servant Abraham with the bosom. This person with the bosom was born when his father was 70; but, when his father had reached the age of 205, Abraham was only 75 years old! During his father's lifetime he had apparently lost 60 years! How did he do it? I have heard of a watch stopping, O Lord, and of a shake setting it going again; but a man stopping, O Lord, and for 60 years too, it must have taken a tremendous shaking to set him going again. You must have set your feet wide to steady yourself, and, then taking him in your hands, as a maidservant does a hearth-rug, have given him a shaking that set the world's windows chattering and shook the foundations of the earth. Certainly a strange person must have been this Abraham with the bosom! A man who had managed to be only 75 years of age, when everybody else born in the same year was 135 years of age, is a man worth going all the way to heaven to see. It is no use asking your paid lackeys here about this matter. Your great hierophants, St. Augustine and St. Jerome, gave it up as inexplicable, and your erudite servant, Calmet, ventures on an explanation which leaves confusion worse confounded; and therefore, O Lord, I appeal direct to you.
And, O Lord, another person connected with Abraham also lost some time; I do not know how much. Abraham, like all your saints, was pretty good in the fire and slaughter line. One of his fights was on account of Lot: you will remember Lot, the man with the daughters, and who had a wife who was turned into salt while you peppered away at Sodom. Well, in fighting for this Lot, Abraham and his 318 servants slew the King of Sodom; but, after having been slain, "the King of Sodom went out to meet him (Abraham) after the slaughter of Chedorlaomer."[1] A smart man this King of Sodom. How much time did he lose? Was he used to killing, as the proverbial eels were to skinning? What mysterious personages flit about among the pages of that Book of yours, O Lord!
O Lord, what have you done with Melchisedek? He had no "beginning of days or end of life;" so, of
- ↑ See Genesis xiv. 10 and 17.
