of mythical material crept into this ancient story before it was reduced to writing-be it so. If to others it says that God may stoop to use the lowest of His creatures for the accomplishment of His purposes-be it so. If others, again, hear in the ass's voice only the echo of Balaam's guilty conscience made to reverberate in his ears by an excited imagination-I shall not quarrel with them. If to the rest the speaking ass says simply this, that a clever man under the prompting of evil passion may be blinder and stupider than any brute—they have certainly got hold of a truth. Let each interpret this portion of the history as he will. I shall leave the ass severely alone and turn to what concerns us far more intimately-the strange workings of the human heart as shown in the ass's master.

Let me briefly recall the situation with its historic setting. For forty years the children of Israel had been wandering up and down the Sinaitic Peninsula. They were now approaching the confines of the promised land. Their victorious advance through the territories of Heshbon and Bashan, filled Balak, King of Moab, with great alarm. He feared, as he saw what had befallen Og and Sihon, a like fate for himself, and cast about him for means of resistance. The fame of Balaam the soothsayer, who lived on the banks of the Euphrates, had reached as far as Moab; and to him Balak, in his extremity, sent messengers with rich presents and large promises, begging him to come and lay these invaders under a solemn malediction; for "I know," said he," that whom thou blessest, is blessed, and he whom thou cursest, is cursed."

Now unless we are prepared to deny in toto the historic worth of this narrative, we must conceive of Balaam as one of those men (like Melchizedek and Jethro) who, though not of the chosen people, had some true knowledge of God, and had at times such vivid intuitions of His will, that he might truly be said to receive communications from Him. When Balak's ambassadors preferred their request, he at once said that he could not accompany them without divine permission. In the silence of the night the answer came, clear and unmistakable, "Thou shalt not go to curse these people, for they are blessed." Disappointed, the messengers return to the land of Moab. But ere long others, more in number and more honourable than they, stand at Balaam's door, and with richer promises renew the first petition. Balaam replies as before, "I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord," but he adds, " Tarry ye here this night, that I may hear what the Lord will say unto me more." More! Why, what more should He say? Had not His first answer been explicit? “Thou shalt not go." Ah, but the presents and the promises of Balak were so alluring Balaam cannot turn his back upon them altogether. He must see if he cannot wring from God permission to go and grasp them. And apparently that permission is given. That night comes another oracle, "Thou shalt go with the men; nevertheless the word that I say unto thee, that shalt thou do." To his own delight and that of the ambassadors, he sets off with them. Yet we read, God was angry with him that he went!

How is that to be explained? Well, in the first

place, close examination discloses the fact that the story of Balaam is compiled from two independent sources, and the older narrative, which contained the words, "God was angry with Balaam that he went," had not said anything about God's giving him permission to go. The other narrative which recorded the permission, said nothing about God's anger. But here, in the Book of Numbers, the two narratives have been pieced together regardless of the apparent contradiction. Apart, however, from this superficial explanation, is there not a deeper one? The divine permission, or what Balaam took to be such, came through the channel of his own mind. How else could it come? And is it not perfectly clear that it shaped itself according to the desires of that mind? One can almost hear him saying to himself, " Yes, I see now; the important thing is that I am not to curse these Israelites; rather, I am to go and bless them." His going was not what God willed, but what Balaam wished God to will-what he ultimately came to think He willed. This is no uncommon experience. When, like Balaam, we will not accept once for all the clear verdict of conscience prohibiting some course that has been suggested to us; when we fall to thinking how convenient it would be if only it were not wrong; when we begin asking whether there be not some middle course by which we may get, in part, at least, what we want without doing violence to our conscience, and our prayers take the form of pleading for God's sanction to our desires-then very often He lets us have our own way, and suffers us to persuade ourselves that the wrong is right. Half a dozen specious reasons

start up in our mind why, in our circumstances, on this special occasion we are really justified in taking the course which at first we clearly saw to be wrong and we take it and think we have divine permission for it.

When the gulf of temptation skirts our path there are three courses open to us. We may run right into it; we may keep as far away from it as possible; or we may try how near we can go without falling into it. The first is the way of the wicked; the second is the way of the righteous; the third is the way of the fool. If Balaam had boldly taken the first, gone at once with the ambassadors and cursed Israel, he would at any rate have reaped the rich rewards of the Moabite king. If he had taken the second, firmly and finally turned his back on them, he would have had the recompense of a good conscience; he would not have perished with the Midianites, nor would his name have been handed down for thousands of years as the type of the souldestroyer. But he took the third course, the way of the fool, and lost everything. He would go friendly to Balak, but would not curse Israel. He would please the heathen king, but would not displease God. He thought something might turn up which would enable him to reconcile the irreconcilable and make the same thing to be and not to be at the same time. And it all ended in his committing a sin worse than that from which he at first revolted with horror. The wonder was that he held out against the temptation so long, as the narrative, to which we now return, shows.

He reaches the land of Moab, and is received with

great honour; but if the promised rewards are to be his, he must solemnly curse the hosts of Israel. Will God suffer him so to do? He dare not, as yet, go flat against God, but he has hopes. He has seven altars built and a bullock and a ram offered on each by the Moabite king. May not Jehovah be propitiated by the offering and grant the king's desire ? He leaves Balak by the altar, and going apart, his face toward the wilderness, waits the coming of the prophetic afflatus. He longs to curse Israel and possess himself of the coveted rewards; but he knows that he is not his own master. Again and again over yonder by the Euphrates he has had experience of a will stronger than his own, when he has gone out toward the wilderness, and, looking up to the midnight heavens with their innumerable glittering stars, has felt his own nothingness. Sinking into a trance he has beheld things unutterable, while some unseen power has taken possession of his tongue, and words not his own of fateful import have flowed in streaming eloquence from his lips. Ah, those ecstatic moments! he knows them well and that over-mastering impulse which, had ever baffled his comprehension! Yes, it is coming on him now, and he cries, "How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed, or how shall I defy whom the Lord hath not defied. For from the top of the rocks I see him and from the hills I behold him. Lo, this people shall dwell alone and shall not be numbered among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel! Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."