The most signal manifestations of his faith and obedience cluster about three several points in his history; viz. his call to go forth from his ancestral home and country; his waiting twenty-five years for the birth of his one son of promise; and the command to offer this only son in sacrifice. That first call revealed the man. It was but to hear God’s voice; and forthwith he “conferred not with flesh and blood.” He seems not to have paused a moment to question the Lord about the conditions, or to consider the hardships; and he never “looked back.” Next that promise of a son, standing so long unfulfilled; year by year the human probabilities fading, dying out, till at length they are utterly dead, and nothing remained save the naked promise! This was indeed training Abraham’s faith _to wait_. Inasmuch as God’s chosen plan of introducing the Messiah involved long ages of waiting and trusting and living on simple promise, this was by no means a profitless or uncalled for illustration of the nature, the value, and the power of _faith_ as in man toward God. High above either of these cases, in point of the fierceness of the trial and the wonderful spirit of calm and steadfast faith and endurance, stands the case of God’s command and his consent to sacrifice his son Isaac (Gen. 22). The record puts this case in the foreground as to _trial_: “God did tempt Abraham”――not in the sinful sense――tempting to make him sin; but in a sense appropriate to God――subject him to a terribly searching trial. First, God called him by name “Abraham”! Then said――“Take now thy son, thine only son”――that son of promise in whom all thy hopes and all thy heart’s affections have been so long concentrated――that son “whom thou lovest”――take him and go, far away three days’ journey to a mountain which I will point out, and there “_offer him up for a burnt-offering_”!