History of the Old Covenant. By J. H. Kurtz [pp. 451-486]

4Kurtz on the Old Covenant.
and outward sense which was intended to be carried out in a
figurative and spiritual sense only. The explanation given by
our author is undoubtedly the true one, that the command was
intended only as a trial.> God never designed to allow it to be
carried out to full accomplishment. It was his purpose from
the first, to interfere just as he did interfere in the decisive
moment. It was to discover the strength of Abraham's faith
and the steadfastness of his obedience. And as soon as this
was evidenced, and it was seen that the patriarch's faith did
not stagger, and his unflinching obedience was made to appear,
then the trial was complete. Isaac was already sacrificed in
purpose; to slay him could have answered no further end.
But why was exactly this trial selected? Kurtz answers, it
was that Abraham might be taught by his receiving Isaac back
as it were from the dead, yet more than by the long delay of
his birth, that he was the child not of natural descent but of
the gracious promise. It was that he and Isaac might both
be taught that all their possessions, even a dearest and bestloved child, and life itself are the Lord's, and must be surrendered at his bidding; and what was thus inculcated upon the
first father and first son of the chosen race, was through them
impressed upon all their posterity. But there was a deeper
reason for it than these. The Canaanites, on every hill and
under every green tree sacrificed their children in the service of
their idols; and now it should be made to appear both to the
patriarch and to others, whether he had as earnest an attachment to the true God as they to their miserable idols; whether
he would make such sacrifices for the cause of the God he worshipped, as they for their cruel superstitions. There was a
truth too, obscured and mingled as it was with horrid error, in
the human sacrifices practised by the Canaanites, and indeed to
a greater or less extent by almost every ancient heathen nation.
This should here be-sifted out and handed over to Abraham
and his posterity to be a seed, whence might spring anticipa tions and longings after that, for whose full and complete reve lation the world was not yet prepared. Human sacrifice was
the convulsive effort of heathenism in its despair of finding an
adequate mode of appeasing the anger of God. Men felt, and
rightly felt that some expiation was necessary. They felt, and
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