God, we read, appeared to Abraham,
and said to him, 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy father's
house, unto a land that I shall show thee, and I will make of thee a
great nation.' And again the Lord said to him, 'I am the Almighty
God, walk before me and be thou perfect, and thou shalt be a father
of many nations.'
'And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for
righteousness. And he was called the friend of God.'
But from what did Abraham turn to worship the living God? From
idols? We are not certain. There is little or no mention of idols
in Abraham's time. He worshipped, more probably, the host of
heaven, the sun and moon and stars. So say the old traditions of
the Arabs, who are descended from Abraham through Ishmael, and so it
is most likely to have been. That was the temptation in the East.
You read again and again how his children, the Jews, turned back
from God to worship the host of heaven; and that false worship seems
to have crept in at some very early time. The sun, you must
remember, and the moon are far more brilliant and powerful in the
East than here; their power of doing harm or good to human beings
and to the crops of the land is far greater; while the stars shine
in the East with a brightness of which we here have no notion.
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