ous to watch how as Balaam is forced step by
step to be an honest man, so step by step he rises. A weight falls
off his mind and heart, and the Spirit of God comes upon him.

He feels for once that he must speak his mind, that he must obey
God. As he looks down from off the mountain top, and sees the vast
encampment of the Israelites spread over the vale below, for miles
and miles, as far as the eye can see, all ordered, disciplined,
arranged according to their tribes, the Spirit of God comes upon
him, and he gives way to it and speaks.

The sight of that magnificent array wakens up in him the thought of
how divine is older, how strong is order, how order is the life and
root of a nation, and how much more, when that order is the order of
God.

'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!
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, and as
cedar trees beside the waters. His king shall be higher than Agag,'
and all his wild Amalekite hordes. He will be a true nation,
civilized, ordered, loyal and united, for God is teaching him.

Who can resist such a nation as that? 'God has brought him out of
Egypt. He has the strength of an unicorn.' 'I shall see him,' he
says, 'but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall
come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel,
and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of
Sheth.' And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and
said, 'Amalek was the first of the nation; but his latter end shall
be that he perish for ever.' And he looked on the Kenites, and took
up his parable, and said, 'Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou
puttest thy nest in a rock. Nevertheless, the Kenite shall be
wasted, till Asshur shall carry thee away captive.' 'Alas, who
shall live when God doeth this!'

And then, beyond all, after all the Canaanites and other Syrian
races have been destroyed, he sees, dimly and afar off, another
destruction still.

In his home in the far east the fame of the ships of Chittim has
reached him; the fame of the new people, the sea-roving heroes of
the Greeks, of whom old Homer sang; the handsomest, cunningest, most
daring of mankind, who are spreading their little trading colonies
along all the isles and shores, as we now are spreading ours over
the world. Those ships of Chittim, too, have a great a