while she had not, he asked her how she had preserved her faith; and she showed his letters to him, declaring her eternal trust. [In like manner] Israel, in misery and captivity, was mocked by the nations; her hopes of redemption were made a laughing-stock; her sages scoffed at; her holy men derided.  Into her synagogues, into her schools, went Israel.  She read the letters which her God had written, and believed in the holy promises which they contained.  God will in time redeem her; and when he says:  “How could you alone be faithful of all the mocking nations?” she will point to the law and answer:  “Had not thy law been my delight, I should long since have perished in my affliction."[93]

   [93] Psalm cxix, 92.—­By the way, it is probably known to
        most readers that the twenty-two sections into which
        this grand poem is divided are named after the letters
        of the Hebrew alphabet; but from the translation given
        in our English Bible no one could infer that in the
        original every one of the eight verses in each section
        begins with the letter after which it is named, thus
        forming a very long acrostic.

* * * * *

In the account of the Call of Abraham given in the Book of Genesis, xii, 1-3, we are not told that his people were all idolaters; but in the Book of Joshua, xxiv, 1-2, it is said that the great successor of Moses, when he had “waxed old and was stricken with age,” assembled the tribes of Israel, at Shechem, and said to the people:  “Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor; and they served other gods.”  The sacred narrative does not state the circumstances which induced Abraham to turn away from the worship of false deities, but the information is furnished by the Talmudists—­possibly from ancient oral tradition—­in this interesting tale of

Abraham and the Idols.

Abraham’s father Terah, who dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees, was not only an idolater, but a maker of idols.  Having occasion to go a journey of some distance, he instructed Abraham how to conduct the business of idol-selling during his absence.  The future founder of the Hebrew nation, however, had already obtained a knowledge of the true and living God, and consequently held the practice of idolatry in the utmost abhorrence.  Accordingly, whenever any one came to buy an idol Abraham inquired his age, and upon his answering, “I am fifty (or sixty) years old,” he would exclaim, “Woe to the man of fifty who would worship the work of man’s hands!” and his father’s customers went away shamefaced at the rebuke.  But, not content with this mode of showing his contempt for idolatry, Abraham resolved to bring matters to a crisis before his father returned home; and an opportunity was presented for his purpose one day when a woman came to Terah’s