SERMON IV.

PREACHED ON THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, 1839.

2 PETER, ii. 15, 16.

Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the prophet.

THE case and character of Balaam were brought before you in the first Lesson of last Sunday afternoon; and we have gone on with his history in the first Lesson of this morning's Service. His name is found in other passages beside that which I have just read to you as the text; and we shall be most likely to judge rightly of this very remarkable and most unhappy man, if we carefully collect and compare the different places in which he is mentioned. I propose,

with the help and blessing of God, to do this ; offering, as we go along, such remarks suited to our own condition as this portion of Holy Scripture suggests, and concluding with some general and practical reflections furnished by the whole.

The conduct of Balaam appears as strange as it is wicked. Sound notions of his own duty, high views of the attributes of Almighty God, are coupled with known, deliberate, and repeated sin. Piety and goodness, aye, inspiration and prophecy, are mixed up with pride and covetousness, and are followed by what is worse than either, (bad as these both are,) by counsel and advice worthy of the Devil himself. We must be upon our guard against two things in considering the case of Balaam. We must not be led away by the glorious things which he said, by the right things which he occasionally did, to think of his behaviour as less wicked than it really was. Neither must we look upon it as an extreme case, at which we may feel surprise, and sorrow, and horror, and shall then have done our part. His character, in the main, is one that may be met with in the world very often, even now. Strip the character and conduct of Balaam of all the singularities of ancient Eastern usage, make allowance for all that belonged to his particular person and office, and you will find temp

tations that meet you from day to day, you will see sins which you may indeed bless God if His grace has kept you back from committing. Strange as the character of Balaam may seem, St. Peter has given us a key to it in the text,a key which will open many a dark and inner chamber of imagery in many a heart. Thousands of years have passed since Balaam was called to his account; but many a man since that time has loved the wages of unrighteousness as he loved them, loved them against light and knowledge, loved them against strong and multiplied warnings. The wages of unrighteousness, the baits which the great Enemy of souls holds out to us, continue to this hour to lead astray many a soul for which Christ died.

At the time when you read of Balaam, the children of Israel had turned the half of the last year of their wandering in the Desert. Forty years, you remember, they were condemned to pass there, a year for a day, after the number of the days during which the spies sent by Moses had searched the land of promise; because they murmured against the Lord, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt.b Their carcases were to fall in the wilderness; and of their whole number, from twenty years

a Ezekiel viii. 12.

b Numb. xiv. 29.

old and upward, none, save Caleb and Joshua, were to be allowed to enter Canaan. The last year of this weary march had now arrived. The Israelites had come to their last halting-place, over against Jericho, the first town of which they took possession when they were allowed to cross the river Jordan. The rest of this book of Numbers, the whole of that repetition of the law, which we have in Deuteronomy, remained still to be gone through; and the great Lawgiver himself was to have his distant view of the land flowing with milk and honey from the top of Pisgah, and to die on Mount Nebo, before it would please God that Joshua should lead them over to take possession of their rest. But they were close upon it, they had it full in view; and Moab, on whose ground they were, was afraid of them, as it had been foretold he should be in the Song of triumph which Moses sang after Jehovah had brought them so wonderfully through the Red Sea. The mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.

C

Balak, who was king of the Moabites at that time, in his terror and alarm, sent a long way off to fetch Balaam, who was in high repute as a soothsayer, (so he is called in Joshua, xiii. 22,)

Exod. xv. 15.

d

or as a prophet, which more honourable name St. Peter expressly gives him in the text. The errand seems to us a most strange one. Come I pray thee, curse me this people, for they are too mighty for me: peradventure I shall prevail, that we may smite them, and that I may drive them out of the land. In old time it was very commonly thought that solemnly appealing to Heaven by one person or nation on behalf of, or for the harm of, another person or nation, was sure to have its effect for good or for evil. The Greeks and Romans had regular officers whose business it was to devote, as they called it, to destruction those with whom they were going to war ; and in the dark places of the Earth, still full of the habitations of cruelty, the Heathen in their blindness are to this day found doing just the same thing. All this may, no doubt, be traced to some vague and uncertain memory of the earliest ages of the world, when solemn blessing and cursing in the name of the One True God certainly did take effect. The Angels, who now do their ministering to the heirs of salvation without being seen by the eye of man, were then wont to shew themselves frequently. The intercourse between Earth and Heaven did not cease all at once, even after Man had fallen, and

d Numbers xxii. 6.