Now, it needs hardly to be remarked that God is glorified in those holy activities of faith. He is the immediate object of them, as he is the spring from whence they emanate. There was not a scene in Abraham's entire history in which God was so much glorified as the scene on Mount Moriah. There it was that he was enabled to bear testimony to the fact that he had found all his fresh springs in God,--found them not merely previous to, but after, Isaac's birth. This is a most touching point. It is one thing to rest in God's blessings, and another thing to rest in himself. It is one thing to trust God when I have before my eyes the channel through which the blessing is to flow; and quite another thing to trust him when that channel is entirely stopped up. This was what proved the excellency of Abraham's faith. He showed that he could not merely trust God for an innumerable seed while Isaac stood before him in health and vigor; but just as fully if he were a smoking victim on the altar. This was a high order of confidence in God; it was unalloyed confidence; it was not a confidence propped up in part by the Creator and in part by the creature. No; it rested on one solid pedestal, viz., God himself. "He accounted that God was able." He never accounted that Isaac was able. Isaac without God was nothing; God without Isaac was every thing. This is a principle of the very last importance, and one eminently calculated to test the heart most keenly. Does it make any difference to me to see the apparent channel of all my blessings dried up? Am I dwelling sufficiently near the fountain-head to be able, with a worshipping spirit, to behold all the creature streams dried up? This I do feel to be a searching question. Have I such a simple view of God's sufficiency as to be able as it were to "stretch forth my hand and take the knife to slay my son." Abraham was enabled to do this, because his eye rested on the God of resurrection. "He accounted that God was able to raise him up even from the dead." In a word, it was with God he had to do, and that was quite enough. He was not suffered to strike the blow. He had gone to the very utmost bounds; he had come up to the line beyond which God could not suffer him to go. The Blessed One spared the father's heart the pang which he did not spare his own heart, even that of smiting his Son. He, blessed be his name, passed beyond the utmost bounds, for "he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." "It pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief." There was no voice from heaven when, on Calvary, the Father offered up his only-begotten Son. No, it was a perfectly accomplished sacrifice; and in its accomplishment our everlasting peace is sealed.