This was the obedience of faith! The wonderful illustration stands out before all the ages with God’s seal of approbation broadly stamped upon it.――――When the trial had fully reached its culminating point and no room remained for doubt that Abraham would obey God at every cost, fearless of consequences, or rather committing all consequences to his God, then God’s angel interposed! A ram was provided for the sacrifice and the son of promise went back to a more happy home with a more happy father, doubly blessed in the renewed approbation of his covenant-keeping God. No wonder that God proceeded then to make that covenant stronger and broader and richer than ever before! No wonder Abraham stamped into the very name of this ever memorable locality one of the grand moral lessons of the scene――“Jehovah Jireh”――_In the mount of the Lord, himself will provide!_ When you come to the mount of last and utmost emergency, the Lord will have salvation ready! His angel will appear; the ram of sacrifice will be there; and Isaac may go in peace! * * * * * According to the common law of Christian experience, God’s methods with Abraham were _progressive_; his manifestations of himself moved on by successive stages; much this year but more the next; so much indeed at the first that it must have seemed to the good man very great, but more and greater were yet to come. The successive epochs at which God appeared to Abraham to talk with him of the great covenant are very distinctly marked in the history――of such sort as many a Christian might record in his own personal life-history. 1. In the outset of Abraham’s history is that eventful _call_ which brought him out from “Ur of the Chaldees,” the narrative of which stands Gen. 12: 1–3. In the promise made to him then the leading points were――“I will make thy name great”; “I will make of thee a great nation”; “thou shalt be a blessing and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed”; I will stand by thee to bless all who bless thee and to curse whosoever may curse thee.――――This must have raised in Abram’s mind large expectations and assured him that Jehovah was indeed his own God. 2. Immediately after Abram’s arrival in Canaan (Gen. 12: 7) the Lord appeared to him specially to identify that as _the_ land which he had promised (Gen. 12: 1) to show him and to give to his posterity. There, as in each new home, Abram built an altar and in devout worship called on the name of the Lord who had thus appeared to him.