The prosperity of divine favor that rested on Israel in the wilderness did not please the king of Moab—there are few things that give universal satisfaction;—and so in order to effect a change, he sent an embassy 600 miles for Balaam, who was a most respectable man and evidently in great repute, to arrange the matter more to his wishes. Balaam's respectability was not merely that “gig-respectability,” which used to excite Carlyle's ire so much. To be sure Balaam kept his gig—or the saddle-ass which was the Oriental equivalent for it. He was an extremely “religious” man, his religion having moreover no desire to wed poverty like that of St. Francis. But besides this it is manifest that he was a man of the very highest order of mental and spiritual power and capacity,—of far-seeing prophetic vision, of vast and comprehensive knowledge, of lofty and splendid eloquence. But, like the centaur or satyr of the ancients, the upper part of him was like a demi-god and the lower part of him was like a beast. He was corrupt; and, as the Latin proverb says, the corruption of that which is best is the vilest thing of all. He had that cursed appetite for gold, auri sacra fames, which eats into the soul like a cancer.
There have been many who have followed in his footsteps—but afar off; for the race does not often produce men of his capacity. Solomon is an instance of a man who had god-like wisdom and at the same time a most animal libidinousness; but Solomon was incapable of the deliberate wickedness that Balaam perpetrated. The first Duke of Marlborough was an instance of a man of almost superhuman comprehension in war and diplomacy, who could yet sell his own sister, or his own country, for a little gold; who could rob the starving soldiers that were dying for his fame, and send information by which 800 of them were slain for a few guineas. But the only one who has at all completely resembled him was, I think, that lofty and wise philosopher, whose writings have scanned the whole province of knowledge and come home to “men's bosoms and businesses,” who spake as one who had inquired at the mouth of God, and took bribes to wrest justice and sold his friends and benefactors to imprisonment and death, and yet who almost compels us to love him notwithstanding his wickedness,— “the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,” Francis Bacon. It usually takes men a long time to learn that the Satyr is not a myth: it is reality; that there are those who have, what Montaigne calls, “Opinions super-celestes et moeurs souterraines,” who have the brow crowned with the light of heaven and the heel nailed in hell.
When the ambassadors came to Balaam, he told them they must wait till he consulted the Lord. But this was only a way he had, so as not to make himself too cheap. He never dreamed of doing anything of the sort. He went to bed, and the Lord then takes the initiative in the matter. “God came to Balaam and said, What men are these, with thee?” and commanded him not to go with them. This was very embarrassing to the prophet. He had meant to make a little money out of this business, and here he is hindered at the outset. He cannot go. They urge him. He says at last he cannot go even if they give him a house. full of gold and silver. There they have his price now. When a man like that says that he cannot do a bad action for so many pounds, that is about. the amount required. “Make it guineas, and it is a bargain.” He is given another chance. When the ambassadors come again, and Balaam is “wearying” to go with them, God tells him that he may go with them, “if the men come to call thee.” But Balaam does not wait for the test to work. We read that he “rose up in the morning and saddled his ass and notwithstanding the original command not to go, the failure of the test, and the warning of the angel and the dumb beast on the way, he beats down all opposition and goes on to his gold, his honors, and his damnation.
The worst of his conduct is that he saw and knew perfectly the will and judgment of God in the events. We are not dealing with a mere stupid atheist. A man with the highest order of intelligence is never an atheist, though his followers often profess to be so. The great Darwin was no atheist, but the little Darwins frequently are. Neither Voltaire nor Thos. Paine nor Bonaparte were atheists. As Bacon says, “A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.” It is not “knowledge,” but “a little knowledge” that is a dangerous thing. But the man that has intelligence to know that God lives and judges is more guilty in his wickedness than the man—if there really be one—who is stupid enough to believe in a creation without a creator.
His great reputation for sanctity and spiritual power he is prepared to put out to market to Moab. And truly what was the good of it to him if he could not turn an honest penny by it? When Jonas Hanway suggested to his coachman that he would like him to have family prayers, the man replied that he would willingly, and he hoped it would be considered in the wages;—and certainly it ought to be, because piety of this nature must be rewarded in this life, for it has not much to expect from the next. Balaam hoped to die the death of the righteous, but like many another who has the same desire, he prefers to live the life of the wicked, and this is not the way to attain to it. He goes up deliberately prepared for a little sordid gain to curse into misery and disaster a whole nation of people who never offended him; and when God turns his curse into a blessing, in the middle of pronouncing it he murmurs in the king's ear—doubtless in calm, unctuous, sanctimonious accents—a fiendish plot by which to destroy them. “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end [just the “last end” of it only] be like his,” he said; but he died the death of the wicked in the midst of the enemies of God and by the sword of judgment,—a man of noble and splendid endowments, with the “golden mouth” of a Chrysostom in his life, and the gold-filled mouth of the ghastly Crassus in death.