Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms   By: P. C. (Phineas Camp) Headley (1819-1903)

OR,

STORIES AND SKETCHES FROM THE SCRIPTURES AND THE EAST.

PATRIARCHS, KINGS, AND KINGDOMS.

BY REV. P. C. HEADLEY, AUTHOR OF "THE WOMEN OF THE BIBLE," "HARVEST WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT," "THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE," "MASSACHUSETTS IN THE REBELLION," ETC., ETC., ETC.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS.

PHILADELPHIA: PUBLISHED BY JOHN E. POTTER & CO., No. 617 SANSOM STREET.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by JOHN E. POTTER & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

[Illustration: Isaac and Esau]

[Illustration: Job and His Three Friends.]

THE BIBLE AND THE HOLY LAND.

PATRIARCHS, KINGS, AND KINGDOMS.

SCENES IN THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS.

The patriarchs might be called family kings the divinely appointed rulers of households. They were the earliest sovereigns under God of which we have any account. Their authority was gradually extended by the union of households, whose retinue of servants was often large, and their wealth very great. The founder and leader of the patriarchal line chosen by God from the wealthy nomades, or wandering farmers of the fruitful valleys, was Abram. A worshipper of the Infinite One, he married Sarai, a maiden of elevated piety and personal beauty. And doubtless they often walked forth together beneath the nightly sky, whose transparent air in that latitude made the stars impressively

"The burning blazonry of God!"

Upon the hill tops around, were the observatories and altars of Chaldean philosophy, whose disciples worshipped the host of Heaven. In the serenity of such an hour, with the white tents reposing in the distance, and the "soul like sound" of the rustling forest alone breaking the stillness, it would not be strange, as they gazed on flaming Orion and the Pleiades, if they had bowed with the Devotee of Light, while

"Beneath his blue and beaming sky, He worshipped at their lofty shrine, And deemed he saw with gifted eye, The Godhead in his works divine."

But a purer illumination than streamed from that radiant dome, brought near in his majesty the Eternal, and like the holy worshippers of Eden, they adored with subdued and reverent hearts, their infinite Father.

There is great sublimity and wonderful power in the purity and growth of religious principle, in circumstances opposed to its manifestation. The temptations resisted the earnest communion with each other the glorious aspirations and soarings of imagination, when morning broke upon the summits, and evening came down with its stars, and its rising moon, flooding with glory nature in her repose. These, and a thousand lovely and touching scenes of that pastoral life, are all unrecorded. The great events in history, and bold points in character, are seized by the inspired penman as sufficient to mark the grand outline of God's providential and moral government over the world, and his care of his people.

Just when it would best accomplish his designs, which are ever marching to their fulfillment, Jehovah called to Abram, and bade him go to a distant land which he would show him. With his father in law, and with Lot, his flocks and herds, he journeyed toward Palestine. When he arrived at Haran, in Mesopotamia, pleased with the country, and probably influenced by the declining health of the aged Terah, he took up his residence there. Here he remained till the venerable patriarch, Sarai's father, died. The circle of relatives bore him to the grave, and kept the days of mourning. But the dutiful daughter wept in the solitary grief of an orphan's heart. A few years before she had lost a brother, and now the father to whom she was the last flower that bloomed on the desert of age, and who lavished his love upon her, was buried among strangers.