4. The wide and deep impression made by the character of Abraham upon the ancient world is proved by the reverence which people of almost all nations and countries have paid to him, and the manner in which the events of his life have been interwoven in their mythology, and their religious traditions. Jews, Magians, Sabians, Indians, and Mohammedans have claimed him as the great patriarch and founder of their several sects; and his history has been embellished with a variety of fictions. One of the most pleasing of these is the following, but it proceeds upon the supposition that he was educated in idolatry: “As Abraham was walking by night from the grotto where he was born, to the city of Babylon, he gazed on the stars of heaven, and among them on the beautiful planet Venus. ‘Behold,’ said he within himself, ‘the God and Lord of the universe!’ but the star set and disappeared, and Abraham felt that the Lord of the universe could not thus be liable to change. Shortly after, he beheld the moon at the full: ‘Lo,’ he cried, ‘the Divine Creator, the manifest Deity!’ but the moon sank below the horizon, and Abraham made the same reflection as at the setting of the evening star. All the rest of the night he passed in profound rumination; at sunrise he stood before the gates of Babylon, and saw the whole people prostrate in adoration. ‘Wondrous orb,‘ he exclaimed, ‘thou surely art the Creator and Ruler of all nature! but thou, too, hastest like the rest to thy setting!--neither then art thou my Creator, my Lord, or my God!’” ABRAHAMITES, reported heretical sects of the eighth and ninth centuries, charged with the Paulician errors, and some of them with idolatry. For these charges we have, however, only the word of their persecutors. Also the name of a sect in Bohemia, as late as 1782, who professed the religion of Abraham before his circumcision, and admitted no scriptures but the decalogue and the Lord’s prayer. As these were persecuted, they too were probably misrepresented, and especially as their conduct is allowed to have been good, even by their enemies. ABSALOM, the son of David by Maachah, daughter of the king of Geshur; distinguished for his fine person, his vices, and his unnatural rebellion. Of his open revolt, his conduct in Jerusalem, his pursuit of the king his father, his defeat and death, see 2 Sam. xvi-xviii, at large.