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.