What passed between father and son the Sacred record has not revealed. However, we must believe it was the Gethsemane struggle with Isaac, and that in the end he said to Abraham, as Christ, under similar circumstances, said to His heavenly Father, “Thy will be done.” And, perhaps, this loving self-surrender of Isaac made it all the harder for the father’s heart. But, somehow, we can not understand it, only in the light of complete self-surrender to the will of God, he “bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood,” and, nerving himself for the last great act, he “stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” But God, during this scene on Mount Moriah, was an interested spectator. He saw that the obedience of faith--the complete self-surrender of Abraham’s will--was perfect. “And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, ‘Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.’” It is worthy of observation that, while the command to offer up Isaac came in a dream, and therefore open to misgiving, the command to stay his hand is spoken by the angel of Jehovah out of heaven. Abraham was perfect in his faith, and how far it reached into the great love for God and self-surrender to His will, we shall never know. Paul, speaking of this wonderful victory over self, said that Abraham accounted that God was able to raise up Isaac, “even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.” Though all his hope, humanly speaking, perished out of his heart when he took up the sacrificial knife on Moriah, yet his faith overleaped human limitations into the infinite ability of God to raise up Isaac out of the ashes upon his altar. Such faith was possible for Abraham, for God asks no impossibilities at the hands of men, and what was possible for this man of faith is possible for any of us, if we are willing to pay the price. Let no one think, however, that such fruits of righteousness drop into the lap of the faithless.