^ " Now and then," says Peter Eosegger, " I take my soul out from its cage. I smooth its wings and brush away the dust. Then I throw it up, to see how high it can go. It flies up above the housetop, it circles round and round. It settles on a neighbouring tree. It looks up, but the sky is so far. It looks down, the earth is so near. It is hard to soar, it is easy to
' Butler, Sermons, 97.
NUMBERS XXIII. lo 419
descend ; and so in a little time my soul comes fluttering down to me, and creeps into its cage again. My hope is in the Holy Dove, the Spirit of God Himself, that comes down to earth and bears my soul upon its wings to heaven,"
3. The story of Balaam may be entitled " a drama of the ruin of conscience." We are introduced to him at the crisis of his life. What had gone before we do not know, although we see clearly manifested in him, on the one hand, the tyranny of a strong besetting sin and, on the other, the helpfulness and strength of religious principle. He is evidently in the habit of seeking guidance from God, of listening to and obeying the voice of conscience. The message of Balak, with its offer of silver, and gold, and honours, is the turning-point of his life. The struggle between conscience and his besetting sin is most dramatically portrayed ; it is a tragedy, ending in the defeat of conscience, in the ruin of character, probably in the loss of a souL
^ We often see two individuals in the same family, brothers perhaps, inheriting from the same parentage, brought up under the same environment, and living together until some great decision has to be made by each. The one decides for right, for God ; and his life afterwards, while it is not free from struggle, and has its imperfections, is a steady progress upward. The other brother yields to the temptation, and though he makes, from time to time, efiforts to recover himself, yet they seem to be unavailing, and he falls lower and lower until, perhaps, becoming hopeless and despairing, he gives up the fight. What made the difference between the two at the moment of trial ? It was the life which had gone before: in the one, a life of fidelity to principle, to conscience, even in small matters ; in the other, a life of carelessness about little things, as though they were too unimportant to be made matters of principle. In the first the will gradually became stronger and stronger to resist temptation, and so was able to make the right decision at the crisis of life ; in the other the will had been weakened by many little acts of self- indulgence, so that when the great demand was made upon it, it could not rise up to meet the temptation, it yielded and never again recovered. The whole principle is summed up in our Lord's words, " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much ; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much."!
^ ▲. 6. Mortimer.
420 THE DEATH TO DIE
The smallest thing thou canst accomplish well, The smallest ill. 'Tis only little things Make up the present day, make up all days, Make up thy life. Do thou not therefore wait. Keeping thy wisdom and thy honesty. Till great things come with trumpet-heraldings ! *
4. What were the motives which led to the perversion of conscience in Balaam ? There are two opposite motives which sway men. Some, like Simon Magus, will give gold to be admired and wondered at ; some will barter honour for gold. In Balaam the two are blended. We see the desire at once for honour and for wealth ; wealth, perhaps, as being another means of ensuring reputation. And so have we seen many begin and end in our own day — begin with a high-minded courage which flatters none; speaking truth, even unpalatable truth ; but when this advocacy of truth brings, as it brought to Balaam, men to consult them, and they rise in the world and become men of consideration, then by degrees the love of truth is superseded, and passes into a love of influence. Or they begin with a generous indifference to wealth — simple, austere; by degrees they find the society of the rich leading them from extravagance to extravagance, till at last, high intellectual and spiritual powers become the servile instruments of appropriating gold. The world sees the sad spectacle of the man of science and the man of God waiting at the doors of princes, or cringing before the public for promotion and admiration.
The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds; Upon death's purple altar now.
See, where the victor- victim bleeds: Your head must come To the cold tomb: Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.*
III.
The Death of thb Eighteous.
1. There are many ways in which men go out of the world. Some withdraw in carelessness and indifference, some in heaviness
' A Layman'i Breviary, * James Sliirley.
NUMBERS XXIII. lo 421
and fear, some without hope or expectation, some with a mere wish to make an end of physical discomfort, some hardened in frigid stoicism, and some in a maze of dreams, saying to them- selves, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace. There is another manner of departure which leads all the rest in dignity and beauty. It is the death of the righteous — joy with peace ; a trust in God that rests on strong foundations ; a heart confiding in a covenant promise which it knows to be certain and sure ; perfect submission to the will which is evermore a will of love ; resigna- tion of self and all into those hands which come forth through the gathering darkness; sacrificial surrender gladly paying the debt due to sin; — these signs mark the death of the righteous. And to all this, since Christ came, are to be added the presence of the Saviour, the thought that He has gone that way before us and knows every step of the path, the conviction that to die is gain, the assurance that the Lord shall raise us up at the Last Day, and that whosoever liveth and believeth in Him shall never die.