32 CHAPTER IV. 66 A FATHER OF MANY NATIONS. "I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth."-GEN. xiii. 16. WELL, we'll hope that no one will drop in to interrupt our conference to-night," said Martin. Mrs. Conway smiled, but began at once by saying, "It would be too long a business, and for our object not necessary, to go right through the whole Scripture history, which, of course, you all, at least in some measure, remember." Why, yes," Stewart replied, with a shrug of his shoulders; "it would take up all our holidays, and more. We must privately refresh our memories." "I hope you will," said his mother, smiling; "for I want to direct your attention to certain points and features in it, and to shew you how many of the chief prophecies have been fulfilled. You understand that, and of course you all know the point from which we start." "Yes, we must go to the root of the old tree," said Harry, "and find the first mention of the father of the race. Here it is in Genesis xi. 26." "And thus we begin a story which I want you to be aware is one which the Jews have always received without a doubt of its veracity," Mrs. Conway said, "and that is a great point, you know. I must add to this another remark, however, and it is one which perhaps never occurred to you. This early history, when first written down by Moses, was just a narrative of facts, with most, if not all, of which his countrymen must have been in a great measure acquainted, either by personal knowledge or by traditions handed down through only a few generations. And therefore they were really in a position to test its truth." "How could that be?" said Martin, in surprise. "Indeed it could," she answered. "The case is only very like your grandmother telling you what her grandmother had told her, when you take into account the length of life in those times. And we may be quite sure that such facts as Abraham had to tell would be related, and handed down with very particular care and interest. "Now just observe: Joseph was 110 at his death. We can't suppose him to have been ignorant of these wonders. Well, he saw his great-grandchildren we know. Don't you suppose he told them these stories? And what he was telling, all the grandfathers in the nations might be telling, too; for they all had an equal interest in their ancestors. And then Moses was eighty years old at the time of the Exodus. So about one or two links are all that need to be supplied. The whole nation, therefore, could have stopped him, had he tried to impose on them." 'Well, I never thought of that," exclaimed Martin, "never before: but it certainly is so. And of course we all know that those Easterns do talk about their ancestors in a wonderful way." 66 "And about Abraham as much as ever," said Mrs. Conway. "The wild Arabs talk of him still indeed, all the countries in which he sojourned are full of stories about him, which shews what a noted and famous man he became. No doubt they clothe all their tales in very flowery and poetic language: but it is not thus that Moses tells his story. "I suppose there never was a memoir more simply written than that of Abraham; indeed, for my part I cannot cease wondering at the matter-of-fact way in which his story begins. There is not a word to indicate that we are entering on the biography of a very remarkable person. "It does not even open by a mention of the call; but the genealogy from Shem being given, it is first stated that Terah took his son, his son's wife, and grandson, and started. Then quietly in the next chapter comes the explanation that Abraham had received a call from God; but when or where is still not positively stated. We read in Joshua xxiv. 2, 3, that the fathers of the Jewish nation dwelt on the other side of the flood, and that they served other gods; but after all it is Stephen who tells us, in Acts vii. 2, that it was in Mesopotamia, and therefore we may reasonably suppose that it was in Ur of the Chaldees, whence they set out, that this call came. 66 Ah, I see! you are looking in your maps; you want to find this Ur of the Chaldees; but I am afraid we cannot certainly fix the spot. According to the writers of the Septuagint, it was a country rather than a city. However, there is a city called Orfa, around which stories of Abraham still pass from mouth to mouth among the Arabs. 66 Many other traditions are also connected with the spot, once a metropolis and University for Christianity in the far East; and Ephrem, a famous Syrian deacon, is buried there. Afterwards it fell under the rule of one of the chiefs of the first crusade. "However, I want you to imagine how differently any mere man would have told this story;-how he would have described the place, the scene, the circumstances. And we are not debarred from using our imaginations. We may conjure up to ourselves all these, and fancy Abraham's feeling on first hearing that wondrous voice: then think |