ad not the story of
Abel's faith itself loudly proclaimed the sacredness of human life?
Would not Abraham, if he offered up Isaac, become another Cain? Would
not the dead child speak, and his blood cry from the ground to God for
vengeance? It was the case of a man to whom "God is greater than
conscience." He resolved to obey at all hazards. Hereby he assured his
heart--that is, his conscience--before God in that matter wherein his
heart may have condemned him.[275] We, it is true, in the light of a
better revelation of God's character, should at once deny, without more
ado, that such a command had been given by God; and we need not fear
thankfully and vehemently to declare that our absolute trust in the
rightness of our own moral instincts is a higher faith than Abraham's.
But he had no misgiving as to the reality of the revelation or the
authority of the command. Neither do the sacred historian and the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews question it. We also need not doubt. God
met His servant at that stage of spiritual perception which he had
already attained. His faith was strong in its realisation of God's
authority and faithfulness. But his moral nature was not sufficiently
educated to decide by the character of a command whether it was worthy
of God or not. He calmly left it to Him to vindicate His own
righteousness. Those who deny that God imposed such a hard task on
Abraham must be prepared to solve still greater difficulties. For do not
we also, in reference to some things, still require Abraham's faith that
the Judge of all the earth will do right? What shall we say of His
permitting the terrible and universal sufferings of all living things?
What are we to think of the still more awful mystery of moral evil?
Shall we say He could not have prevented it? Or shall we take refuge in
the distinction between permission and command? Of the two it were
easier to understand His commanding what He will not permit, as in the
sacrifice of Isaac, than to explain His permission of what He cannot and
will not command, as in the undoubted existence of sin.

But let us once more repeat that the greatest faith of all is to
believe, with Abel, that God is righteous, and yet to believe, with
Abraham, that God can justify His own seeming unrighteousness, and also
to believe, with the saints of Christianity, that the test which God
imposed on Abraham will nevermore be tried, because the enlightened
conscience of humanity forbids