by day, nor the moon and
stars by night," said Haran, "but you can always have your idol with
you."

This troubled little Abraham for a while, but one day he came running
to his brother and said, "I have made a discovery. I shall no longer
worship the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars. There must be some
mighty power behind them that orders them to shine, the sun by day and
the moon and stars by night. That great power shall be my God."

Abraham asked all sorts of queer questions of his father. "Who made
the sun and the moon and the stars?" he asked.

"I know not," replied Terah.

"I have asked all your idols, your gods, and they answer not," said
Abraham.

"They cannot speak," said Terah.

"Then why do you pray to them and worship them?" persisted the boy.

Terah did not answer. Abraham asked his mother, but she could only
tell him that the gods who created everything were with them in the
house.

"But Haran made those silly things of wood and clay," said Abraham,
and at last they refused to answer his awkward questions.

Mostly he stood at the door of the house, gazing at the sky as if
trying to read the secrets behind the sun and stars.

"Thou shouldst have been placed with an astrologer," said Haran to him
one day. "Thou art a child of the stars."

Terah heard this and was angry with Haran, for he feared that the
secret of the child's birth might be betrayed.

"I know not why my father keeps thee here," said Haran afterward to
Abraham. "Thou art becoming lazy. I have worked enough this day and
will go out to the woods to watch the hunting. Stay thou here.
Perchance a purchaser may come. Be heedful and obtain good payment for
the idols."

Not long after Haran left, an old man entered the shop and said he
wished to buy an idol.

"I dropped my idol on the ground yesterday and it broke," he said. "I
must have a stronger one."

"Certainly thou must have a god so strong that naught can break it,"
answered Abraham. "Tell me, how old art thou?"

"Full sixty years, boy," replied the man.

"And yet thou hast not reached years of wisdom," said Abraham. "See
how easy it is to break thy gods," and he took a stick and smashed one
of the idols with a single blow.

The old man fled from the shop horrified.

Next, a woman entered.

"I am too poor to have an idol of my own," she said. "Therefore, I
have brought a little food as an offering to one of the many gods
here."

"Offer it to any idol that pleases