The words with which Huxley fell in love were addressed by the prophet
to a desperate man--and that man a king--who was prepared to pay any
price and make any sacrifice if only, by so doing, he might win for
himself the favor of the Most High. '_Wherewith shall I come before the
Lord and bow myself before the high God?' he cries. 'Shall I come before
Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be
pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for
the sin of my soul?_'
'_My firstborn!_'--we have just witnessed a father's anguish on the
death of his firstborn. But Balak, King of Moab, is prepared to lead his
firstborn to the sacrificial altar if, by so doing, he can secure the
favor of the Highest.
And the answer of the prophet is that the love of God is not for sale.
And, if it _were_ for sale, it could not be purchased by an act of
immolation in which heaven could find no pleasure at all. F. D. Maurice
points out, in one of his letters to R. H. Hutton, that the world has
cherished two ideas of sacrifice. When a man discovers that his life is
out of harmony with the divine Will, he may make a sacrifice by which he
brings his conduct into line with the heavenly ideal. That is the one
view. The other is Balak's. Balak hopes, by offering his child upon the
altar, to bring the divine pleasure into line with his unaltered life.
'All light is in the one idea of sacrifice,' says Maurice, 'and all
darkness in the other. The idea of sacrifice, not as an act of obedience
to the divine will, but as a means of changing that will, is the germ of
every dark superstition.'
Heaven is not to be bought, the prophet told the king. '_He hath shewed
thee, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of thee but to
do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?_'
_Equity! Charity! Piety!_
_Do something! Love something! Be something!_
_Do justly! Love mercy! Walk humbly with thy God!_
These, and these alone, are the offerings in which heaven finds delight.
V
I cannot help feeling sorry for the lady in the Scottish church. She
thinks that Balaam's brave reply to Balak is the worst text in the
Bible. And she is not alone. For, in his _Literature and Dogma_, Matthew
Arnold shows that she is the representative of a numerous and powerful
class. 'In our railway stations are hung up,' Matthew Arnold says,
'sheets of Bible texts to catch the eye of the passer-by. And very
profitable admonitions to him they generally are. One, particularly, we
have all seen. It asks the prophet Micah's question: _Wherewith shall I
come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God?_ And it answers
that question with one short quotation from the New Testament: _With the
precious blood of Christ._' Matthew Arnold maintains that this is not
honest. By casting aside the prophet's answer, and substituting another,
the people who arranged the placard ally themselves with the lady in the
Scottish church. They evidently think Balaam's reply to Balak _the worst
text in the Bible_. But is it? Is it good, is it fair, is it honest to
strike out the real answer and to insert in its place an adopted one? I
wish to ask the lady in the Scottish church--and the people who prepared
the placard--two pertinent questions.
My _first_ question is this. Is the deleted text--the worst text in the
Bible--true? That is extremely important. _Does_ God require that man
should do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with Himself? Is it not a
fact that heaven _does_ insist on equity and charity and piety? Can
there, indeed, be any true religion without these things? Do they not
represent the irreducible minimum? If this be so, is it not as well for
that Scottish minister to preach on that terrible text, after all? And,
if this be so, would not the original answer to the question be the best
answer for the placard?
My _second_ question is this. Even from the standpoint of 'a stern lady
who is provokingly evangelical,' is it not well for the minister to
preach on that objectionable text? The lady is anxious, and commendably
anxious, that the pulpit of her church should sound forth the
magnificent verities of the Christian evangel. But will a man desire the
salvation which the New Testament reveals unless he has first recognized
his inability to meet heaven's just demands? In a notable fragment of
autobiography, Paul declares that, but for the law, he would never have
known the meaning of sin. It was when he heard how much he owed to the
divine justice that he discovered the hopelessness of his bankruptcy. It
was when he listened to the _Thou shalts_ and the _Thou shalt nots_ that
he cried, 'O wretched man that I am: who shall deliver me?' It was Sinai
that drove him to Calvary. The law, with its stern, imperative demands,
was, he says, the schoolmaster that led him to Christ. The best way of
showing that a stick is crooked is to lay a straight one beside it. This
being so, the lady in the Scottish church, and the compilers of Matthew
Arnold's placard, must consider whether, in the interests of that very
evangelism for which they are so justly jealous, they can afford to
supersede the stately passages that make men feel their desperate need
of a Saviour.
This, at any rate, is the way in which Micah used the story of the
conversation between Balak and Balaam. By means of it he sought to
reduce the people to despair. And then, when they had fallen upon their
faces and covered themselves with sackcloth, he made one of the noblest
evangelical pronouncements that the Old Testament contains: '_He
pardoneth iniquity because He delighteth in mercy: Thou wilt cast all
their sins into the depths of the sea_.' But the people would never have
listened hungrily to that glad golden word unless they had first
realized the sublimity of the divine demand and the incalculable extent
of their shortcoming.