quented the divine schools. But you will find that Isaiah lived for his people, and not for himself, that he did not value himself upon his gifts, or upon his holiness, or upon anything whatsoever that belonged to him as an individual. His eyes had seen the King the Lord of Hosts, and that sense of God's holiness which made him know that he was an unclean man and dwelt among

people of unclean lips, yet enabled him to go forth and declare His truth and His kingdom, to testify that if the kings of the house of David were ever so unbelieving, ever so tyrannical, He would raise up a King who should be a refuge from the heat and storm, who should judge the poor, who should gather together the outcasts of Israel, and in whom the Gentiles should trust. The certainty, under every possible discouragement and conflict, that the righteous God would prevail over all that was unrighteous and anarchical in the universe,—the delight in this assurance, the willingness to be made an instrument of carrying out God's purposes, let what would come of him or his character, let him be honoured as a prophet, or cast out as the offscouring of the earth,-this, this is the sign of the true man, this is what separates him from the solitary self-seeker who shrank from the thought of God appearing to set the world right, who only wished, when his wishes were purest, that he might die the death of the righteous.

But the faithful men, Isaiah or Jeremiah, did not come to this state without passing through internal struggles which Balaam never knew, with

out having to experience all the temptations which he did know and to which he yielded. The books of their prophecies are no mere records of words put into their mouths, of sudden overpowering inspirations. They tell how the man struggled with the divine Teacher, how he said he would speak no more words in His name, till the fire could not keep itself pent in his heart any longer; how he complained that the Lord had deceived him; how the precious and the vile had need to be separated in him by the severest discipline, that he might know assuredly that he was not speaking the thoughts of his own heart, but words which God desired him to speak for the good of his age and of generations to come. This is the Scripture, not merely an inspired book, as we sometimes call it, thinking to pay it great honour, —but an actual discovery of God Himself and of His ways with His creatures. If we consider it only as a collection of inspired sentences or oracles, we may accept it as divine; but we shall gradually lose sight both of Him who is speaking in it, and of those by whom and to whom He is speaking; its godliness and its humanity will disappear together. We shall be continually stumbling at one sentence and another, trying to force them. into some strange meaning of our own; then violently outraging the conscience which God's Word itself has been cultivating in us, calling in His Omnipotence to dispense with His righteousness, when it is the very characteristic of Scripture that it makes Righteousness the root of God's being,

power only its instrument and accident. If we take that other view of the Bible, the errors, sins, false or imperfect judgments of its best and wisest men, will be no scandals to us; we shall accept them as foils which enable us to see His character more clearly, in whom is light and no darkness at all. We shall perceive that men could only apprehend truth just so far as they saw it in Him after whose image they were formed. Every step in the history will be a step into clearer illumination, God shewing Himself more fully, that the thoughts and actions of men may be capable of a closer correspondence to His. At the same time, it will be no perplexity to us, but an infinite comfort, that the powers, and energies, and kindly affections, and right desires of every man whatsoever, in every part of the earth, whether yielding to the right or resisting it, should be vindicated for Him from whom every good and perfect gift comes down. This will not hinder us from recognising His gracious purpose in calling out a family, a nation, a church, to be the heralds of His great Name, to shew forth His kingly and fatherly rule over men. For we shall see how dangerous all His most precious gifts are likely to become, if those who are entrusted with them do not know that they are but holding them as dispensers to a great household, and that they can have no blessings of their own except so far as they feel that they are meant to give each member of that household his own portion of meat at the due season. The Bible, so considered, becomes an orderly

expanding history. The Star which Balaam saw afar off emerges more and more out of the darkness. At last it is seen how God could raise up a Prophet to men of their brethren, who should be one with them in all their sorrow and affliction, because He was one with His Father in heaven, and perfectly delighted to shew forth His Name, to declare His kingdom, to do His will upon the earth. At last it is seen how His holy Spirit, which had been bestowed without measure upon His well-beloved Son, could come down and make men's bodies His temples, could bind men of every nation and tribe in one, could inspire them with all gifts, could consecrate all gifts to the service of their Father in Heaven and their brethren upon earth.

I must say one word more which is closely connected with the application of this whole subject to our own selves. Though the writers of the New Testament cannot have held an essentially different opinion respecting Balaam from that which was common among their countrymen, yet they certainly dwell upon the dark side of his character more than it is dwelt upon in the Book of Numbers. They especially represent him as the type of a false prophet, and this not for the purpose of condemning him, but of shewing how his evil tendencies might be more prevalent and more fatal in the new dispensation than the old. reason is evident. They had been taught to refer all gifts and powers, which appear in particular men, to that holy Spirit, who was now manifested

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as the indweller in human hearts, as the bond of human fellowship. Those whom St. John in the Apocalypse describes as followers of Balaam were men who believed most strongly in a Spirit, and boasted that they were possessors of it, but who forgot altogether that He was the Spirit of Holiness, who blessed Him for enduing them with powers, who did not ask Him to renew and remake themselves the wielders and exercisers of those powers. Such Balaamites there have been in all ages among those who minister at God's altar, among those who perform all different offices in His household and His vineyard. In whatever form self-exaltation comes into the heart of man, in the form of craving for popularity, of intellectual pride, of spiritual pride, in the desire for dominion over others, in the secret triumph of our own superiority, the Balaam sin is working under ground; the fruits of it may some day become apparent. Let no one of us say that it is not his sin, that it may not penetrate into him and diffuse itself through him, when he seems to himself to be engaged, nay, when he is in fact engaged in the most godly services, and receiving the most godly inspirations. Let our trust be in God and not in ourselves, to deliver us from this root of bitterness. Let us ask Him that we may not value ourselves upon gifts, or tongues, or prophecies, but may be filled with that love which shall remain when they cease, and when He is all in all.