“And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son,” who was compelled as it were to bear his own cross.  And he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and Isaac said, “Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” yet suffered himself to be bound by his father on the altar.  And Abraham then stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son.  At this supreme moment of his trial, he heard the angel of the Lord calling upon him out of heaven and saying, “Abraham!  Abraham! lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me....  And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering instead of his son.  And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand upon the seashore, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice.”

There are no more recorded promises to Abraham, no more trials of his faith.  His righteousness was established, and he was justified before God.  His subsequent life was that of peace, prosperity, and exaltation.  He lives to the end in transcendent repose with his family and vast possessions.  His only remaining solicitude is for a suitable wife for Isaac, concerning whom there is nothing remarkable in gifts or fortunes, but who maintains the faith of his father, and lives like him in patriarchal dignity and opulence.

The great interest we feel in Abraham is as “the father of the faithful,” as a model of that exalted sentiment which is best defined and interpreted by his own trials and experiences; and hence I shall not dwell on the well known incidents of his life outside the varied calls and promises by which he became the most favored man in human annals.  It was his faith which made him immortal, and with which his name is forever associated.  It is his religious faith looming up, after four thousand years, for our admiration and veneration which is the true subject of our meditation.  This, I think, is distinct from our ordinary conception of faith, such as a belief in the operation of natural laws, in the return of the seasons, in the rewards of virtue, in the assurance of prosperity with due regard to the conditions of success.  Faith in a friend, in a nation’s future, in the triumphs of a good cause, in our own energies and resources is, I grant, necessarily connected with reason, with wide observation and experience, with induction, with laws of nature and of mind.  But religious faith is supreme trust in an unseen God and supreme obedience to his commands, without any other exercise of reason than the intuitive conviction that what he orders is right because he orders it, whether we can fathom his wisdom or not.  “Canst thou by searching find out Him?”