Two points of surpassing worth in his faith suggest themselves. The one
is largeness and variety of experience; the other is conquest over
difficulties. These are the constituents of a great saint. Many a good
man will not become a strong spiritual character because his experience
of life is too narrow. Others, whose range is wide, fail to reach the
higher altitudes of saintliness because they have never been called to
pass through sore trials, or, if they have heard the summons, have
shrunk from the hardships. Before Abraham faith was both limited in its
experience and untested with heaven-sent difficulties. Abraham's
religion was complex. His faith was "a perfect cube," and, presenting a
face to every wind that blows, came victorious out of every trial.

Let us trace the comparisons.

_First_, Noah obeyed a Divine command when he built an ark to the saving
of his house. He obeyed by faith. His eyes saw the invisible, and the
vision kindled his hopes of being saved through the very waters that
would destroy every living substance. But this was all. His faith acted
only in one direction: he hoped to be saved. The Apostle Peter[258]
compares his faith to the initial grace of those who seek baptism, and
have only crossed the threshold of the spiritual life. It is true that
he overcame one class of difficulties. He was not in bondage to the
things of sense. He made provision for a future belied by present
appearances. But the influence of the senses is not the greatest
difficulty of the human spirit. As the lonely ship rode on the heaving
waste of waters, all within was gladness and peace. No heaven-sent
temptations tried the patriarch's faith, He overcame the trials that
spring out of the earth; but he knew not the anguish that rends the
spirit like a lightning-stroke descending from God.

With Abraham it was otherwise. "He went out, not knowing whither he
went."[259] He leaves his father's house and his father's gods. He
breaks for ever with the past, even before the future has been revealed
to him. The thoughts and feelings that had grown up with him from
childhood are once for all put away. He has no sheltering ark to receive
him. A homeless wanderer, he pitches his tent to-day at the well, not
knowing where his invisible guide may bid him stretch the cords on the
morrow. His departure from Ur of the Chaldees was a family migration.
But the writer of this Epistle, like Philo, describes it as the man's
own persona