One partial exception, and only one, to this great ruling lesson of the chapter is to be noted; it occurs in the second verse. There "by faith we perceive that the worlds," the _aeons_, the dispensations and evolutions of created being, "have been framed," perfected, adjusted to one another, "by the Word of God, so that not from things which appear has that which is seen originated." These words appear to be inserted where they stand in order, so to speak, to carry the sequence of the references to the Old Testament down from its very first page. The work of faith has exercise in face of the mysterious narrative of Creation, and in this one instance the exercise is quoted as what concerns us now quite as much as "the elders." They like us, we like them, get our guarantee as to the facts of the primal past not by sight but by faith, by taking God at His word. He, in His revelation, tells us that "in the beginning"--the beginning of whatever existence is other than eternal--"God created." Things finite, things visible, came into original being not as evolved from previous similar material, but as of His will. But when that pregnant side-word has once been said, the argument settles itself forthwith upon the recorded examples of the potency of faith as "the elders" exercised it. We see man after man enabled to treat the invisible as visible, the promised as present, by reliant rest upon the word of God, however conveyed. To Abel, we know not how, it was divinely said that the sacrificed "firstling" was the acceptable offering, and, antecedent to any possible experience, he offered it. To Enoch, we know not how, it was made known that the Eternal, as invisible to him as to us, cared for man's worshipping company, and he addressed himself through his age-long life to "walk with God." Noah was apprised, for the first time in man's known history, of an approaching cataclysm and of the way of escape; the promise came to him wrapped in the cloud of an awful warning, and it was long delayed, but he acted upon it in the steady energy of faith. Abraham was "called," we know not precisely how, but in some way which tested his reliance on things "not seen as yet," and he set out on that wonderful life of a hundred years of faith. He renounced the settled habits and old civilization of Chaldea for the new life of a Syrian nomad, "settling permanently in tents" ([Greek: en skenais katoikesas]), he and his son and his grandson after him, all in view of an invisible future made visible by the trusted promise, a future culminating at last to his "eye of faith," so here we are solemnly assured, in the city of the saints, in the Canaan of the heavens. The same reliance on the sheer word of promise nerved him to the awful ordeal of the all-but immolation of his son. And that son in his turn, against all appearances, and rather bowing to the Word of God than embracing it, blessed _his_ least-loved son above his dearest; and