10 ISRAEL.

Probably man has never since seen a human display so striking as the march through the wilderness.

Xerxes may have been followed by a more numerous multitude, but it was a multitude of the Scythian, the

Thracian, and the Asiatic; a half-savage and tumultuous gathering of wild men, in which the disciplined pomp

of Persia was obscured and hurried along. The myriads of an Attila or a Zengis were barbarians, sweeping the

land like an universal flame; or, like the locusts, seen, only in the act of devastation, or on the wing. But the

march of Israel, in its vastness, its strength, and its order, was sublime. The simultaneous movement of

millions of human beings,1 marshalled by their tribes, advancing under the standards of their princes, to the

sound of trumpets and hymns; and the whole mighty mass expanding across the unobstructed plains, seen

under the bright horizon, and heard in the unruffled air, of the wilderness; with the tabernacle and the Glory

in the centre, giving a superhuman character to the whole; possesses an exclusive and unrivalled grandeur.

With such a scene suddenly disclosed to his eyes, how well can we comprehend the amazement and delight

which wring from Balaam his unwilling homage! His first impression is of their incalculable number.

" From the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him.....

" Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel ? "
He changes his place of sacrifice, again tries his incantation, and is struck with a still deeper
sense of that irresistible power, which must defy alike sorcery and arms.

" The Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them. . . . Surely there is no
enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel .... Behold, the people shall
rise up as a great lion, and lift himself up as a young lion: he shall not lie down till he eat of the
prey, and drink of the blood of the slain."

At evening he makes a third attempt to blaspheme; but the host are now encamped, and the
beauty of the sight fills his lips with a strain of pastoral and lovely imagery.
" How goodly are thy tents, 0 Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!

"As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign-aloes
which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar-trees beside the waters."

But the evil spirit within the soothsayer is at length totally vanquished ; he abandons the work of
magic, sees in futurity an intellectual Star, which eclipses all the rising splendours of the skies, and
bursts out into uncontrollable and triumphant prediction.

" He hath said, which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which
saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open.

" I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh; there shall come a Star out of
Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all
the children of Sheth.

"And Edom shall be a possession, Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies; and Israel shall
do valiantly.

" Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion."2

The entrance into Canaan bore the same character of Divine royalty. On reaching the banks of the

1 The number of the Israelites, at the close of their Egyptian bondage, has been a matter of some dispute. It has been, for instance, denied that the
increase from seventy persons to 603,550 males above twenty years of age, (besides 22,000 males from a month old, among the Levites), in the space of 430
years, was probable. But Jabn (Hebrew Commonwealth), in a learned note, shews that the natural increase might have been much more, namelv, 977,280
males above twenty years. The actual number of the People bas been reckoned at two million four hundred thousand souls.

! Numbers xxiv.