We look at Balaam, and think, how could a man purpose anything so foolish as to go on seeking for an opportunity to break a law which he knew to be irrevocable!
Yet what did he do but what every sinner does?
All sin is the breach of law which at the very moment of breaking is known to be imperative.
All sin is thus the overbearing of conscience, or the sophistication of conscience, and all sin is the incurring voluntarily of consequences which at the moment are or might be known to be certain, and far overbalancing any fancied 'wages of unrighteousness.'
Thus all sin is the overbearing of reason or the sophisticating of reason by passion. Men know the absurdity of sin, and yet men will go on sinning. 'A rogue is a roundabout fool.' All wrongdoing is a mighty blunder. It is only righteousness which is congruous with a man's reason, with a man's conscience, with a man's highest happiness. 'The fear of the Lord,' that is wisdom.
IV. The wages of unrighteousness.
How Balaam's experiment ended—his death. He tried to make the 'best of both worlds,' so he ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds, and this was how it ended, as it always does, as it always will. How death ends all the illusions, sternly breaks down all the compromises, reveals all the absurdities!
Men are one thing or the other. Learn, then, the lesson that no gifts, no talents, no convictions, no aspirations will avail.
Let this sad figure which looks out upon us with grey streaming hair and uplifted hands from beside the altar on Pisgah speak to us.
How near the haven it is possible to be cast away! Like Bunyan's way to hell from near the gate of the celestial city.