An old man and a young boy trudged up a mountainside. The lad knew that they were going up the mount to offer a sacrifice to their God; but. puzzled at the absence of something to be offered up, he questioned his father (Gen. 22:7), "Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham replied to Isaac, "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering."
Abraham no doubt had believed that his cherished hopes and plans would be fulfilled through the line of Isaac, his lawful son. Earlier in his experience, in his anguish concerning the son of the bondwoman, he had cried to God (Gen. 17: 18), "O that Ishmael might live before thee!" Now again he was being tested. According to his feeble sense of God's directing he was to offer up the son of promise, but an angel opened his eyes, so that it was a ram, which perhaps represents the mistaken sense which he was entertaining, that was laid upon the altar instead of his beloved son.
Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 581) defines "angels" as "God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality." These good thoughts are always at hand to show us that what we need to give up is not anything that is good or useful, but only an erroneous mortal sense.
