the mention of them, therefore, was, in truth, a severe reproach, as it showed at once that he was not the righteous man whom a performance of those solemn obligations constituted. The king of Moab had certainly not done justly in bringing the prophet of Pethor all the way from Mesopotamia for a selfish and criminal purpose; neither had he exhibited any love of mercy in desiring him to curse an innocent people; nor could he be said to "walk humbly with his God," in commanding Balaam to bring evil upon those whom that God had so signally protected. Nothing could be more opposed to the character here given of a righteous man than the sovereign of Moab, who had betrayed qualities the very reverse to those enumerated by the prophet, as constituting such a man. All those traits of disobedience and insubordination, manifested by Balak in his nonobservance of the obligations declared by the seer as forming a character approved of God, are, by inference, applied to the person who had promised to advance him to honour. They were made to convey the strongest animadversion upon Balak's conduct, not expressed indeed, but too evidently implied to be misunderstood. And observe how poetically the several particulars of the quatrain are distributed; each quality expressed as indispensable to the character of a righteous man, rising in solemn force and emphasis, until, as in the couplets immediately preceding, the whole ends in a magnificent climax. This is a common mode among the Hebrews of terminating their sacred com

positions, as it is always calculated to leave the strongest impression upon the mind. The practice of justice, the exhibition of mercy, and veneration for the Divinity, are the great constituents of such a person, as it was the object of Balaam to describe. Those qualities combine the entire sum of righteousness, and are far more efficacious in bringing him into favourable communion with God than whole burntofferings and sacrifices. The mind of such a man must be essentially spiritualized, and thus fitted for the intromission of every new accession of good. There is a most unpretending, but nevertheless truly sublime simplicity preserved throughout this fragment, which is prodigiously elevated, not by the language, but by the sentiments, though the former is chastely choice and significantly simple. In the first couplet of Balaam's reply the immediate opposition of man and God is eminently happy, there being unusual force in the antithesis; both are mentioned without any qualification, the one appearing in his abstract nature of weakness and dependance, the other in his inaccessible character of omnipotence and everlasting supremacy. The lines which follow are every way worthy of the lines that precede them. This splendid record of Balaam's genius, whatever may have been his character as a man, will place him, as a poet, upon a level with the greatest writers of antiquity.

CHAPTER IX.

Difference of style observable in the various poetic portions of the Pentateuch. How these portions were probably preserved and transmitted. Opinions concerning them. The variation of style no argument against their inspiration. Different compositions of the Pentateuch contrasted. Ezekiel's prophecy against Egypt.

I HAVE already spoken of the difference of style observable in the various poetical portions of the five books of Moses, clearly showing that those portions were not the composition of one man, but of the several parties to whom they are ascribed in the inspired volume. Although the great Hebrew lawgiver does not mention the writers of the parts quoted by him as having actually produced them, but seems rather to record these passages as conveying the sentiments of, or as the revelations made to those parties, as is commonly the case in historical compositions, not produced under the influence of inspiration, in which the supposed sentiments of the characters are given rather than the precise words in which they were delivered; nevertheless, the extreme variation of style and difference of poetical treatment, will sufficiently show, that certain portions of the Pentateuch, such as the blessings of Noah, Isaac, and Jacob, were actually the productions of those severally

represented as giving utterance to them; these extraordinary effluences of the divine mind, through the human, having, no doubt, been preserved in the early patriarchal families and handed down, pure and unalloyed by oral tradition, as has been the case with numerous productions of the Celtic bards in ages long subsequent, but still remote by comparison with our own times. In the earlier periods of the world, we may well imagine that all productions, whether poetical or otherwise, to which importance was attached, were kept with extreme care by the descendants of those who composed them, as evidences of ancestral distinction; since it is natural for men to be proud of any memorial by which their forefathers have obtained repute. Even though written records did not exist, there could be no great difficulty in preserving the occasional creations of genius which beamed like rays of glory through an atmosphere of comparatively intellectual darkness; and in proportion to their rarity was the facility of conservation. Moses could have no difficulty, in the character which he sustained among the Israelites, as a lawgiver divinely commissioned and inspired, in having access to whatever existed among the families over whom he held, not only a political but likewise a spiritual control, likely either to improve or adorn the history which he was composing for their behoof: for although he wrote the Pentateuch under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, this did not prevent the introduction of matter, though produced long anterior to the time of his writing, and likewise dictated that is the

matter though not the words in which it had been preserved by the same Spirit.

In consequence of several parts of the Pentateuch being evidently not the composition of Moses, as I have already shown, some learned men, among whom were Le Clerc and Simon; have questioned his claim to the authorship of those books, but their conjectures upon this subject are so futile, and have been so frequently and ably confuted, that I shall not stay to prove the fact against them here. Of late years, however, "the question of the originals of the Pentateuch has been discussed with great acumen, and much critical investigation. The result seems to be, not that those documents were composed or arranged since the days of Moses, (except so far as concerns Ezra's revision for his edition,) but that they existed before Moses, were combined and regulated by him—perhaps, even, some of them translated from more ancient memoirs, preserved in the families of Shem, Abraham, and the Hebrew patriarchs. As these came from a considerable distance east of the Euphrates, the objections derived from that incident are completely obviated by this supposition; and the others dwindle into insignificance by our better acquaintance with the ancient history of persons and places.

"It may be taken, for instance, first, that the book of Genesis contains sundry repetitions, or double narratives of the same early events. Secondly, that these duplicate narratives, when closely compared, present characteristic differences of style. Thirdly, that these differences