And the Spirit of the Lord Began to Move Him at Times
By Mary W. Howard
MY attention was riveted as I read these words. How many times I had passed carelessly over them without receiving any impression, I will not attempt to say. The fact is known to all, that in different positions of mind sentiments sink into the heart, when at other times the same presentations pass unheeded, making no impression. But as I read it this time, I was thinking, why am I not now as in days that are gone? I had been reading the confession of a brother in REVIEW, No. 13. The force of each word seemed so truthfully applicable to myself (only, unhappily, I had not the frankness to confess it,) that it made me reflect. At times, I had mourned that the Spirit of the Lord moved me less frequently than before, and wondered that an abiding presence could not be enjoyed, and sometimes had even been almost ready to discredit the evidence of my own experience. I was conscious that this was sorrowful proof of my spiritual relapse—a relapse that I fear still holds me in thrall, though I do desire to hear, as it were, a voice behind me, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it. Ah! can it be that there lies the root of the declension? Have I heard the voice, but refused to walk in the way? Sad examples of such derelictions are, alas, too frequent, not only in the past, but present. Of old, Balaam and Judas were each favored of the Lord. Unto Balaam, prophetic visions were opened; and Judas enjoyed the sweet fellowship of Jesus and the disciples; but to what good purpose? Former manifestations and experiences availed not for them. Balaam came, ere the end of his career, to be designated as “Balaam the soothsayer,” Joshua xiii, 22; and Judas’ sad history is familiar to all. Matt. xxvii, 3-5. Balaam, although unwilling to take the necessary care to live the life of the righteous, had prayed, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” Num. xxiii, 10. When importuned, he had said, “I cannot go beyond the commandment of the Lord,” yet the apostle tells us that he “loved the wages of unrighteousness;” and so we infer that the motives of his heart decided his destiny; that, being let down step by step from his better position, when he had been held in check, when he had heard the words of God, known the knowledge of the Most High, and seen the visions of the Almighty, Num. xxiv, 4, 16; or, perhaps, pushed upward by the flatteries or bribes of mistaken friends, to a dizzy, bewildering height, he had fallen from the favor of God, and “Balaam the soothsayer” became his fitting designation. Before the sacred historian drops him as a prophet, his eager looking toward worldly emolument, obtained for him the command to go as he desired; yet we are told that “the anger of the Lord was kindled against him, because he went.” Num. xxii, 22. In Balaam, we see illustrated the responsibility of so living that “we serve our generation by the will of God.” It is written for our warning and example. Let his course lead others to beware, lest a like disastrous forfeiture of rectitude become theirs. MARY W. HOWARD.
Malone, N. Y., Oct. 11, 1868.