mention of idols
in Abraham's time. He worshipped, more probably, the host of
heaven, the sun and moon and stars. So say the old traditions of
the Arabs, who are descended from Abraham through Ishmael, and so it
is most likely to have been. That was the temptation in the East.
You read again and again how his children, the Jews, turned back
from God to worship the host of heaven; and that false worship seems
to have crept in at some very early time. The sun, you must
remember, and the moon are far more brilliant and powerful in the
East than here; their power of doing harm or good to human beings
and to the crops of the land is far greater; while the stars shine
in the East with a brightness of which we here have no notion. We
do not know, in this cloudy climate, what St. Paul calls the glory
of the stars; nor see how much one star differs from another star in
glory; and therefore here in the North we have never been tempted to
worship them as the Easterns were. The sun, the moon, the stars,
were the old gods of the East, the Elohim, the high and mighty ones,
who ruled over men, over their good and bad fortunes, over the
weather, the cattle, the crops, sending burning drought, pestilence,
sun-strokes, and those moon-strokes which we never have here; but of
which the Psalmist speaks when he says, 'The sun shall not smite
thee by day, neither the moon by night.' And them the old Easterns
worshipped in some wild confused way.

But to Abraham it was revealed that the sun, the moon, and the stars
were not Elohim--the high and mighty Ones. That there was but one
Elohim, one high and mighty One, the Almighty maker of them all. He
did not learn that, perhaps, at once. Indeed the Bible tells us how
God taught him step by step, as he teaches all men, and revealed
himself to him again and again, till he had taught Abraham all that
he was to know. But he did teach him this; as a beautiful old story
of the Arabs sets forth. They say how (whether before or after God
called him, we cannot tell) Abraham at night saw a star: and he
said, 'This is my Lord.' But when the star set, he said, 'I like
not those who vanish away.' And when he saw the moon rising, he
said, 'This is my Lord.' But when the moon too set, he said,
'Verily, if my Lord direct me not in the right way, I shall be as
one who goeth astray.' But when he saw the sun rising, he said,
'This is my Lord: this is greater than star or moon.' But the sun
went