But when Abram was released from the clog which he had experienced in the person of his father, he was enabled to enter with vigor and decision upon the path of faith--a path which "flesh and blood" can never tread--a thorny path beset with difficulties from first to last, in which God alone can sustain the soul. "And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. _And the Canaanite was then in the land._ And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: _and there builded he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him_." (Gen. xii. 6, 7.) Here Abram at once takes his stand as _a worshiper_, in the face of "the Canaanite." The altar marks him as one who, having been delivered from the idols of Ur of the Chaldees, had been taught to bow before the altar of the one true God, "who made heaven and earth." In the following verse, we get the second grand feature in the character of the man of faith, namely, "_the tent_," denoting strangership in the world. "By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a _strange_ _country, dwelling in tabernacles_ with Isaac and Jacob, _the heirs_ with him of the same _promise_." (Heb. xi. 9.) We shall have occasion to notice more fully, as we proceed, these two important points in the life of Abraham, and shall therefore rest satisfied for the present with establishing the fact that the tent and the altar do most clearly present him to us as a _stranger_ and a _worshiper_, and that as such, he was a man entirely separated from the course of this evil world. Scarcely had Abram entered upon his course, when he had to encounter one of those difficulties which have a special tendency to test the genuineness of faith, both as to its quality and its object. "And there was a famine in the land." The difficulty meets him in the very place into which the Lord had called him. Now, it is no easy matter when we perceive trial and sorrow, privation and difficulty awaiting us, while walking in "the strait and narrow way," still to persevere--still to pursue the onward path, and especially if we observe within our reach, as Abram did, an entire exemption from the particular trial under which we may be smarting. The men of this world "are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued as other men." This feeling is still further increased by the entire absence of every thing, as far as sight is concerned, which could act as a confirmation of our hope. Abram had not so much as to set his foot upon--famine was raging around him on every side, _save in Egypt_. Could he only find himself _there_, he would be able to live in ease and abundance.