was, and where He was. "It must be the star," he said, but when he saw the moon, larger and brighter, he said, "God
must surely be the moon.” But at dawn the moon disappeared and the great light of the sun flooded the heaven and earth. Then he said, “Surely the sun mut be God, for that is the largest and brightest of them all.” But when it grew dark the sun disappeared, just as the moon and the stars had disappeared before. “There must be some being greater than the sun, the moon and the stars,” said he, “who made them and who guides them, and who made us and everything. Him will I worship, for surely He must be the one God of the whole earth.” .
After he grew up he married a girl named Sarah and settled in Chaldea. But the Lord did not want Abraham to stay in Chaldea with all the other idolators, so one day God appeared to him and said: "Get out of thy country, and away from thy kindred, and go into the land which I shall show thee."
Now it was real hard for Abraham to obey this command of God. Imagine your father having bought a real nice home, fixed it up so that it would be comfortable for the family, and then some one coming and advising him to move. Would he want to do it?
But Abraham did not stop to think over it for a moment, and although it was hard for him to part, with all his friends and neighbors, yet he took all his belongings and wandered. You ask where? Well this he did not know himself. He simply trusted that God would lead him aright. And he was not mistaken. After a long journey he came to Palestine. At that time Palestine was inhabited by the Canaanites, on account of whom it was called Canaan.
Abraham lived in Palestine for a long time, but was not entirely happy. Now let me tell you why. Imagine your mother