QUES. 8.-Will you explain what seems like contradiction in Num. 22:? In ver. 12 God answers Balaam, "Thou shall not go with them; thou shall not curse the people; for they are blessed." And yet in ver. 20 He says, "Go with them;" also in ver. 35, " The angel of the Lord said unto Balaam, Go with the men," etc. I cannot understand why God should forbid Balaam's going at the beginning, and permit it afterward.

ANS.-The reason is not far away, and the lesson in it is most solemn :Moses was a prophet too, and yet Balak would never have thought of approaching him with what he approached Balaam. There must have been a vast difference therefore between those two prophets-a difference felt by men. Next, God's first answer to Balaam is clear and decisive:No indeed, be cannot go. Why is it, even, that such men are in his house?

But Balaam covets reward and honor, and though afraid to disobey such a plain order, his heart, his will, follow after the men. Very well, says the Lord in all that follows, I will prevent your affecting My purposes of grace and. love toward My people, but you can have what your heart wishes; go with them; go, and reap in the end the bitter fruit of it; and yet I will still warn you on your way to it, even by the voice of a brute. Balaam's end we all know. Such is all self-will, and all double-heartedness. And such is God's way of dealing with it.