CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
BALAAM THE INCONSISTENT
THERE are few figures in the Gallery which make one feel so near to modern times as the portrait of Balaam. It is placed in a foreign environment, in a culture long outgrown, ina scene remote from Western experience. It professes to delineate the days of Israel's desert
—that period which, of all others, carries us furthest away from present civilisation. Yet, in defiance of these surroundings, the picture speaks to us as a modern man. The desert becomes a city; the plains of Mesopotamia assume the aspect of the streets of London; the distance of the years is annulled, and we stand in the presence of our contemporaries. In a thousand of these contemporaries we meet the form of Balaam. There he stands—undimmed by the mists of antiquity, uncrushed by the crumbling of empires and the dethroning of dynasties! Three thousand years at least have swept over him in vain. Myriad changes of [171]
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vesture have signalised the human drama since he stood on the arena of the wilderness; but this man has assumed each new costume, has donned each fresh fashion, has worn each mantle of every age, and remains still his inner self, his original self—one of those forms which make us realise that there is an element in humanity which is the same in all centuries and identical in all climes.
I have taken Balaam as the type of the inconsistent man. He belongs to that widest of all classes—the men of two worlds. The two worlds, however, are Heaven and Earth— not Heaven and Hell. He wavers between two principles; but the principles between which he wavers are not good and evil. It would be more correct to say that he is a man struggling betwixt the old and the new. We have, in my opinion, a wrong view of the character of Balaam. We think of him as a backslider from the faith of Moses, as a man tempted by worldly ambition to desert the God of Israel.
A more unjust view cannot be conceived. A man standing on a doorstep may be either coming into the house or going out. Whether he is coming in or going out must be determined by his previous footsteps. Balaam is unGe
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questionably on the doorstep; but he is the man coming 1m—entering the precincts of the God of Israel. His temptation is not the temptation to retreat; it is the temptation to advance—to become a better man. The interruption he experiences, the struggle he experiences, is caused by the breaking of light upon darkness—not by the impinging of darkness upon light. Unless we appreciate this we cannot, I think, do justice to the character of Balaam. Inconsistent he certainly is; but it is the inconsistency, not of one who descends to the moral plain after summering on the top of the mountain, but of one who after long dwelling on the plain begins in later years to climb the mountain. That he ever reached the summit I do not know; I think the narrative leaves him climbing. But he is climbing—not grovelling; and it is in this light we must view him if we would see the full proportions of the man.
I think I shall be most true to the delineation of Balaam in the Great Gallery if I place the man in an environment which will be at once equivalent and modern—in other words, if I give the story a parabolic dress. I will try to put ideas in the place of names. If we prac- [173 ]
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tised such a system more, I think we should find that history repeats itself, and that the life which we relegate to ancient times is very much the life in which at present we live and move. It is the scenery that makes the difference; the actors are always the same. I will clothe in a modern garb the story of this ancient man.
Once in the olden time, there dwelt in Pethor, a town of Mesopotamia on the banks of the Euphrates, a very distinguished religious preacher named Balaam. He was possessed of extraordinary gifts—splendid imagination, graphic descriptive power, and a wonderful faculty of dramatic representation. These qualities had been fostered by the religion of the country to which he ministered
—the land of Moab. The religion of Moab was the worship of a God of Nature. By whatever name or names He was called, this was His characteristic in the eyes of that people. The Moabite worshipped the physically beautiful. He adored the objects of the eye.
He luxuriated in all beauty that was sensuous.
He invested female loveliness with a sacramental value—not without exposing religion to licentious temptations. He delighted, above
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all things, in the vision of mountains.
It _ seemed to him that God's metropolis was there. Wherever he saw physical height, he uncovered his head in adoration. His worship was essentially an aesthetic culture, an admiration of nature's symmetry. In this atmosphere, as I take it, Balaam had been nursed, from this atmosphere he had received his first breath of inspiration—his poetry. It was at the shrine of Moab his imagination had been lighted. Here had been kindled his sense of the physically sublime. Here had been stimulated his architectural power of constructing lofty imagery. Here had been evoked his facility for graphic description and his faculty for artistic delineation. In all these respects Balaam was the child of Moab.
But latterly there had come into his life a second influence. I say 'a second' rather than
'another.' It did not expel the first, but was added to it as a fresh impulse. There had come to the ears of Balaam tidings of a strange people who had emerged from Egypt into the wilderness and were growing in power and greatness day by day. He had heard of their conception of God, and it was to him a novel conception. It was that of a God whose main
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feature was, not beauty, not symmetry, not outward splendour, but righteousness. It was the idea of a Being who desired that they who worshipped Him should worship love, truth, holiness—that His votaries should be composed of the men who served their brother man, who sustained the sanctity of home, who were upright in business, stainless in morals, reliable in testimony. The very novelty took hold of Balaam—the admiration of the internal was such a new thing! He was influenced by the Hebrew movement, but he hid the fact in his heart. He knew that in high places this revival of the religious life was not popular. Its origin was democratic. It was the product of revolution, of rebellion against the authority of Egypt. Kings looked with jealousy upon it; those who favoured it were likely to get no promotion. Balaam had been born and bred a conservative. His interests lay not with the masses but with the classes. His influence as a preacher would be shaken if he allied himself with what was deemed not respectable. Prudence counselled him to keep quiet; yet, in the secret hours he often asked himself if this new movement did not supply the missing link in the religious life.
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By and by there came to him one of those moments of crisis which reveal a man to himself, which force him to examine himself. The office of court-preacher in the royal house of Moab became vacant. King Balak looked round to see if there was anywhere a man of pulpit gifts capable of supporting the dignity of the state religion. His eye lighted on Balaam. He sent a deputation to confer with him. They came to the preacher of Pethor, and offered him the tempting charge. They said: "The king wants a man of culture, of imagination, of brilliant secular gifts. He wants a man whose preaching will attract so as to be a counterpoise. He wants him to strike a key-note which shall be a trump of war against that gloomy view of God which is being propagated by these desert revivalists.
Will you come, and blow that trumpet?'
Then Balaam began to question himself more seriously. Was he in a position to accept such an office? Had he a right to denounce the revivalists of the desert! Was not their
God in a sense already his God! Had He not gained possession of a greater part of his mind than he cared to acknowledge! Was there not something within him which told him that he
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owed allegiance to more than beauty, more than symmetry, more than the laws of art— that there was a law more potent than any natural force, more binding than any aesthetic sympathy! And so Balaam declined the call.
It was accompanied by conditions which jarred upon him, which rose against one side of his nature. With a noble self-denial he put the temptation aside; he said: 'I will not go.'
Then the offer was repeated—in a grander form, with more imposing advantages. A larger deputation came, composed of men of higher position; and with increased pertinacity and enlarged promises the call was pressed on Balaam. The salary was doubled; the privileges were multiplied; the attendant honours were augmented tenfold. Balaam was shaken; he was dazzled by the prospect. It is here more than anywhere else that the inconsistency of his character appears. If a man refuses on the ground of conscience a post worth a thousand a year, he is not justified in reconsidering the matter if the same post is offered at ten thousand. With Balaam it ought not to have been a money question at all; his conscience should have been equally imperative over a mite and over a million. But then, the [ 178 ]
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/ man had two natures; conscience had not con- ) quered all the land. On one side of his being
| he was still a child of Moab—a lover of the physical. The result was that Moab and Israel began to strive within him—the flesh
} against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh.
_ The outer man cried: 'Take the gold; make yourself comfortable, fashionable, famous!' the inner said: 'Do not; palter not with your
} conscience; let no honours tempt you from the | path of honesty!'
_ Balaam, then, like Paul in different circumstances, was in a strait betwixt two. He had
/ a desire to depart and be with the king of | Moab; but duty bade him remain. He could
| not decide at the moment; he required time to think over it. He asked the deputation to } stay at his house overnight. They consented.
| What follows has perplexed all the critics— the Lower as much as the Higher. Hundreds of devout Christians have sought a solution which would free them from a literal interpretation. As this is a matter not for learning but for imagination, I venture to lift my voice
'with those of the 'chiefest apostles,' and to offer with all diffidence a humble contribution
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to the efforts that have been made to clear the mystery.
Balaam went to bed with a tumult in his brain. To go or not to go—that was the question. He laid down his head upon the pillow listening to a dialogue within his own soul— an argument fiercely contested and vehemently maintained. At last nature became exhausted, and he fell asleep; but his waking problem became the problem of his dreams.
In Numbers xxii. 20, we read 'God came to Balaam at night.' I understand the words 'at night' to mean 'in a dream'; and I think that all the sequel of the chapter, up to verse 35, is a description of this dream. He thought that the God of Israel stood before him and said,
'If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go with them.' Then he thought that the morning had come and that, in company with the august deputation, he was already on his way.
And as he travelled in his dream with a heart still full of misgiving, it seemed to him that he was everywhere beset with barriers. Suddenly, the ass on which he rode shied and halted.
Balaam lashed her, spurred her, goaded her; but it was all in vain. Neither the menace of the voice nor the stimulus of p ste iho [ 180 ] ee eae eee ery ede eee le e ee
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the whip were of any avail. Ultimately she fell on the ground and began to utter words of expostulation. There are no wonders in dreamland. Balaam is not surprised at the conversational powers of the naturally dumb animal. He seems more impressed with her argument than with her articulation. He grows calmer and begins to look round; and then, all at once, the obstacle is revealed to him. There, right in the centre of his path, stands a figure with a drawn sword whom he identifies as God's angel and before whom he prostrates himself. The angel warns him that his course is a dangerous one. Balaam offers to return. The angel suggests a compromise.
Balaam is to go, but he is to go without any promise on hzs part. He is to accept the vacant living on the condition that he will only censure the people of Israel when his conscience points to any particular act in which they deserve censure—so I understand the nature of the compact.
With the angel's disappearance Balaam awoke and found that the real morning was 'come. The various voices of the night had been the various voices of his own mind. But of these, the voice of the angel remained para- | [ 181]
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mount. It seemed to offer a prospect of making the best of both worlds. Was it not likely that, after all, occasions would arise in which Balaam might at once be true to his conscience and acceptable to Moab! Was it not almost certain that the children of Israel would sometimes make a slip that called for denunciation! Was it not absolutely certain that at least isolated individuals of the band would be guilty of trespasses and misdemeanours which would enable him to point a moral that would be dear to the heart of Balak! Had he not found at last a way by which he could both keep his conscience clear and raise his fortunes high! He resolved that he would go.
Now, it will be acknowledged that this compromise put Balaam morally in a very dangerous position. It was practically the position of a preacher whose parochial success was proportionate to the amount of sin in the district. The ordinary case of the religious minister is just the reverse; he is deemed successful in proportion as he can give a good report. But when a minister is told that his income will rise with the increase of sin in his parish, he is brought perilously near to a great
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temptation—the temptation of desiring that sin may abound. Balaam was placed in circumstances where his material interests came into conflict with his spiritual interests. His material interest was Israel's sin; his spiritual interest was Israel's holiness. He was the auditor of two simultaneous and opposing voices; the one called on him to contemplate the sea's buried dead, the other bade him count its treasured pearls. Which of these voices was to win?
I think I must answer that the victory remained with the last. I know this is not the common view. We have come to think of Balaam as a man who came to curse the people of God, but who, by an involuntary process, was made to utter words of blessing. I submit that such is not the view suggested by the narrative. Let any one read the twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters of Numbers and say if he thinks these magnificent words were intended to describe the absence of premeditation. But, indeed, there is no room for argument on this point. The narrative tells us in express terms that there was premeditation— that the addresses of the preacher were not even extempore, much less involuntary. It
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tells us that before delivering his sermons he had moments of communion with God. What he said in public was the result of what he thought in private. Many a cleric has entered his study with a determination to please Moab, and has emerged from it with a resolve to bless Israel. I have known more than one man who has sat down to write a life of Christ from an exclusively human standpoint. In each case, he has said to himself, 'I must be abreast of the time; I must explain everything by the causes known to Moab; I must avoid all reference to the supernatural— otherwise I shall be deemed behind the age.'
But as he proceeds in his task, he has found that the Christ he proposes to construct would be more supernatural than the one he seeks to avoid. He has found that to attribute the Christ of the Gospels to natural causes would be to proclaim a real violation of law, a miracle compared to which the healing of the demoniacs would be pure science; and he has been compelled, in the very defence of his scientific reputation, to assume the presence of an influence not measurable by Moabitic lines.
Now, this is a parabolic description of the [ 184 ]
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case of Balaam. We may call him an inconsistent man; but his inconsistency appears, not in the pulpit, but in the study. He enters the study with a naturalistic bias. He is dazzled by the court of Balak, impressed with the honour of being selected as the representative of the age. He would like, if possible, to keep up that reputation—to interpret all texts on the lines of the school of Moab. But, as he reads, he is in communion with a larger influence; and ever more and more that influence becomes the dominant one. He looks at the field of thought from various standpoints, surveys it from different altitudes. But, from whatever height he beholds it, he is borne back to the same conclusion—that the fruits of this field have been matured by no earthly sun. Ever as he gazes, the star of Jacob grows clearer and clearer. Ever as he ponders, the destiny of this tribe of the desert shines forth with greater splendour. Ever as he meditates, the origin of this people seems more unique, more inexplicable, more separate from the world's origins. When Balaam comes out of his study, so far as intellectual conviction is concerned, he has made up his mind—has decided for the kingdom of God.
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Yet Balaam did not outwardly join the kingdom of God. He refused to denounce it; but he would not become a member. Balak heaped him with obloquy and dismissed him; yet he left not the Church of his fathers.
There must have been something pertinaciously loyal about the man—to stick to the old ship when he knew it was doomed and when its crew had treated him with scorn!
Balaam parted from the king, but he never abandoned his allegiance. Before parting he gave his sovereign a word of counsel which has handed down his name to infamy, but which, I think, has been misinterpreted in its motive. What I understand him to have said is this: 'These men of Israel can never be hurt by the word of others, if they are ever to be injured it must be by their own hand.
I propose, O king, a better test of their power than you have offered. You want to see if they can stand your blows; I would ask you to see if they can stand your blandishments.
You seek to kill them by floods; can you kill them by flowers! Try them with your temptations; ply them with the allurements, with the seductions, of your city life! If they can resist these they have proved their right to a [ 186 ]
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unique place in history; if they succumb they will suffer greater loss than the denunciations of any prophet could ever bring.'
This advice, as I have said, has tarnished the name of Balaam with historical infamy.
Yet, I think, unjustly. I believe he spoke in good faith, and with no malign intent, towards
Israel. The test he proposed was a sound one.
It is the counterpart of that which in the great drama the Almighty accepts for Job. In Job's case the problem was, can man resist the temptations of suff ering?—in Israel's case the problem was, can man resist the temptations of pleasure? I cannot see that the latter is a whit less legitimate than the former. I think Balaam both believed and hoped that Israel would stand the test, would emerge from the trial victorious. What motive had he for wishing the contrary! He had no longer any official connection with Balak; he had been dismissed from his service. Did not all his interest lie in the hope that his refusal to curse the children of Israel would be vindicated by the stream of events, and that the faroff glory which he predicted for their race would be already prefigured in the eyes of the king of Moab!
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The rest of the narrative I can only piece together by the threads of imagination. But it seems to me that the order of events was this: Balaam went back to his home. Moab continued her aggressive policy towards the people of God, and formed a league with Midian to bar their way. Israel had no recourse but war. She was bound for the land of Canaan, and her way to Canaan was blocked. If the barrier could not be removed by favour, it must be shattered by force. Israel advanced to battle. She was small among the nations; but her strength lay in her religious faith. Midian too desired such a strength. On her was to fall the brunt of the battle, and she wanted spiritual support.
She thought of Balaam. If that great preacher would stand in her ranks to stimulate the living, to comfort the dying, she believed she would prevail.
Balaam is summoned from his retreat. He obeys. He joins the ranks that are fighting in the cause of his former master, Balak. Not as a soldier does he join, but as a priest, as a consoler. In doing so he displayed no inconsistency with his latest conviction; who needs religious consolation so much as those in the wrong! Balaam fell on the field of battle—
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in the capacity, as I think, not of a warrior but of a priest. He died helping the enemies of Israel—but the help he gave was such as a man may give to those with whom he agrees not. In his last act he has been numbered among the transgressors by the reckoning of history; he is not included in the visible communion of the people of God. Yet he remains on the roll of inspired men, yea, of God's inspired men. His words are authoritative. His sayings are proverbial; they have become part of Holy Writ; they are quoted; they are sung.
Israel is as proud of them as of the utterances. of Isaiah. There is no stronger testimony to the truth that the ways of heaven are wider than the paths of earth and that the inspiration of God is larger than the creeds of Man.
O THOU who hast never left Thyself without a witness in any land, let me not narrow the range of Thy Spirit! Let me not say that Thy voice can only reach the members of the Church Visible! Teach me that Thou hast psalmists even in Moab, seers even in Midian!
Often have I marvelled at the Balaams of this world. I have seen gifted souls, inspired souls,
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who have not been numbered with Thy congregation; I have heard strains of Divine melody which have not come from Thy sanctuary; I have read thoughts of sublime beauty which have not issued from Thy tabernacle;
I have found deeds of sacrificial love which have not radiated from Thy visible altar—and I have wondered. Let me wonder no more!
Thou art larger than Thy tabernacle, Thou art wider than Thine altar. Thou travellest on the wings of the morning. In the uttermost parts of the sea I find Thee. If I say of any spot 'Surely here the darkness will cover me!' behind the curtain I meet Thee/ We do not shut Thee out by shutting the gates on Thee;
Thou canst enter through closed doors. Thy rays are Rontgen rays; they pass through my fleshly barriers, they detect my secret wounds.
Do not let me call my brother an infidel because he joins not Thine outward Church;
Thy Church can join him/ Thou hast recognised hundreds on the road to Emmaus who have not recognised Thee. Thou hast seen
Nathanaels under the fig-tree who never knew Thou wert passing by. Increase my charity,
O God!
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