heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the
years and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood
to young manhood the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer
with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon
the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and
son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.

"Take now thy son," said God to Abraham, "thine only son Isaac, whom
thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there
for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee
of." The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on
the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but
respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form and convulsive
wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater than
Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit
a human soul. If only the man himself might have been allowed to die.
That would have been easier a thousand times, for he was old now, and to
die would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with
God. Besides, it would have been a last sweet pleasure to let his
dimming vision rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would live
to carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises of
God made long before in Ur of the Chaldees.

How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of his
wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the
promise, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called"? This was Abraham's trial
by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still
shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac
lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, the
old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had
directed him to do, and _then trust God to raise him from the dead_.
This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart
found sometime in the dark night, and he rose "early in the morning" to
carry out the plan. It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as to
God's method, he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart. And
the solution accords well with the New Testament Scripture, "Whosoever
will lose for my sake shall find."

God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where
He knew there wou