pon
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
G