And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering: so they went both of them together. {110} And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order; and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing 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 a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son." A man who, by his enlightened views, and the elevation of his mind, as well as by his faithfulness as a follower of Christ, is an honour to the church which he serves, Dr. Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, explains and characterises in these terms the Biblical truths to which I am referring. {111} "There have been," he says, "in almost all ancient forms of religion, and also in some of more modern date, two strong tendencies, each in itself springing from the best and purest feelings of humanity, yet each, if carried into the extremes suggested by passion or by logic, incompatible with the other and with its own highest purpose. One is the craving to please, or to propitiate, or to communicate with the powers above us, by surrendering some object near and dear to ourselves. This is the source of all sacrifice. The other is the profound moral instinct that the Creator of the world cannot be pleased, or propitiated, or approached by any other means than a pure life and good deeds. On the exaggeration, on the contact, on the collision of these two tendencies, have turned some of the chief difficulties of evangelical history. The earliest of them we are about to witness in the life of Abraham. ... {112} The sacrifice, the resignation of the will in the father and the son was accepted; the literal sacrifice of the act was repelled. The great principle was proclaimed that mercy was better than sacrifice,--that the sacrifice of self is the highest and holiest offering that God can receive. ... We have a proverb which tells us that man's extremity is God's opportunity." [Footnote 24] [Footnote 24: Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. By Arthur P. Stanley, D.D. Vol. i. pp. 47, 48, 50. London, 1867.]