arranged, that this latter shall correspond with the season of Easter; which is indeed (so to speak) the point of sight of the whole Christian Calendar, as the passover is of the Jewish.
But to proceed:—The Lessons from Easter to Whit-Sunday, (taking into account the great days of Easter-week and Ascension,) are so many specimens of the transgressions of the elect people, and of the methods taken to chastise or reclaim them[1]. The case of Balaam, most evidently, needs not to be excepted from this account; for never was a clearer analogy than between him and the Jewish people; they murmuring and rebelling with the Shechinah before their eyes; he coveting the reward of iniquity, perhaps plotting seduction in his heart, while he heard the words of God, and saw the vision of the Almighty. No analogy can be more exact; except it be that between the same miserable man and a Christian baptized, sinning against faith and knowledge.
The Lessons for Trinity-Sunday, as was natural, interrupt for one week the progress of the history, for the purpose of reviewing the whole course. The mind is carried back, first, to God's original intent in creating man after His own image[2]; next, to the appointed condition or mean, by which that image is to be regained; viz. the imitation of Abraham's faith[3]. In effect, they rehearse to us both Covenants; that of Paradise, and that of the Gospel.
Resuming our view of the covenanted people, we contemplate them first victorious[4], peaceful, and comparatively innocent, renewing their engagements with their Maker in the days of Joshua[5]; in the days of the Judges backsliding and factious, but not yet deliberately unbelieving[6]; next, trained by Eli's sons to irreverence for holy things[7]; and so, not ill-prepared to apostatize, by choosing a king on principles of accommodation and worldly policy[8].
The gradual degeneracy and downfal of that unhappy king,[9] (the emblem of the Jews of his time, as Balaam had been of a former generation,) and the substitution of one of better mind, are continued through a chain of Lessons, to the excision, long after his death, of almost all that remained of his family.[10]
