Verses 22-35
Balaam Stopped By an Angel
One of the most pious and profound commentators has suggested that all this was seen in a vision; in other words, the narrative may be taken as Balaam's report of a very marvellous dream. Any suggestion will do when men want to get rid of the supernatural. Under such circumstances, the very indifferent man may become an important personage. Anything that will rid us of lines beyond our own personal experience, and give us a sense of comfortable snugness within four visible points, will be received with gratitude by the natural heart. We like insulation. We are pleased with a clock that we can see, every tick of which we can hear, and every indication of which we can read. But the clock is not the time. The time is invisible, impalpable, in many regards incalculable; quite a ghost, a very solemn thing, always talking, and yet talking in a way that is not always clearly apprehended or understood. People like to be comfortable, and nobody can be comfortable with the supernatural who is not in harmony with it. If a certain miracle has not been wrought in the soul, the supernatural becomes a kind of ghost, a spectral presence, an uncanny possibility in the life, and had better be got rid of; and when the mind wants such riddance, any suggestion that will aid in that direction is received with effusive thankfulness. In this instance, we had better, perhaps, in the first place, endeavour to find out what are those things in the story which do lie within the limit of our own experience an experience which we are in danger of exaggerating into a kind of instinct and claim of infallibility. First of all, therefore, instead of troubling the mind with vexing questions which never can be settled, let us collect the lessons which are obviously within the circle of our own observation and experience; after that, we may be in a position to look at certain miraculous aspects and ascertain their import and their divine intention.
It lies quite within our experience that we do get our own way, and yet have a sense of burning and judgment, of opposition and anger all the time. Balaam was invited to go to Balak's country and he said, No. He said No with some emphasis. He was a man of fine impulse, an« his first impulse was generally healthy and strong in a right direction. Instead of giving a hesitant No he gave a bold round thunderous NO! Then Balak tried again; he also believed in importunity. He doubled the bribe, nay, he may have multiplied the bribe by ten. He sent more honourable princes; men who in their own country were accustomed to command, and they assumed the obeisant attitude with great grace and humility. Balaam said, No. But all the thunder had gone out of that No; it was a No which a mean man might have said. However he said I will pray about it, I will consult the Lord when he need not have consulted the Lord at all. Men forget that there is a time when they need not ask the Lord any questions. Never trouble the Lord to know whether you cannot do just a little wrong; he is not to be called upon in relation to business of that kind. He does not pray who palters with moral distinctions, who wants to make compromises, who is anxious to find some little crevice or opening through which he can pass into the land of his own desire. Whimpering hypocrite! miserable miscreant! thou wilt pray in order to get leave to go in the direction pleasant to the imagination or profitable to the pocket and call it prayer! wilt consult the oracle, wilt look to heaven, wilt inquire diligently in the Scriptures, wilt endeavour to find out some sign indicating what God means thee to do, whilst before thou didst pray thou hadst fashioned the answer. It was a mocker's religion. Balaam got his own way so far. The Lord has a method of his own in this particular. Providence does shape itself curiously in some instances. The voice said to him, Go! you want to go; you have made up your secret mind to go, go; only the word that I bid thee speak, that shalt thou say; and Balak, who sent for an ally, shall find himself confronted with a missionary. These things lie quite obviously within our own experience. We need not describe them at all as theological; we have seen this in a score of instances, perhaps, in some instances, we ourselves have been the chief actors and sufferers. So far then we are upon the line of experience.
Men are stopped in certain courses without being able to tell the reason why. That also is matter of experience. The wind seems to be a wall before us; the road looks quite open, and yet we can make no progress in it. Our eyes deceive us, because surely this is a highway the king's broad road and yet, scheme as we may, promise what we may, we can make no progress along that road. If an army met us, we could run home, and say, Lo! a host beset us, and we have fled before the furious opposition. But there is no army. If some beast of prey had rushed out from the hedge, we could have turned back and explained to our comrades in life that we were stopped by a threatening beast. But there is no such difficulty on the road that is at all visible to us. We lift up our hand, and say we will go in this direction, oppose us what may, and there is nothing to strike at. Again and again do we say, How is this? we came the first two miles easily, pleasantly, as if galloping over a flowery land at bright summer time, and we said in our hearts, This journey will be a right pleasant one all through; and suddenly we can go no farther. This is matter of experience. Let us constantly say to ourselves: We cannot account for the impossibility of progress. The business stands still; we have risen at the same hour in the morning, carried out the usual arrangements, been apparently on the alert all the time; and yet not one inch farther are we permitted to go. Suppose we have no God, no altar, no Church limitations, no ghostly ministry exerting itself upon our life and frightening us with superstition and spectre we are healthy reasoners, downright robust rationalists, men who can take things up and set them down, square-headed men, yet there is the fact, that even we such able-bodied rationalists, such healthy souls that any society would insure us on the slightest inquiry there we are, puzzled, mystified, perplexed, distracted. We will not use theological terms: we fall back upon the second grade of language; still there remains the substantial and abiding fact, that progress along this road is impossible. So far, this story affords no ground of serious difficulty, even to the reason and the mind in its soberest mood.
It also lies within the region of experience that men are rebuked by dumb animals. That is odd; but it is true. The whole Scripture is charged with that statement, and so charged with it as to amount to a practical philosophy in daily life: "But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee" "The stork in heaven knoweth her appointed times" "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib" "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." Dumb creatures are continually teaching us. They keep law with wondrous obedience. The poorest brutes are really very faithful to the rude legislation under which they live. If men could only be as drunk as a beast, they would never go far from the paths of sobriety. It is a foul slander upon the beast for a man to set himself beside it and say that he is as oblivious of law, as negligent of divine intention, as the brute that perishes. In temperance, in acceptance of discipline, in docility, I know not any beast that is ever used by man that may not teach some men, very distinctly, helpful and useful lessons. That the beast does not speak is the very smallest and poorest objection that can be taken to the teaching. It is putting speech in a false position, it is altogether altering the relations and perspective of things. What is speech? How is speech delivered? Is speech confined to the tongue? We must define the word speech, if we are to enter into the particulars of a controversy which can never be settled. But we cannot allow rude definitions to be given as if they were philosophical. There is the substantial fact, that the beasts of the field do teach us, rebuke us, humble us; and that they do not do all this through the medium of articulate speech as that term is understood by us, is a frivolous objection, and ought not to be taken account of in any court in which the presiding disposition is to find out substantial and eternal truths. So far, I see nothing in the story to disturb the sobriety of experience.
Then, again, it does lie within our cognition that men do blame second causes for want of success. Balaam blamed the ass. That is what we are always doing. There is nothing exceptional in this conduct of the soothsayer. We want to get on it is the beast that will not go. Who ever thought that an angel was confronting him that a distinct ghostly purpose was against him? Who ever imagined that he, a rationalist with a healthy digestion, was stopped on his course by some beneficent providence? He naturally feels that he ought not to have been stopped; he is a healthy-minded man, there is no nonsense about him, a practical man, shrewd, with eyes well-set in his head and that can see one colour in its distinction from another an eye skilled in proportion and distance and expression; he ought not to have been stopped. Yet he is arrested. He blames his surroundings, his assistants, his colleagues, his "stupid partner," his "reluctant people." He would have been miles ahead he might have been back by this time, but he was stopped by second causes. How much nobler the health of the man who says, I am but of yesterday, and know nothing; I cannot tell what a day may bring forth; it is good to be disappointed; it is beneficial for my soul's health not to have my own way always; I wanted to go along this road, and to go at a very quick rate, but I am mysteriously arrested, and I cannot move through an invisible wall; but God built it I fall down before it as before an altar, and thank God for the stoppage! To some men, that appears to be the true reasoning. They have such self-distrust they have seen the consequences of leaning to their own judgment so frequently, they have tested life at so many points and find what a mystery it is that at last they have come to say, We see nothing as it really is; we know nothing as it really is; we are in the hands of the divine Father; not our will but thine be done. To some imaginations, that appears to be fanaticism; to others not altogether ridiculous in mental capacity, nor altogether unworthy of credit really genuinely-learned and cultivated men it seems to be the finest rationalism, the noblest sobriety, the most substantial conviction.
Does it not also lie within the range of our experience that men do want to get back sometimes but are driven forward? Did not Balaam want to return when he said, "If it displease thee, I will get me back again"? We cannot. Life is not a little trick, measurable by such terms. A man cannot make a fool of himself, and instantly turn round as if nothing had happened; we cannot drive a nail into a tree and take it out without leaving a wound behind. It does not lie within the range of our arm pontiffs though we be in the shabby church of reason to break the vessel of glass, and put it together again as if it had never been dashed to pieces. This is not in harmony with the mystery of the universe as we know it. This proposition of Balaam's is the ridiculous imagination of men who suppose that they can sin against God and say, Now we will turn back; we will not do it again; we have blasphemed God now we will go to church. To get that sophism out of the human mind is the difficulty of God. It appears so easy to commit a sin, and then to say we are sorry that we committed it, and to go back home as if nothing had been done. What has been done? The universe has been dishonoured; the snowy purity of God has been stained; the great creation in all its harmonies has been shocked and distressed with a great pain. We ought not to infer anything to the disadvantage of God from such a method of providence. It means that we are more than we thought ourselves to be. Conduct is of greater consequence than we imagine. Humanity is a sublime mystery, as well as God; and there is no way backward, unless it be in consent with the Mind that constructed and that rules creation. Balaam would go back and remain at Pethor as if he had never left his native village; but the Lord said, No; go forward; only now be the representative of holy truth to the heathen king.
But there is a difficulty about the dumb ass rebuking the perverse prophet? So there is. I would be dismayed by it if I were not overwhelmed by greater miracles still. This has come to be but a small thing a very momentary wonder, a riddle which a child might guess, as compared with more astounding circumstances. A more wonderful thing than that an ass should speak is that a man should forget God. If you challenge me to the consideration of both the subjects, and take them in the order of their importance, in proportion as I am a sound reasoner and in a healthy condition of conscience and imagination, I cannot hesitate which to assign the overwhelming importance. That a man should forget deliverances that a man should be delivered from the jaws of the lion and the bear and should forget the deliverance that is a more astounding circumstance than that all the beasts of the field should open their mouths in articulate and impressive eloquence. Why do we vex our little selves with little questions, instead of exciting our greater selves by greater problems? The miracle that astounds the Lord is that we should have forgotten that he had nourished and brought up children and that they should have rebelled against him. We childish, foolish, vain, are busy with little puzzles in the history of miracles, whilst the infinite impeachment is uttered by all the thunders of the universe, that we have forgotten God, turned away from the fountain of waters, and have hewn out to ourselves cisterns broken cisterns that could hold no water. Riddle-loving, easily tickled and amused, excited by miracles of the smallest quantity and the feeblest quality, we are wondering if the ass did speak to Balaam; whilst all the angels of God might stand appalled in looking on any sinful man who ever lifted his hand against the majesty of Heaven. There are historical miracles, there are miracles of a physical and material kind, there are mysteries to which we have no immediate answer; but there are other mysteries which involve destiny, and to these miracles we think it best to address ourselves in the first instance. The miracles of a physical and historical kind may admit of postponement as to their consideration; but that men should have forgotten God, and insulted law, and done unrighteously, these are mysteries which must not be delayed in their explanation and settlement.
So we come again and again to the great practical inquiry, Being on the wrong road, how shall we get back? There is no answer in man. If Balaam could have retraced his steps, put up his ass in the stable and gone about his business as if nothing had occurred, it would have been but a paper universe. That he could not do so, that he was under the pressure of mightier forces, indicates that the universe is itself a tragedy, and that the explanation of every character, every incident, and every flush of colour, must be left for another time, when the light is stronger and the duration is assured. Meanwhile, we can pray, we can look up, we can say, each for himself, "I have sinned."
Prayer
Almighty God, receive us everyone in the name of thy Son Jesus Christ, we humbly beseech thee. There is room in thine heart for every one; thou dost miss the least. Teach us the minuteness of thy care that we may give to thee the keeping of our whole life, reserving nothing for our own regard, but delivering the whole space of life, great and small, to the rule and blessing of Heaven. We will do nothing without thee; though the temptation be strong to arise and move on and begin the battle and seize the gate, yet will we stand still until we are sure of thy bidding to move. Thou hast made one star differ from another star in glory; thou hast set one man above another; thou hast made one life the ruler of many lives. The distribution is entirely in God's hands; we would accept it and adore the sovereignty which it represents. But thou hast a place for every one: thou hast omitted nothing from thy reckoning; to every man thou sayest, Why stand ye idle in the marketplace? thou wilt find a position for every life. We bless thee for this confidence; it delivers us from care; it helps us patiently to wait. Thou hast marked our life by many a sign we cannot mistake. It is thy life: it was thy life before it was ours; it is only ours because it is thine. Thou dost close the door upon us suddenly and open another door that we did not know to be in existence; thou takest away from us our staff and thou puttest into our hand a still stronger one. We cannot tell what thou doest. Thou sendest winter in the midst of summer, and a glow of heavenly light amid the clouds that darken the heavens. Thy will be done evermore. As for our sin, if it is not always present to us, it is always in our heart, a reckoning to be settled, a guilt to be pardoned; but if the sin is there, behold, the Cross of Christ is still within the vision of our faith, and the blood of Jesus Christ thy Son cleanseth from all sin. We will not fall into despair: we will not turn our imagination into the plague of our life; but looking to the heavens and to thy revelation in the Holy Book and to the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, even in the deep pit we will take heart again and our hope shall be strong in God. Let a morning light be in our hearts; let a. gracious blessing make us glad; may the Spirit of the Living One destroy all death within us and make us now joyous and rich with the assurance of immortality. Amen.
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