Scripture Biography (Volume 2)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BALAAM. B. c. 1452. Even in the days of Moses the worship of the true God still lingered in the flats of Mesopotamia, which had been its earliest receptacle. But it was as a spark overlaid with dead cinders. It was joined with the worship of false Gods; nevertheless, as long as it existed at all, God condescended, as in the case of Israel, when he was worshipping him under the form of a calf at Dan and Bethel, to hold communication with such petitioners through prophets. But these were of a very different class from those holy unyielding men whom he sent to reclaim his chosen people; they gave way to the general corruption, and abused his gifts to their own base purposes; such at least was Balaam, the only one of his fellows whose memory survives. His story is interesting, were it only on account of its supplying the last occasion on which we hear the name of Jehovah pronounced as that of their God by the heathen world. From that moment Israel appears as separate from it, with regard to the residence of the knowledge of the one and only God, as heaven is from earth. Balaam lived at Peor, on the banks of the Euphrates. God had given him the gift of prophecy. But this precious talent he did not employ to procure more talents, but used it to pass off a great quantity of counterfeit coin. God's revelations came not often enough, nor suitably enough for his worldly purposes. He wished to give an answer to every one that came, so that he may receive a reward at every application, and also multiply applications. And having obtained a reputation as a seer, he turned diviner also. The few successful results which he had obtained from God he made use of to give credit to the mass of his own invention which he so audaciously put forth. We know how much authority the successful in...