It is blasphemy for a man to say “when he is tempted, I am tempted of god; for god cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (James i., 13). Yet it is blasphemy to deny that “after these things god did tempt Abraham (Gen. xxii., 1). If anybody is infidel enough to ask how a god that tempts no one could have tempted Abraham, the best answer is: “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Perhaps Abraham was no one, and in that case both statements would be true. Everyone knows the beautiful story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. How this noble father led his child to the slaughter; how Isaac meekly submitted; how the farce went on till the lad was bound and laid on the altar, and how god then stopped the murder, and blessed the intending murderer for his willingness to commit the crime. If anyone now tries to emulate Abraham’s faith, he is treated as a dangerous lunatic; but it is blasphemy to deny that that which would be murder now was virtue then. It is blasphemy to deny that Isaac was born when his father and mother were too old for his birth to be natural (Gen. xvii., 17); in fact, Abraham was “as good as dead” and Sarah “was past age” (Heb. xi., 11, 12), and we are told that when “he was about an hundred years old” “his own body” was “now dead” (Rom. iv., 19). Although it is blasphemy to assert that he was _not_ too old at 100 to become the father of one son, it is also blasphemy to assert that he _was_ too old more than 37 years later to become the father of six sons (Gen. xxv., 2). We are bound to believe that Abraham was naturally capable of becoming a father when he was 86 years of age, and when he was over 137 years of age, but that it was only by a miracle that he was capable of becoming a father when he was 100 years of age. Truly there are in the Bible “some things hard to be understood” (2 Pet. iii., 16).