1. Chaldea, the native country of Abraham, was inhabited by a pastoral people, who were almost irresistibly invited to the study of the motions of the heavenly bodies, by the peculiar serenity of the heavens in that climate, and their habit of spending their nights in the open air in tending their flocks. The first rudiments of astronomy, as a science, is traced to this region; and here, too, one of the earliest forms of idolatry, the worship of the host of heaven, usually called Tsabaism, first began to prevail. During the three hundred and fifty years which elapsed between the deluge and the birth of Abraham, this and other idolatrous superstitions had greatly corrupted the human race, perverted the simple forms of the patriarchal religion, and beclouded the import of its typical rites. The family of Abraham was idolatrous, for his “fathers served other gods beyond the flood,” that is, the great river Euphrates; but whether he himself was in the early period of his life an idolater, we are not informed by Moses. The Arabian and Jewish legends speak of his early idolatry, his conversion from it, and of his zeal in breaking the images in his father’s house; but these are little to be depended upon. Before his call he was certainly a worshipper of the true God; and that not in form only, but “in spirit and in truth.” Whilst Abraham was still sojourning in Ur, “the God of glory” appeared to him, and said unto him, “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and go into the land which I shall show thee;” and so firm was his faith in the providence and care of God, that although the place of his future abode was not indicated, nor any information given of the nature of the country, or the character of its inhabitants, he nevertheless promptly obeyed, and “went out, not knowing whither he went.” Terah his father, Nahor his brother, and Lot his nephew, the son of Haran his deceased brother, accompanied him; a circumstance which indicates that if the family had formerly been idolatrous it had now received the faith of Abraham. They first migrated to Haran, or Charran, in Mesopotamia, a flat, barren region westward of Ur; and after a residence there of a few years, during which Terah had died, Abraham left Haran to go into Palestine, taking with him Sarah his wife, who had no child, and Lot, with his paternal property. Nahor appears to have been left in Haran. To this second migration he was incited also by a Divine command, accompanied by the promises of a numerous issue, that his seed should become a great nation, and, above all, that “in him all the families of the earth should be blessed;” in other words, that the Messiah, known among the patriarchs as the promised “seed of the woman,” should be born in his line. Palestine was then inhabited by the Canaanites, from whom it was called Canaan. Abraham, leading his tribe, first settled at Sechem, a valley between the mountains Ebal and Gerizim, where God