Chapter XXX (5)

Ahaziah fell through the lattice, and in his helplessness he became religious. Man must have some God. Even Atheism is a kind of religion. When a man recoils openly from what may be termed the public faith of his country, he seeks to apologize for his recoil, and to make up for his church absence by creating high obligations of another class. He plays the patriot; he plays the disciplinarian; he will be a Spartan in personal training and drill--in some way he will try to make up for or defend the recoil of his soul from the old altar of his country.

It is in their helplessness that we really know what men are. Do not listen to the frivolous and irresponsible chatter of men who, being in robust health, really know nothing about the aching, the sorrow, the pain, the need and the agony of this awful human life.

What does our helplessness suggest? Instantly we go out of ourselves to seek friendship, assistance and sympathy. “Oh, would some gentle hand but touch my weariness!” Thus cries the helpless one. All that, being fairly and duly interpreted, has a religious signification. The cry for friendship is but a subdued cry for God.

Sometimes men will invent Gods of their own. This is what was done, practically, by Ahaziah. Men will go out after novel deities. This is what is being done every day--not under that name, but the mere name makes no difference in the purpose of the spirit. Say new enjoyments, new entertainments, new programs, new customs--these, being interpreted as to the heart of them, mean new altars, new helpers, new gods.

It is said of Shakespeare that he first exhausted worlds, and then invented new. That was right. It was but of the liberty of a poet to do so. But it is no part of the liberty of the soul. Necessity forbids it, because the true God cannot be exhausted. He is like His own nature, so far as we know it in the great creation; He is all things in one, gleaming and dazzling as noon-tide, soft and gentle as the balmy wind, strong as the great mountains and rocks, beauteous as the tiny fragrant flowers, musical as the birds that make the air melodious, awful as the gathered thunder which hovers above the Earth as if in threatening.

Who can exhaust nature?

Who can exhaust nature’s God?

Still, the imagination of man is evil continually. He will invent new ways of enjoying himself. He will degrade religion into a mere form of interrogation. This is what Ahaziah did in this instance: “Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this disease.” All that we sometimes want of God is that He should be the great fortune teller.

How true it is that Ahaziah represents us all in making his religion into a mere form of question asking--in other words, into a form of selfishness!

The messengers have now come. They have taken their speech from their king, and they are on the road to consult Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron. But who is this who meets them, and who asks:

“Is it not because there is not a God in Israel that ye go to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?”

The men had said nothing about their errand. Who is it that reads the heart night and day, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike, and from the fire of whose eye nothing is hid? How do we get the impression that when we have perfected our lie it is in some sense public property? We are sure the man whom we meet knows it. He looks as if he did.

Elijah is an abrupt speaker. The “hairy man” and “girt with a girdle of leather” did not study the scanning of his sentences. He struck with a battering ram; his interrogations were spears that quivered in the heart; his looks were judgments. What an effect he produced upon these men! Why did they not go past him and say: “Keep thy speeches to thyself, thou hairy man, nor interfere with the king’s messengers”?

We can not do that. We know that some men are not to be turned away so. We may attempt to deceive, evade or disappoint them, but they have a magnetic and most marvelous influence upon us. Though they do not speak in the imperative mood, they speak with imperative force.

The men turned back like whipped children to tell the king what they had heard, and Ahaziah was surprised at their early return. He can not sleep. He asks that the book of the chronicles may be brought, that he may look up events and see where the loop slipped, where the wrong entry was made, or where the minutes were not carried out in detail.

All this means that Elijah lives in some form or other and will meet us and confront us and have it out with us.

Look at the conflict between Ahaziah and Elijah, the Tishbite. Ahaziah is the king and Elijah is only the prophet, and the king ought to have every thing his own way ex-officio. Now we shall see what metal Elijah is made of. He handled kings as if they were little children. He took them up and set them down behind him and said: “Wait there until I return, and stir at your peril.”

The prophet should always be the uppermost man. Kings are nothing compared to teachers and seers--men who hold the judgments of God on commission. The great men of the nation are the prophets, the teachers, the educators of thought, the inspirers of noble sacrificial enthusiasm. See how Elijah tramps among the kings. He has no favor to ask. If he were driven to ask for one morsel of bread, he would be Elijah no more.

Ahaziah sends to Elijah and says: “Come down.” These words sound very commanding and imperative. Elijah answered: “If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from Heaven and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from Heaven and consumed him and his fifty.”

Look at the conflict and its parties. On the one hand, petulance; on the other, dignity. On the one side, anger--fretful, fuming, petty; on the other, judgment--calm, sublime, comprehensive, final.

Ekron was one of the royal cities of the Philistines. Its situation is pointed out with considerable minuteness in Scripture. It is described as lying on the northern border of Philistia and of the territory allotted to Judah. It stood on the plain between Bethshemesh and Jabneel. Jerome locates it on the east of the road leading from Azotus (Ashdod) to Jamnia (Jabneel). From these notices we have no difficulty in identifying it with the modern village of Akir. Akir stands on the southern slope of a low and bleak ridge or swell which separates the Plain of Philistia from Sharon. It contains about fifty mud houses, and has not a vestige of antiquity except two large and deep wells and some stone water troughs. Ekron means “wasteness.” The houses are built on the accumulated rubbish of past ages, and, like their predecessors, if left desolate for a few years they would crumble to dust. The most interesting event in its history was the sending of the ark to Bethshemesh. A new cart was made and two milch kine yoked to it, and then left to choose their own path; “and they took the straight way to the way of Bethshemesh,” the position of which can be seen in a gorge of the distant mountains eastward. The deity worshiped at Ekron was called Baal-zebub, and we may conclude from the story of Ahaziah that this oracle had a great reputation, even among the degenerate Israelites. Ekron was a large village in the days of Jerome, and also in the age of the crusades.

ASA.

Asa was a good king of Judah. He “did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord, his God.” Not only “good and right,” because these might be variable terms. There are persons who set themselves to the presumptuous and impious task of settling for themselves what is “right” and what is “good.”

In the case of Asa, he did not invent a righteousness, nor did he invent a goodness which he could adapt to his own tempers, ambitions and conveniences. He was right and good and “did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord, his God.”

While the land had peace, Asa set to work and built walls, towers and fences, and did all that he could for the good of his country.

Zerah, an Ethiopian warrior, did not understand silence. He mistook quietness for languor. He made the vulgar mistake of supposing that quietness was indifference. He did not know that repose is the very highest expression of power.

Zerah brought against Asa, king of Judah, no fewer than a million soldiers--to us a large number, but to the Orientals quite a common array. Zerah’s host was the largest collected army of which we read in Scripture, but it does not exceed the known numbers of other Oriental armies in ancient times. Darius Codomannus brought into the field at Arbela a force of 1,040,000. Xerxes crossed into Greece with certainly above a million combatants. Artaxerxes Mnemon collected 1,260,000 men to meet the attack of the younger Cyrus.

What was to be done? Asa did not shrink from war, though he never courted it. He must meet the foe in battle. Before doing so he must pray.

“Lord, it is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many or with them that have no power. Help us, O Lord, our God, for we rest on Thee; and in Thy name we go against this multitude. O Lord, thou art our God; let not man prevail against Thee.”

Having risen from their knees, they launched themselves against the Ethiopians, and were mighty as men who answer straw with steel. They fought in God’s name and for God’s cause, and the thousand thousand of the Ethiopians were as nothing before the precise and terrific stroke of men who had studied war in the school of God.

The defeat of Zerah is one of the most remarkable events in the history of the Jews. On no other occasion did they meet in the field and overcome the forces of either of the two great monarchies between which they were placed. It was seldom that they ventured to resist, unless behind walls. Shishak, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander and Ptolemy I. were either unopposed or only opposed in this way. On the other occasion on which they took the field--which was under Josiah against Necho--their boldness issued in a most disastrous defeat.

Asa, then, began upon a good foundation; he established himself upon a great principle. That is what all, young people especially, should take to heart right seriously. Do not make an accident of your lives--a thing without center, purpose, certitude or holiness. Be right in your great foundation lines, and you will build up a superstructure strong, after the nature and quality of the foundation upon which you build. Do not snatch at life. Do not take out an odd motto here and there and say: “This will do for the occasion.” Life should be deeply laid in its bases, strongly cemented together in its principles, noble in its convictions; then it can be charitable in its concessions and recognitions.

“And Asa took courage, and put away the abominable idols out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities which he had taken from Mount Ephraim, and renewed the altar of the Lord.”

Let us not trifle with the occasion by suggesting that we have no idolatries to uproot, no heathen groves to examine, to purify or to destroy. That would indeed be making light of history and ignoring the broadest and saddest facts of our present circumstances. The world is full of little gods, man-made idols, groves planted by human hands, oppositions and antagonisms to the tried Theism of the universe.

We are apt to think that the idols are a long way off--far beyond seas; or that they existed long centuries ago and spoke languages now obsolete or forgotten.

Nothing of the kind. They live here; they build today. Our gods are a million strong. We do not call them gods, but we worship them none the less. Luck, Accident, Fortune, Fashion, Popularity, Self-Indulgence--these are the base progeny of idols that did once represent some ideal thought and even some transcendental religion. Idolatry has retrograded; polytheism has gone quickly backward.

Asa said, in effect: “We must be right about our gods before we can be right with one another.” That is true teaching. With a wrong theology we never can have a thoroughly sound and healthy economic system.

This was the corner-stone upon which Asa built his great and gracious policy. What was the effect of it upon other people? We find that the effect then was what it must always be:

“They fell to him out of Israel in abundance when they saw that the Lord, his God, was with him.”

Such is the influence of a great leadership. If Asa had been halting, the people would have halted, too. Asa was positive; and positiveness, sustained by such beneficence, begets courage in other people. “They fell to him out of Israel in abundance”--that is, they came over to him and were on his side. They ranked themselves with Asa; they looked for his banner and called it theirs, “when they saw that the Lord, his God, was with him.”

Nations perish for want of great leaders. Social reforms are dependent to a large extent upon the spirit of the leadership which has adopted them. The Church is always looking around for some bolder man, some more heroic and dauntless spirit, who will utter the new truth, if any truth can be new--say, rather, the next truth; for truth has always a next self, a larger and immediately impending self, and the hero, who is also martyr, must reveal that next phase of truth and die on Golgotha for his pains.

Can we not, in some small sense, be leaders in our little circles--in our business relations, in our family life, in our institutional existence? Many people can follow a tune who can not begin one. That is the philosophy we would unfold and enforce.

Regard all leaders with prayerful hopefulness in so far as they want to do good and to be good. Sympathize with them; say to Asa, even the king: “What thou hast done thou hast well done; in God’s name we bless thee for the purification of the land and for the encouragement of all noble things.”

Asa showed the limits of human forbearance and human philosophy. He broke down in the very act of doing that which was right because he went too far. He made a covenant, and the people made it along with him.

Solemn renewals of the original covenant which God made with their fathers in the wilderness occur from time to time in the history of the Jews, following upon intervals of apostacy. This renewal in the reign of Asa is the first on record. The next falls three hundred years later, in the reign of Josiah. There is a third in the time of Nehemiah. On such occasions the people bound themselves by a solemn oath to observe all the directions of the Law, and called down God’s curse upon them if they forsook it.

“And they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and all their soul; that whosoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.”

That is the danger. You can not make men religious by killing them, by threatening them, by inflicting upon them any degree of penalty. Do not force a child to church. Lead it; lure it; make the church so bright and homelike and beautiful that the child will eagerly long for the time to come when the door will be opened.

Asa was impartial. There was a touch of real grandeur about the man. He would not even allow his mother to keep an idol. The queen had an idol of her own “in a grove.”

“And also concerning Maachah, the mother of Asa, the king, he removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove; and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it and burnt it at the brook Kidron.”

Thus ruthlessly Asa disestablished that little royal church. See how burningly in earnest the man was, and what a man will do when his earnestness is fervent! He knows nothing about fathers, mothers, partialities or concessions. He says: “Light is the foe of darkness, and you can not have any little dark corner of your own. This light must find you out, chase away every shadow and purify every secret place in human life and thought.”

Some have supposed that Maachah, the mother of Abijah, and Maachah, the “mother” of Asa, were different persons, the former being the daughter of Absalom, the latter the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. There are really no grounds for this. Maachah, the mother of Abijah, enjoyed the rank of queen mother not only during his short reign of three years, but also during that of her grandson, Asa, until deposed by him on account of her idolatry.

The original word for “idol” appears to signify a “horrible abomination” of some monstrous kind; and instead of “in a grove” we should read “for an asherah,” the wooden emblem of the Canaanitish deity.

There seems little doubt that some obscene emblem is meant, of the kind so often connected with worship of the productive powers of nature in ancient religions--substituted, as a still greater abomination, for the ordinary asherah. Clearly, the act of Maachah was one of so flagrant a kind that Asa took the unusual step, on which the historian here lays great stress, of degrading her in her old age from her high dignity, besides hewing down her idol and burning it publicly under the walls of Jerusalem.

“Now,” said Asa, in effect, “what is good for the public is good for the individual; what is good for the subject is good for the queen.”

ATHALIAH.

Athaliah was a king’s daughter and a king’s wife. She had a son whose name was Ahaziah, but, as he was an invalid, he did not occupy the throne longer than about twelve months.

As soon as his mother saw that he was dead a fierce and most murderous passion seized her heart. She then resolved to be queen herself.

In order to carry out this nefarious purpose, she slew all the seed royal, so that, there being no successor to the throne, she ascended it and reigned as queen.

It is very wonderful that some of the most cruel and startling things in the world have been done by women. One called Laodice poisoned her six sons one by one, that she might be empress of Constantinople. Another, ironically named Irene, took the eyes out of her own boy, that he might be incapable of empire, and that she might reign alone.

These things were done in the ancient time. Is any of the cruelty of heart left still? The accident may be changed--what about the passion and purpose of the heart? Let every one answer the question individually.

Athaliah made her heap of corpses and laughed in her mad heart, saying that now she was queen. But always some Fleance escapes the murderer’s clutch. In that heap of corpses there was an infant boy, hardly twelve months old; he was spared. The sword had not taken his little life, but the queen knew not that the child Joash had escaped. He was taken and with his nurse was hidden in the Temple, and there he was trained by the good priest, Jehoiada, for some six years. All the while the queen was reigning and doing evil.

The little boy was saved by his aunt, Jehosheba, and when six years had passed and the boy was seven years of age, being twelve months old when he was snatched from impending ruin, Jehoiada called the rulers together and all the chief and mighty men of Israel. He then revealed the secret to them.

Having disposed these dignitaries in military order and with military precision around the person of the young king, Jehoiada brought the crown and put it upon his head, and he gave him the testimony or Book of Leviticus; and, having gone through all this ceremonial process, the young king stood upright by the pillar of inauguration in the Temple, and all that great throng then clapped their hands and shouted: “God save the king!” Louder the shout rang till the queen heard it in her own house, which was not far off.

“The nearer the church, the farther from God,” has been wittily said.

Athaliah hastened to the sacred place to know the reason of this hilarious tumult, and when the case was made clear to her she shrieked and cried:

“Treason! Treason!”

But her voice found no echo in the hearts of men. Not a soul fluttered--not a heart started up in the royal defense. The woman--the evil daughter of an evil mother--was taken out by the way along which the horses came into the king’s house, and the sword which she had thrust into the throats of others drank her own blood.

In an event of this kind there must be some great lessons for all time. These are not merely momentary ebullitions of wrath or malice. They have history in them; they are red with the common blood of the whole race.

Very few men stand out in ancient history with so fair and honorable a fame as good Jehoshaphat. It is like a tonic, intellectual and spiritual, to read his vivid history. He was a grand king--long-headed, good-hearted, honest and healthy in purpose of doing wondrous things for his kingdom and for the chosen of God.

But is there not a weak point in every man? Does not the strongest man stoop? Does not great Homer sometimes nod?

Jehoshaphat had this weakness, that he hankered after some kind of connection with the wicked house of Ahab. He had a son, whose name was Jehoram (or Joram), and he wanted his son married. He must look around for royal blood. Explain it as we may--no man has explained it fully yet--Jehoshaphat wanted to be connected with the evil house of Ahab. To that house he looked for a wife for his son, Jehoram. His son married Athaliah, and she brought into the kingdom all the idolatry of Ahab and the fierce blood-thirstiness of Jezebel. That was the root of the mischief. Some roots lie a long time before they begin to germinate. There may be roots in our lives which will take ten years or forty years to develop, but the root will bring forth according to its kind. Let us take care what roots we plant in our lives--what connections we form.

Jehoram, the son of good Jehoshaphat, walked in the evil ways of the kings of Israel, and he wrought that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. Mark the reason given by the inspired historian: “He had the daughter of Ahab to wife.”

What secrets were indicated by that one reason! What a whole volume of tragedy is wrapped up in that brief sentence!

The responsibility seems to a large extent transferred from Jehoram and placed upon his wife, who was a more subtle thinker, a more desperate character, with a larger brain and a firmer will, with more accent and force of personality. Jehoram played the evil trick, repeated the foul habit, went in the wrong direction, bowed down to forbidden altars, for--“he had the daughter of Ahab to wife.” She lured him; the seduction was hers; she won the conquest. When he would have bowed the knee to the God of Heaven, she laughed at him and mocked him into Baal worship. He fell as a victim into her industrious and cruel hands.

“Be not unequally yoked together.” Do not look upon marriage lightly; do not suppose that it is a game for the passing day, a flash and gone, a hilarious excitement, a wine-bibbing, a passing around of kind salutations, then dying away like a trembling echo. Beware what connections you form, and do not suppose that the laws of God can be set aside with impunity. Get out of your heads the infinite mistake that you can do as you like and escape the operation of divine law. Deliver yourselves from the cruel delusion that you can sow tares and reap wheat. Be not deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows that shall he also reap.

Our family life explains our public attitude and influence. What we are at home we are really abroad.

Wives, do not destroy your husbands. When they would do good, help them. When they propose to give to the cause of charity, suggest that the donation be doubled, not divided. When they would help in any good and noble work, give them sympathy, prayer and blessing. We never knew a man yet of any enduring public power that was not made by his wife, and we never knew a public man yet that fully appreciated the value of that ministry. It is secret; it is at home; it does not show. It is chalked on a black-board, and not gilded on a high ceiling; it is silent, but vital.

We have seen a man go down in his church life, and we have wondered why. It was his wife--the daughter of Ahab--who was degrading him, narrowing him and dwarfing him in his thinking and sympathy.

We have seen a man go up in his public influence, and we have found that it was his wife who was encouraging him, helping him, telling him that he was on the right way, and wishing him good luck in the name of the Lord.

See to it that your home is right. Have a beautiful home--morally and religiously; a sacred house, a sanctuary where joy is the singing angel. And then, when you come abroad into the market-place, into the pulpit, into parliament, into trade and commerce or into any of the social relations of life, you will bring with you all the inspiration which comes from a home that blooms like a garden or glows like a Summer sun.

Do not suppose that the divine purpose can be set aside by Athaliahs, Irenes, Laodices or any false, furious or desperate characters of any kind.

The Lord promised David that he should always have a candle in Jerusalem. The light was very low sometimes--it was reduced to a spark in young Joash; but it was God’s candle, and Athaliah’s wild breath could not blow out that light. The word of the Lord abideth for ever.

Observe a very strong peculiarity in human nature, as shown in the conduct of Athaliah. She went into the Temple and saw the young Joash with a crown upon his head, and she shrieked out: “Treason! Treason!”

Poor innocent Athaliah! Who would not pity so gentle a dove, with a breast of feathers and a cruel dart rankling in it? Sweet woman--gentle and loving creature--injured queen! Her hands were perfectly clean; she was the victim of a cruel stratagem. She was outwitted by heads longer than hers. She, poor unsuspecting soul, had been brought into this condition, and all she could do was to cry in injured helplessness:

“Treason! Treason!”

How moral we become under some circumstances! How very righteous we may stand up to be under certain provocations! Who could but pity poor Athaliah, who had nursed her grandchildren with a wolf’s care? We do this very self-same thing very often in our own lives. Where is the man who does not suppose that he has a right to do wrong? But let other people do wrong, and then hear him!

Given a religious sect of any name whatsoever, that has the domination of any neighborhood, and the probability is that that religious sect will use its supremacy somewhat mischievously in certain circumstances. It will not let anybody who opposes its tenets have an acre of ground in that neighborhood, nor will it allow any sect that opposes its principles to build a church there. No! It takes a righteous view of the circumstances; it will not trifle with its responsibilities; it can allow no encroachment. It is charged with the spirit of stewardship, and must be faithful to its sacred obligations.

So it cants and whines, whatever its name be. If it be the name we bear religiously, so much the worse. We speak of no particular sect, but of any sect that may be placed in such peculiar circumstances as to claim the domination and supremacy in any neighborhood.

Now, let any member of that sect leave that particular locality and go to live under a wholly different set of circumstances, and apply for a furlong of ground, or for a house that he may occupy as tenant. Then let it be found that his religious convictions are a bar to his enjoyment of local properties and liberties. He will cry out: “Persecution! Persecution!” How well it befits his lips! The very man who in one district persecuted to the death those who opposed him removes to another locality, where a screw is applied to his own joints, and he raises the cry of persecution. It is Athaliah’s old trick, and will have Athaliah’s poor reward.

See how the cry of the wicked is unheeded. Athaliah was a woman, and by so much had a claim upon the sympathy of the strong. Yet no man’s heart went out to her in loyal reverence.

Jehoash (or Joash, as the name was shortened) was trained in the Temple, under the good Jehoiada. He was blessed in his aunt--for it was his aunt who took him, the daughter of Ahab, but not by the mother of Athaliah--and Joash did good all the days of Jehoiada, the priest. See the influence of a noble life. See how religion may help royalty, and how that which is morally true lifts up patriotism to a higher level. No country is sound at heart--through and through good and likely to endure--that draws not the inspiration of its patriotism from the loftiness and purity of its religion.

All these tragedies are making the Earth reek with abomination today. Athaliah lives in a vigorous progeny.

BALAAM.

Balaam comes into the narrative most suddenly--but he will never go out of it again. Other men have come into the Bible story quite as suddenly, but they have only remained for a time. Balaam will never disappear; we shall read of him when we come to the Book of the Revelation of John the Divine.

There are some historical presences that you can never get rid of. It is useless to quibble and question. The same mystery occurs in our own life. Some persons, having been once seen, are seen for ever. You can not get away from the image or the influence, or forget the magical touch of hand or mind or ear; they turn up in the last chapter of your life Bible. You can not tell whence they come. Their origin is as great a mystery as is the origin of Melchisedek; they come into your lifelines as quickly and abruptly as came Elijah, the Tishbite; and they take up their residence with you--subtly coloring every thought, secretly and mightily turning speech into new accents and unsuspected expressions full of significance and revealing that significance in ever-surprising ways and tones.

Why sit down and look at the story of Balaam as though it were something that occurred once for all? It occurs every day. God teaches by surprise. He sets the stranger in our life, and while we are wondering He turns our wonder into a mystery more sublime.

Who would have a life four-square, in the sense of limitation, visible boundary, tangible beginning and ending? Who would not rather be in the world as if he had been in some other world, and as if he were moving on to some larger world? We lose power when we lose mystery. Let us not chaffer about words. If the spirit of mystery is in a man, the spirit of worship is in him; and if the spirit of worship is in him, it may detail itself into beliefs, actions and services which are accounted right, and whose rightness will be proved by their beneficence. Balaam comes as suddenly as Melchisedek, as unexpectedly as Elijah; but we shall find him at the very last an instructive historical character.

He is called Balaam, the son of Beor, and he is domiciled at Pethor, on the River Euphrates. At that time the king of Moab was called Balak, and when Balak saw how Israel had destroyed the Amorites he said:

“Fighting is out of the question. If we have to come to battle, we may as well surrender before we begin; the numbers are overwhelming. Now shall this company lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field.”

You can hear the lick and the crunch, and be present at the destruction. It was a day of fear and much sorrow in Moab.

What, then, was to be done?

Herein came the wisdom of Balak. He also lives to the end of life’s chapter, for to the end of that chapter we shall find the touch of superstition in the human mind. Balak would have recourse to supernatural help. He had heard of Balaam, the soothsayer of Pethor--a man of divination, a person who had power to bless and to curse--the Simon Magus of his day. So he took advantage of his superstition, and thought to sow the air with curses which would work where his little sword could not reach.

That is not a mean thought. Call it perversion or superstition--you do not touch the inner and vital mystery of the case. The great agonies of life are not to be explained by calling them perversions, or labeling them superstitions, or denouncing them as nightmares or dreams; they are there. Man must obey voices which are not always articulate and reportable as to words and tones. It may be more superstitious to deny the supernatural than to affirm it. Never forget the cant that is talked against cant.

Do not believe that they are the heavenly, pure and brilliant souls who have no church, no religion, no altar; who live under the dome of their own hats and walk on the marble of their own boots. Whose prophets, pray, are they? They must be accounted for, as well as the Melchisedeks, the Balaams and Elijahs of old time. What is their history? Where have they made their mark? What marvels of beneficence have they performed? Or do they only live in the very doubtful region of sneering at other people’s piety?

Balak’s was a great thought. We do not adopt its form, but we should perhaps do unwisely to reject its spirit and intent. Balak said: “Numbers are against us. If it is to be a mere contention of army against army, Moab will be destroyed at once. The thing to be done--if it can be done--is to enlist the service and the action of the supernatural.” Quite right. We say so now. If that can be done, any other thing that can be done is contemptible in comparison.

So Balak sent for Balaam, who made answer that he would not come. By-and-by Balak sent other princes more honorable still, with offers of promotion and honor and abundant wages. Balaam said he would ask God. He asked God, and angered Him by so doing. Some second prayers are worse than superstitions.

So God said: “If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go with them; yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do.” But God’s anger was kindled against Balaam.

“And God’s anger was kindled because he went; and the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now, he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants were with him. And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand; and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field; and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in a path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side and a wall on that side.”

When Balak heard of Balaam’s arrival he was glad. Gold went for nothing, now the soothsayer had come. Riches were as water poured forth. In those days the supernatural went for something in the market-place. It is the cheapest of all things now. Ideas are without value; religious thoughts are mere breath. But Balaam remembered that he was only to speak what God told him; so he began to play the priest. He would have altars put up.

He took up his parable, and said: “Balak, the king of Moab, hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying: ‘Come, curse me Jacob,’ and ‘Come, defy Israel.’”

Balaam would have altars put up and sacrifices rendered. But the answer was: “No. Israel can not be cursed.”

So Balak took him to another point of view, where perhaps, the multitude looked greater or did not look so great. “And he took up his parable, and said: ‘Rise up, Balak, and hear; hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor.’” And again the people were to rise like a lion, and lift up themselves as a young lion; and the people were not to lie down until they had eaten of the prey and drunk of the blood of the slain.

“Well, then,” said Balak, “if that be the case, this thou must do for me: Neutralize thyself; be nothing; act as if thou hadst not come at all. Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all.”

But Balaam said: “No. You can not treat God’s messengers in that way. As a matter of fact, they are here; you have to account for them being here, and to reckon with them while they are here.”

We can not quiet things by ignoring them. Simply by writing “Unknowable” across the heavens we really do not exclude supernatural or immeasurable forces. The ribbon is too narrow to shut out the whole Heaven. It is but a little strip, and looks contemptible against the infinite arch. We do not exclude God by denying Him, nor by saying that we do not know Him, or that He can not be known. We can not neutralize God, so as to make Him neither the one thing nor the other.

So Balaam was the greatest mystery that Balak had to deal with. It is just the same with the Bible--God’s supernatural Book. It will not lie where we want it to lie. It has a way of getting up through the dust that gathers upon it and shaking itself, and making its pages felt. It will open at the wrong place. Would it open at some catalogue of names it might be tolerated, but it opens at hot places, where white thrones are and severe judgments, and where scales are tried and measuring wands tested. It will speak to the soul about the wrong doing that never came to any thing, and the wicked thought that would have burned the heavens and scattered dishonor upon the throne of God.

Balak said, in effect: “Would to Heaven I could get rid of this man.” He took Balaam to another point of view, and Balaam “set his face toward the wilderness, and took up his parable.” He sang a sweet and noble song: “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! And thy tabernacles, O Israel! As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river’s side, as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters. He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath, as it were, the strength of an unicorn; he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones and pierce them through with his arrows. He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a great lion; who shall stir him up? Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.”

Balak made a bad bargain that day. He added unto his troubles, instead of diminishing them.

Balak would gladly have parted with Balaam, but he could not get rid of him; and Balak was wroth. It became a king to become angry. And Balak’s anger was kindled against Balaam, and he smote his hands together and said unto Balaam: “I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast altogether blessed them these three times. Therefore, now flee thou to thy place. I thought to promote thee unto great honor, but lo, the Lord hath kept thee back from honor.”

Balaam then made a great speech to Balak. He said: “Is this not precisely what I said to the king’s messengers? Did I not say: ‘If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I can not go beyond the commandment of the Lord, to do either good or bad of mine own mind; but what the Lord saith, that will I speak’? Now, I will tell that which I see.”

And then came the parable of the man whose eyes are open:

And he took up his parable, and said: “Balaam, the son of Beor, hath said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said, he hath said which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open; I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh; there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth. And Edom shall be a possession, Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies; and Israel shall do valiantly. Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, and shall destroy him that remaineth of the city.”

Then the parable is continued, Balaam looking Balak full in the face; and last of all “Balaam rose up, and went and returned to his place, and Balak also went his way.”

You can not carve your God into any shape that will please your fancy. You can not send for any true faith and bribe it to speak your blessings or your cursings. Balaam was a man of noble sentiments. Look at some of his words: “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” And again: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent.” And again: “I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh.”

Then take the grand words which he spoke to Balak, as reported in the prophecies of Micah. Never did man preach a nobler sermon than this: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”

Who can amend that speech? Who can refine that gold? Who dares touch that lily with his mean paint? Who taught Balaam that great speech?

We sometimes say we find, scattered up and down in ancient literature, morals as beautiful as any we find in the Bible. Possibly so. Who wrote them? Whence did they come? Is God the God of one corner of the creation? Is God a parochial Deity?

Is there not a spirit in man--universal man--and does not the Spirit of the Most High give him understanding? Wherever there is a line of beauty, God wrote it; wherever there is a sentiment which is charged with the spirit of beneficence, that may be claimed as a good gift of God.

Apostle Paul never uttered a nobler sentiment than is uttered by Balaam, as reported in the prophecies of Micah. This is the Sermon upon the Mount in anticipation. That is the vicious Church, built on the wrong foundation, aiming at the wrong Heaven, which does not recognize in every literature and in every nation all that is good, noble, wise, prophetic.

Balaam’s convictions and wishes disagreed sometimes. Therein he was most human. He knew he ought not to go to Balak, and yet he wished to go. He would ask the second time; he would doubt his own convictions, or he would adjust them according to the shape and temper of circumstances. Wherever he came from, he claims herein to be quite a near neighbor of ours. Doubt may exist as to the exact relation of Pethor to the river upon which it was built, but there can be no doubt whatever of the blood relationship between Balaam and our own age. Speaking impulsively from the center of his convictions, he said: “No. Nothing shall tempt me to go. You speak of gold and silver. Were Balak to give me his house full of gold and silver, I would not go. I am the Lord’s servant, and the Lord’s work alone will I do.”

Then the thought occurred to him--a second message coming, borne by more honorable princes: “Perhaps I might go and obtain this wealth and honor, and still do my duty.”

He is on the downward road now. A man who thinks to do forbidden things and spend the bounty for the advantage of the Church is lost; there is no power in him that can overcome the gravitation that sucks him downward. He says: “I will bring back all Balak’s gold and silver, and add a transept to the church or another course of marble to the altar.”

He will never return. God will not have His house so patched and bungled; nor does He want Balak’s gold for the finishing of His sanctuary. A nobler spirit was Abram, who said no to the king of Sodom, “lest thou shouldest say: ‘I have made Abram rich.’”

The whole story of Balaam is intensely Oriental and primeval. The first deputation is dismissed in obedience to a divine warning; but, so far as we know, “the wages of unrighteousness,” which Balaam loved, are carefully retained. A second embassy of nobler messengers, carrying richer gifts, succeeds. He does not at once dismiss them, as God had required, but presses for permission to go with them, which at last is granted.

Balaam would earn the fame and honor apparently within his grasp, yet he knows that when the prophetic afflatus comes on him he can only utter what it prompts. With a feigned religiousness, he protests that if Balak were to give him his house full of silver and gold he could not go beyond the word of Jehovah, his God, to do less or more; but he also bids them wait overnight to see if he may not, after all, be allowed to go with them. If his ignoble wish to be allowed to curse an unoffending nation be gratified, he has the wealth he craves; if it be refused, he can appeal to his words as proof of his being only the mouth-piece of God.

That Balaam should have been allowed to go with Balak’s messengers was only the permission given every man to act as a free agent, and in no way altered the divine command, that he should bless, and not curse. Yet he goes as if at liberty to do either, and lets Balak deceive himself by false hopes, when the will of God has been already decisively made known.

Balaam’s was a maneuvering life--very truthful, and yet very false; very godly, and yet very worldly--a most composite and self-contradictory life, and still a most human life. Balaam never breaks away from the brotherhood of the race in any of his inconsistencies. When he is very good, there are men living today who are just as good as Balaam was; when he is very bad, it would not be difficult to confront him with men who are quite his equals in wrong doing. When he is both good and bad almost at the same moment, he does not separate himself from the common experience of the race. He was always arranging, adjusting, endeavoring to meet one thing by another, and to set off one thing over against another. It was a kind of gamester life--full of subtle calculation, touched with a sort of wonder which becomes almost religious, and steeped in a superstition which reduces many of the actions of life to a state of moral mystery wholly beyond ordinary comprehension.

ELAH.

There was once a king in Israel named Elah. He reigned over Israel, in Tirzah, two years. He had a servant called Zimri, who was a captain of his chariots.

Zimri was a born traitor. Treachery was in his very blood. In the case of Elah, Zimri had a marked advantage, for Elah was a drunken fool. He was in the habit of visiting the house of another of his servants, a steward called Arza. There he had what drink he asked for, and he asked for a great deal--so much that he was often drunk in his servant’s house. On one of these occasions Zimri went in and killed him, and reigned in his stead.

These are the facts with which we have to deal. Are they very ancient, or are they happening about us every day? Is Elah dead? Is Zimri clean gone for ever? And is the house of the servant Arza closed, so that the master can drink no more with the steward?

Elah lives in every man who has great chances or opportunities in life, but allows them to slip away from him through one leak in the character. Elah was a king and was the son of a king, so his openings in life were wide and splendid; but he loved strong drink, and thus through that leak in his character all that might have made him a man oozed away, and left him a king in nothing but the barren name.

Strong drink will ruin any man. It is the supreme curse of England. I will say nothing now of the old, but to the young I may speak a word. I care not, young man, how many and how brilliant in life your chances are, if you drink wine in the morning, as many young men in London do, you are as good as damned already. You think not, but that only shows the infinite deceitfulness of the enemy. He tells you:

“Nothing of the kind. This is parson’s twaddle. Take your wine when you want it, and let it alone when you do not care for it.”

There is suppressed mockery in that high challenge. There is no soundness of health in it. Every drink but leaves you weaker. Every emptied glass is another link added to the strong chain thrown upon your limbs.

Zimri still lives in all persons who take advantage of the weaknesses of others. Zimri knew that Elah was a drunkard, and he further knew through Elah’s habit of drunkenness alone could he be reached. On every other side of his character Elah may have been a strong man--acute, shrewd and far-sighted--but when in drink he was, of course, weak and foolish. Zimri played his game accordingly. He said:

“Elah goes to Arza’s house after sundown. In half an hour after going, he will begin to fall under the effects of wine; then the worst wine will be brought out, and he will go mad under its poison and become drowsy. I must get Arza out of the way. The fool will go on any errand I name, on promise of another horse; that is it.”

The Bible says: “And Zimri went in and smote him and killed him.” He took advantage of his master’s weakness, and his progeny is numerous on the Earth.

Some people trade on the weaknesses of others. They study them. They adapt themselves to them. They watch for striking time, and seldom miss the mark. How else could the net be always ready for the bird? How else could the pit be always prepared for the unsuspecting and bewildered traveler? There is an infernal science in these things--a devil’s black art!