and invoking without remorse upon the armies of Israel all the destructive vengeance implied in those agencies, and the moral superiority of the army of Moses, dwelling safely under the care of Providence, free alike from the stroke of the diviner's art and from the ireful rage of supernatural evil. One must not, however, quit this first prediction without reminding the reader of the improved version of the Septuagint of the last couplet. The couplet would then read in the following manner: 'Let me die the death of the righteous, And let my posterity be like his.' In which the prophet both prays for his own happy termination of his life, and for the correlative bliss of his prospective self in the as happy death of his descendants, a prayer which seems from the Mosaic record to have succeeded in neither of the particulars. The second prediction of Balaam is thus recorded: 'Rise up, Balak, and hear; Hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor! God is not a man, that he should lie ; Nor the son of man, that he should repent. Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall not he make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless, And he hath blessed, nor can I reverse it. He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob; And the shout of a king is among them. God brought them out of Egypt; : He hath as it were the strength of an unicorn (the reem). Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob; Neither is there any divination against Israel. According to this time it shall be said Of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought! He shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, The studious reader will observe here the same construction of gradational parallels, the latter line amplifying or energizing the signification. This second prediction takes the turn, in the third line, of maintaining the irreversible veracity of Jehovah, from the fact that Balak had requested the prophet to come unto another place, from whence thou shalt see but the utmost part of them, and curse me them from thence.' The prophet wished to impress Balak with the fact that all places were alike to God, and that there was neither juggle in the terms which he addressed to men, nor collusion in his government, and he adds the melancholy assertion to Balak, if not to himself, 'Behold, I have received commandment to bless, Though we cannot regard the next couplet as a prophecy- Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel' it is liable in its literal interpretation to the erroneous construction of the hyper-Calvinistic creed, which is however avoided by translating the Hebrew word, here rendered iniquity, by its more ordinary and better signification of an idol' and an image,' of which the places in 1 Sam. xv. 23, and Isaiah lxvi. 3, are specimens, as well as the Church of England's homily against the peril of idolatry, where the passage is translated, There was no idol in Jacob; nor was there any image seen in Israel.' Balak, still clinging to his notion of the topographical power of his divinities, was not even yet convinced that Jehovah was equally the Lord of all places, but having bidden Balaam neither to curse them at all nor bless them at all, summoned the prophet to another place, adding, Peradventure it will please God that thon mayest curse me them from thence.' This leads us to the third expression from the lips of Balaam : 'Balaam the son of Beor hath said, And the man whose eyes are open hath said, How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! As the valleys are they spread forth, As gardens by the river's side, As the trees of lign-aloes which the Lord hath planted, He shall pour the water out of his buckets, And his kingdom shall be exalted; God brought him forth out of Egypt; He hath, as it were, the strength of an unicorn. 'He shall eat up the nations his enemies, And shall break their bones, and pierce them with his arrows; And as a great lion; who shall stir him up? And cursed is he that curseth thee.' The whole of this predictive passage is happily eulogistic of the condition of the Abrahamic progeny, but the really predictive portion is included in the four lines which begin, He shall pour the water out of his own buckets,' &c., and which seem to foretel the state of contented affluence to which the Hebrew race, then without a home, would rise; that the nation would become distinguished for its monarchs, and that the kingdom was destined to increase. Unimportant as this passage may seem to us who know the history of the Jews, it was not only then important, but most unlikely to take place; for though the Jews were then under the one government of Moses, they had still all their enemies to subdue, and every foot of land to win by battle, before these predicted events could transpire. The unity of the seed of Jacob sprung from no less than five mothers, yet attested alike by the prophecies of Jacob, of Moses, and of Balaam, is the historic miracle, which appears more extraordinary when we remember the feuds of the tribes themselves, and the fact that the twelve tribes were always divided into four distinct encampments. The fourth and the last prediction seems to have been uttered to Balak, either without his request, or with the seven offerings which had preceded the other communications, and is introduced by Balaam's remark, 'Come, I will advertise thee what this people shall do to thy people in the latter days;' and it thus opens : 'Balaam the son of Beor hath said, And the man whose eyes are open hath said, I shall see him, but not now; ; Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies, Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, 'Amalek was the first among the nations, But his end shall be that he perish for ever.' Of the Kenites the prophet continues to add : Strong is thy dwelling-place, : And thou puttest thy nest in a rock; And ships shall come from the coast of Chittim, If the eighth and ninth lines refer to the four succeeding ones, their interpretation is sufficiently easy, for the prophet foretels the rise among that strange people whom he was brought to execrate of a distinguished individual, who would arise in some future and unknown period of their history, and whom the prophet himself would only distantly behold. Whether Balaam foretold the compound personages of David-Christ, the former as the temporal type of the latter, and as smiting the corners of Moab, we must leave to the reader to determine for himself, but of this opinion, certainly, were Maimonides and many of the modern writers on Scripture; but there can be little doubt that Balaam, though ignorant of the particulars of his character and government, foretold the Messiah as the Star out of Jacob.' We must, meantime, admit, that the modern Jews interpret this prophecy solely of David, who destroyed the independence of the Moabite power (2 Sam. viii. 2), but to confine the prediction to the times of David would be to outrage the very spirit of historical criticism. Besides his predic tion of the Messiah, Balaam foretels what would befal the Kenite, the Moabite, the nations of Amalek and of Asshur; and though the Grecian power did not then exist, the prophet describes the doom that was held in reserve for that remarkable people. There is still one other poem, which Bishops Lowth and Butler, as we think erroneously, impute to Balaam. The passage itself occurs in Micah vi. 6, 7, 8, and it may perhaps bear more analogy with the poems of Balaam than with those of Micah; but as it was not inserted by Moses in the Balaamic history, nor is mentioned by any intermediate author, we cannot help refusing to class this more theologically developed poem with the relics of the diviner from Pethor. In concluding our remarks on this non-Judean prophet, and the only one of his kind, we must admit that the whole bears evidence that Balaam was a worshipper of the true God; that he appears to have acted conscientiously in uttering his prophecies; that he evinced considerable courage in resisting the power and the offers of Balak; that his predictions are as lucid and as decisive as those of any of the Jewish prophets; that it does not appear that his advice to Balak extended beyond the counselling intercourse by marriages and treaties with the Jews; and yet that Balaam would, if he could, have execrated the Hebrew people, for he loved the wages of unrighteousness." This compulsory adoption of the diviner for a true prophet, if against his will and his interest, was one of those extraordinary instances in which Divine Providence overrules the counsels and intentions of men to achieve purposes and to reveal words to which they are only involuntary agents, and which they do not even understand. Some may imagine that we have not treated the subject fairly by not quoting Josephus. Why should we encumber the article with the opinions of a writer who violates the Mosaic record? He affirms that Balaam told the first messengers that he was very willing to go with them, but God did not permit him; and that the seven altars were erected that he might discover in the smoke the maledictory turn of the wreaths. His speeches to Balak are not even a paraphrase or the Hebrew text, while he works up the parts of the Balaamic predictions that refer to Israel immeasurably beyond the warranty of Moses. This Josephus, who attributes to the Pethorite prophet the request that he would build more altars, mentions but two of the predictions of Balaam, while he unjustly enlarges on his assumed advice to set some of their handsomest daughters' before the young Jews, and even adds a long speech of these Moabitish women in favour of idolatry. No one, with these particulars before him, can justly believe that Josephus had other historic documents beside the Pentateuch from which to quote, but which have long since been destroyed. In our judgment, this whole account of Josephus appears to be almost entirely worthless. Christian Doctrine and Controversy. [UNDER this title occasionally appear in this Magazine papers from various pens discussing questions of interest in Christian Doctrine and Religious Truth. It has been thought desirable specially to distinguish articles or communications of this and similar character from others that appear in this journal, because of the impossibility of always maintaining a perfect consistency of view in such matters. The Editor, therefore, wishes it to be understood that he does not hold himself responsible for the opinions expressed in these papers. He can only engage that they shall contain nothing deemed to be inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Christian faith.] OF THE FALL OF MAN. BY FRANCIS WAYLAND, D.D. 'By one man's disobedience many were made sinners.'-Romans v. 19. Ir is a natural question, How could a race of sinners have been created by a holy and most merciful God? The answer to this question is contained, in part, in the words of the text. By one man's disobedience many, or the many,' became sinners. That is, the Scriptures teach us that the race of man was created upright; that our first parents sinned; and that, in consequence of that sin, their descendants are found to be universally depraved. My object, in the present discourse, is simply to present the statement of the Scriptures on this subject, and to consider some of the objections that have been urged against it. 1. The Bible asserts that God created our first parents perfect. 'God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him. And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good.' By this I understand that God created man with a perfect moral nature, such that every impulse and affection was in harmony with the relations in which he was placed. But man was endowed with the gift of free agency. He had the same power to disobey the law of God as to obey it. Without such power he could have been neither virtuous nor vicious. The consequences of obedience and disobedience were placed before him, and thus his destiny was left in his own hands. 2. It pleased God, at an early period in the history of man, to place before him a trial of his obedience. And the Lord God commanded man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' Whether this narrative be understood literally or figuratively, its lesson is precisely the same. It teaches the all-important truth, that there is a moral limit affixed to the gratification of human desires; that, under our present constitution, we have the power to enjoy objects which God has forbidden, and to pursue the gratifications which he has allowed, beyond the limit which he has assigned; and that the perfect |