'How goodly,' he cries,
'are thy tents, oh Jacob, and thy camp, oh Israel.' He likens them,
not to the locust swarm, the sea flood, nor the forest fire, but to
the most peaceful, and most fruitful sights in nature or in art.
They are spread forth like the water-courses, which carry verdure and
fertility as they flow. They are planted like the hanging gardens
beside his own river Euphrates, with their aromatic shrubs and wide-
spreading cedars. Their God-given mission may be stern, but it will
be beneficent. They will be terrible in war; but they will be
wealthy, prosperous, civilized and civilizing, in peace.
Many of you must have seen--all may see--that noble picture of Israel
in Egypt which now hangs in the Royal Academy; in which the Hebrews,
harnessed like beasts of burden, writhing under the whips of their
taskmasters, are dragging to its place some huge Egyptian statue.
Compare the degradation portrayed in that picture with this prophecy
of Balaam's, and then consider--What, in less than two generations,
had so transformed those wretched slaves?
Compare, too, with Balaam's prophecy the hints of their moral
degradation which Scripture gives;--the helplessness, the
hopelessness, the cowardice, the sensuality, which cried, 'Let us
alone, that we may serve the Egyptians.
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