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172 blessed. That is, through him and his posterity he would impart the greatest possible good, the knowledge of the true God. To accomplish this purpose God selected the spot in which he and his posterity were to be placed; and no spot on earth could have been better suited for the purpose. The land of Canaan, afterward called Judea, afterward called Palestine, a tract of country situated about midway between the three great divisions of the earth — Asia, Africa, and Europe — on the great highway of nations, in the very path of conquest, commerce, and travel, was equally accessible to all parts of the then known world.

"But those circumstances which afterward made Judea so favorably located as the radiating point of the true faith did not exist in the time of Abraham. There was neither conquest nor commerce nor travel. The world was overrun by wandering tribes, scarcely having boundaries or fixed habitations. Chaldea, the cradle of the human race, and Egypt, the birthplace of human learning and the arts, were the only nations of consequence at that time. It is not probable that any such thing as alphabetic writing existed; for we read that Abraham took no other evidence of the purchase which he made of a burying-place for his family than living witnesses of the bargain. At that period, therefore, divine communication must have been confined to individuals. The fulness of time had not yet come even for that partial revelation which was made by Moses. There was no mode by which it could be