LV. SUCH a man did appear on the stage of the world. It was the
patriarch Abraham. The rarest qualities of mind and heart concurred
admirably to render him fit for the high mission. By the superiority of
his intelligence, he arrived at the rejection of the captivating, but
absurd, idolatrous opinions of his contemporaries, and at the
recognition of a unique supreme Cause of all things, omnipotent,
all-wise and holy, that governs all with impartial justice and infinite
mercy. The nobility of his sentiments led him to labour and exert
himself in the diffusion of these holy notions wherever he found
himself; and he was most sedulous in drawing the attention of men to
that which most concerned their spiritual life. An unparalleled
cordiality towards not only his own friends, but all who approached him;
a self-abnegation, carried to the point of refusing the best deserved
remuneration; a humility ready to waive any right of his own in order to
support that of others; a hospitality full, generous, unasked; a
continual exercise of charity and justice, which had become in him a
second nature; in fine, a submission of all himself and his dearest to
the will of God,--such was the character of that celebrated luminary of
antiquity, of that man truly divine, of that exemplar of sublime virtue.
LVI. Although so many pre-eminent merits indisputably assigned to him
the distinction we have pointed out, yet the Divine wisdom decided to
subject his constancy to various trials, with the view of making
manifest to the world the excellence of that virtuous character, and the
justice which dictated the choice. In the continual antagonism between
the material and spiritual interests involved in the events of his
agitated life, he had opportunities to display the noblest firmness in
causing the latter to prevail. Involuntary peregrinations, conflicts
with foreign potentates, domestic discords, dangers, hazards, hopes
deferred, and promises well nigh forgotten, became to him so many
occasions for the exercise of the highest virtues: and last, the holy
resignation with which he prepared to immolate his beloved son, thinking
thereby to respond to a Divine bidding, raised his glory to an
unapproachable summit. If the other deeds of his edifying piety caused
him to be appointed a herald of the true religion, this last heroic act
brought down upon him the greatest blessing, in the shape of a promise,
that even to his remotest posterity would be extended the mission of
jealously preserving the revealed truths, and effectually cooperating in
their propagation, so that through that posterity would be _blessed all
the families of the earth._
LVII. Abraham's vocation marks a luminous and highly interesting epoch
in the history of humanity. It was the commencement of the execution of
that plan of education of mankind, which, conceived since the beginning
in the Increate Mind, came by means extraordinary, yet consistent with
the natural course of earthly events, to diffuse itself gradually and to
acquire a progressive force among the various ramifications of the human
family. In that vocation we perceive the first threads of a wonderful
tissue of events, as well in the physical as in the moral world, which
went on preparing a slow but always progressive development of the human
intelligence, and will go on to produce ultimately the full final
accomplishment of the same primitive plan, so grandly conceived. In
fact, in the very act of electing this patriarch, God revealed the
ultimate object of the election by saying, that He chose him, in order
that he might transmit to his latest posterity the obligation--which was
to become characteristic of it--of exercising and promoting CHARITY and
JUSTICE, the two chief columns on which rests the edifice of human
perfectibility, two conditions indispensable to the fulfilment of the
Divine idea, and therefore called _ways of the Eternal_.
LVIII. Abraham and his race having been called upon to perpetuate the
idea of the relation existing between God and man, it was obviously
necessary that such a relation should be fixed and established in a more
precise mode in the individuals of that race than it was in any others;
in other words, it was necessary to show clearly that the idea, which
was to be promoted among others, was firmly seated, under permanent and
concrete forms, in those who were called upon to propagate it. This
permanency of the relation exhibited itself, then, to Abraham and his
posterity under the form of a _covenant_ between God and that family,
whereby the contracting parties, as it were, promised and undertook to
maintain certain conditions, upon which depended the subsistence of that
relation. The mutual conditions established were, in substance, nothing
else than the universal relations subsisting between God and every
rational being, but expressed, with respect to Abraham's, family, in
more special and characteristic terms, viz., under a form in which God
promised Abraham that He would be particularly _his God_, his Protector,
Guardian, and Benefactor; and the Abrahamites, on their part, bound
themselves to recognise _Him alone_ as the Deity, to whom adoration and
loyal obedience were due. Thus the covenant, which had been formerly
established in general terms with Noah, as the representative of all
mankind, was afterwards confirmed in more specific terms to the
Abrahamites, as those who were appointed to keep and to promote among
mankind the fulfilment of the conditions of the said relation.
Considering the Abrahamitic covenant in this point of view, all
objections of unreasonable exclusiveness and unjust predilection, which
have been sometimes urged, must disappear. The God of Abraham is the God
of the universe; and the descendants of Abraham propose to themselves
nothing more than the attainment of that same happiness to which every
mortal can aspire.
LIX. In order that the idea of the contracted covenant might remain
firmly impressed on all Abraham's progeny, it was necessary to
institute some external mark, which should continually recall it to the
mind; for an idea being but an abstraction, it could not be very long
retained in men's minds, without some symbol or visible sign capable of
keeping its remembrance alive. It was also necessary that the adhesion
of that progeny to the covenant should not begin to take effect in
individuals in the adult age only, and as a result of one's own
spontaneous reflexions, as had been the case with the first stock of
that family, but that it should present itself as an accomplished fact,
and, therefore, irrevocable and obligatory; so that every future
offspring should bear from his birth an external indelible mark,
characterising him as a follower of that principle, and qualifying him
to enter into the pale of that association. By such means the
preservation of the covenant was insured, and a beginning was made in
the system of those external, symbolical, and commemorative acts, which
were to be thereafter prescribed to all that race, when sufficiently
increased to form an entire people distinct from others. This external
mark, instituted before the birth of the elect progeny of the patriarch,
is the _circumcision_.
LX. Before Abraham's descendants attained that degree of maturity which
would fit them to receive a revealed legislation, they had to pass
through various stages of progressive material increment and
intellectual development, and also to undergo several sad vicissitudes
produced by the inevitable relations of contact with other nations.
Throughout all this period, which we may call preparatory, the Divine
Wisdom was pleased to take that race by the hand, guiding its first
steps, and watching in an extraordinary manner over its destinies, so as
gradually to prepare it for the high mission for which it was designed.
We, therefore, perceive, during that epoch, a continual intervention of
the Divinity in regulating the particular concerns of the patriarchs and
their successors, and an incessant care to draw their attention to the
future destiny of their grandchildren, and to their duty of preparing
worthily for it. Such a care manifested itself, particularly, in various
providential measures, the objects of which evidently were to remove
from them everything that might exercise over them a sinister influence;
to enlighten them on the importance of their election, and to make them
acquainted beforehand with the severe trials in store for them for
several centuries, before they could deservedly reap the intended
benefits.
LXI. To this category of providential measures belongs the state of
isolation and of precarious subsistence, in which, by the Divine will,
the first fathers had to live, in respect to their neighbours, in that
same land which was yet promised to them as a perpetual inheritance;
whereby they were brought to learn from the beginning that the great
work, which their children were called upon to accomplish, was not
absolutely dependent on the possession of a land under their own
sovereignty, but rather on the religious doctrines to which they were to
remain faithfully attached. To it belongs, also, the severance or
removal of the elder branch of the first two families, which was too
much inclined to material interests, to teach thereby that physical
superiority is not at all requisite to the preservation of a covenant
based entirely on spirituality. And, lastly, to the same category of
measures belongs the decreed long servitude of the Abrahamites in a
strange land, in which, not only the door to social enjoyments would be
shut against them, but a barbarous tyranny would also deprive them of
the free exercise of acts which are an imprescriptible right of all
mortals. Through the instrumentality of such an oppression, the profound
counsels of the Eternal Wisdom designed so to regulate the first
education of that growing people, that, refined in the crucible of
adversity, it should early learn to renounce the subjection of the
senses, and turn its heart and soul to God, from whom alone it could
hope salvation. It was only by depriving that people of all human
support, and of all extraneous influences on its culture, that it could
acquire a character, firm, independent, tenacious in the principles
adopted, adverse to foreign notions, faithful to its vocation, and that
its mind could be deeply impressed with the sentiment of a constant
adoration of the Supreme Being, as its only Deliverer, Legislator,
Father, and Sovereign.