The faith of Abraham, as we gather it from Genesis, was in God as a Supreme Being.  Though almighty, God was willing to be Abraham’s personal protector and friend.  He talks with Abraham face to face.  He comes to him, and agrees to give to him and to his posterity the land of Canaan, and in this promise Abraham has entire faith.  His monotheism was indeed of an imperfect kind.  It did not exclude a belief in other gods, though they were regarded as inferior to his own.  His family God, though almighty, was not omnipresent.  He came down to learn whether the rumors concerning the sinfulness of Sodom were correct or not.  He was not quite sure of Abraham’s faith, and so he tested it by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac, in whom alone the promise to Abraham’s descendants could be fulfilled.  But though the monotheism of Abraham was of so imperfect a kind, it had in it the root of the better kind which was to come.  It was imperfect, but not false.  It was entire faith in the supreme power of Jehovah to do what he would, and in his disposition to be a friend to the patriarch and his posterity.  It was, therefore, trust in the divine power, wisdom, and goodness.  The difference between the religion of Abraham and that of the polytheistic nations was, that while they descended from the idea of a Supreme Being into that of subordinate ones, he went back to that of the Supreme, and clung to this with his whole soul.

Sec. 3.  Moses; or, Judaism as the national Worship of a just and holy King.

In speaking of Moses and of his law, it may be thought necessary to begin by showing that such a man as Moses really existed; for modern criticism has greatly employed itself in questioning the existence of great men.  As the telescope resolves stars into double, triple, and quadruple stars, and finally into star-dust, so the critics, turning their optical tubes toward that mighty orb which men call Homer, have declared that they have resolved him into a great number of little Homers.  The same process has been attempted in regard to Shakespeare.  Some have tried to show that there never was any Shakespeare, but only many Shakespeare writers.  In like manner, the critics have sought to dissolve Moses with their powerful analysis, and, instead of Moses, to give us a number of fragmentary writings from different times and hands, skilfully joined together; in fact, instead of Moses, to give us a mosaic.  Criticism substitutes human tendencies in the place of great men, does not love to believe in genius, and often appears to think that a number of mediocrities added together can accomplish more than one man of genius.