LIV. The providential measure once decreed, of selecting an individual as guardian of the revealed truths, and making him the father of a posterity, whose duty was to preserve them and to make them fructify, it remained only to determine the selection of the person. And here it is obvious that not a capricious hazard, not an indulgent predilection, but only a strict justice and wise impartiality could determine the important choice. Whoever would have aspired to such a glory--and everybody could have aspired to it--by no other means could he have attained it than his own merits. Such a man must have, of his own accord and spontaneously, withdrawn himself from the general current of depravity; opposed, by his own impulse, the absurd ravings of his contemporaries; displayed a lively attachment to virtue, and a steady abhorrence of evil; cultivated, above all, justice, charity, and righteousness, in his every action; that man must have thrown off the subjection of the senses, and all cupidity of earthly things, and, almost assuming a second nature, have soared towards the eternal Source of truth, the Creator of the universe, offering as a sacrifice to Him his own dearest personal interests, and, if required, his life itself. CHAPTER VIII. 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.