Perhaps to this connection belongs Balaam the sooth- sayer; from Aram, from the mountain- of the east, from the river of his people, from Pethor of Aram-naharaim. From some source he had obtained a profound knowl- edge of God and of his ways; yet so perverted was his heart that he endeavored to bring all that knowledge to effect the destruction of Israel, from the to] rocks he could see the Deliverer coming, yet so deep was hi- malignity that he could meet death in this world and damnation in the next rather than have this man rule over him, He furnishes an awful example of those who hold the truth in unrighteousness.
V. Midianitish. — In those days we have brought up a most beautiful example of the ancient faith— Jethro, ihe prince and priest of Midian, Ii i- true that the Midianites were descended from Abraham by Keturah; hut their relations with Isaac and his descendants would not have kept up, and did not keep up. Ihe faith of Abraham in its advanced stages. All that they re- ceived directly from Abraham needed some kind of sup- port after they were sent away from Isaac: this support could come only from the scattered fragments of primi- tive religion Boating among their new association-, and collected into a focus by such a man as Jethro. So soon as he is oil' tlu' staue. superannuated or dead, and hi- son Ilohah has joined the camp of Moses, we find no more faith among the .Midianites, nor any friendship for
the people of the Lord.
VI. 3fagian.—In the court of Persia, as late as the captivity, we fmd traces of the primitive religion. Not only was Cyrus individually called for special sen ice, but i here was much favor shown to the Jews bj native Per- sians, while foreign satraps, like Sanhallat. Tobiah, and Geshem, used all their craft, as well as their power, to frustrate the labors of Nehemiah in restoring the city. How often they obtained a partial SUCCeSS need- not to
he told lure; nor does this invalidate the idea ol friendly relations when these could have fair play. 'Writers like James lie. man Clarke, after tracing far into antiquity ihe Zoroastrian faith, are unwilling to recognise an an- cient faith to which belong the griffin, the sei-pent, the sacred fire, the sacred tr<< . and other items, while traces of it are found mixed in with later observances. Such
writers can see any religion only as the philosophical
outgrowth of the human mind, bul not as a divine rev- elation, of a different oast is a late writer in the Brit- ish mi,/ I'm, 'mil Evangelical R< vii w, the Lev. .). Murray Mitchell, LL.D. When treating of another, though ad- joining, country, he uses the following phraseology: •■While we can now trace the great nil -ion of India without interruption almost up to it- fountain-head . . . for nearly four thousand years, it is far otherwist with
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the ancient religion of Persia." See the Methodist Quar- t< rly Review, January, 1879. India itself! Is there not enough truth (though seen through a distorted medium) to carry us far beyond the period of the Vedas? To say nothing of moral precepts, a Creator, a Triad — Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva — the Incarnation of Vishnu in the ten Avatars, these and other items claim our at- tention as remnants of patriarchal revelation.
However much or little they may have learned from the return of Balaam's retinue, after he was killed in battle (Numb, xxxi, 8), certain it is that the primitive religion furnished a healthy stock on which to engraft the "Star of Jacob" in Persia and all over the East, whence came the Magi to Jerusalem when Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judaea.
VII. Arabian. — Among the very interesting details of the ancient religions we rind Job and his friends. Without going into minute inquiry, let us place him somewhere about the period of Terah, the father of Abraham. He is classed with "the sons of the East;" yet we cannot locate him in the far East like the Per- sian Magi. His own name, and the names of his friends, resemble more than any other the names of the Seirites, among whom, in later times, Esau and his pos- terity intermingled and intermarried. In Gen. xxxvi we find the names Temanite, Jobab, J-.'/iji/m:. Teman, with others not identical, but of the same general cast as the names of Job's associates. The faith of these godly men, wherever they may have lived, is of a very high order, and their knowledge of < rod and of his ways is of the highest degree. Neither by Job nor by any of his friends is there the least allusion to the covenant of Abraham. Whatever mistakes they labored under, they are recognised as true worshippers, and God deals with them as his own.
VIII. Assyrian. — Late discoveries by Layard and Rawlinson have brought us into contact with the an- cient Assyrians in much of their religion, as well as war and civil policy. Among the sculptures exhumed, none are more interesting than the winged quadrupeds fin- ished off with a human head, or the human form with eagle's head and wings. These carry us back to the early cherubim, the forms of which must have been preserved by Noah and his sons. At first sight these Assyrian images may seem no more than mere idols — false gods ; but that would not account for their close affinity with the living creatures of Ezekiel and the Ttuaapa £wa of John's Revelation. While no one of the Assyrian sculptures embodies the four principles of Ezekiel and John, yet two of them, taken together, do embody the four identical principles, and no more. The winged lion and the winged ox have the aspect of a man, lion, eagle, ox, and nothing besides. The reason for making them double arose from the difficulty of dis- tinguishing the body of the ox from that of the lion in the same figure. Nor is it impossible that the Assyr- ians could have borrowed from Ezekiel; almost equally certain that they did not borrow from Moses. This leaves us the only course, that of authentic tradition from Noah and Shem, as they had the figures down from the garden of Eden. Whether these winged figures were worshipped by the Assyrians or not, it is of impor- tance to notice that they were not the highest objects of adoration, for they are found bowing themselves be- fore the Supreme, the symbol of Supreme Deity being a human form sitting in a winged circle or globe. While the races of Shemites occupied one part of Meso- potamia and the Hamites another, they were sufficiently contiguous to afford the opportunity of corrupting one another in the matter of worship, as well as in the man- ner. We have already seen that the best family of the Shemites — Terah and his sons — had gone into idolatry in connection with the true worship, and needed refor- mation in the days of Abraham ; we may safely infer that other Shemites, as well as the families of Ham, were more deeply involved, and went still further from the truth till the days of Sardanapalus, Nebuchadnez-