The Syracuse Journal, Volume 6, Number 27, Syracuse, Kosciusko County, 30 October 1913 — Page 3

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• SYNOPSIS. George Anderson and wl*,» » e ® a remarkable looking man coma out or ine Clertnont hotel, look around furtively, wash Ins hands in the snow^ an A,P a^ r 2, t ‘ Commotion attracts them to the Clermont, where it is found that the beautiful 1 - Edith Chailoner has fallen dead. Anaer eon describes the man he saw wash„ pr hands in the snow. The hotel declares him to be Orlando Brotherson. Physicians find that Alias Challoner stabbed Sind not shot. Gryce, an aged « tective. and Sweetwater. take up the case. Mr. Challoner tel batch of letters found in his d » u^. t t e s desk, signed “O. B ” All are love letters except one, which shows that the writer was displeased. This !««« ’«’ by Orlando Brotherson. Anderwn goes with Sweetwater to Identify Brotherson. who is found in a tenement u " ‘s® name of Dunn. He is an Inventor Brotherson tells the coroner M lss Challoner repulsed him with scorn when he offered her his love Sweetwater recalls the mjstery of the murder of a washerwomani Inwhich some details were similar to the Challoner affair. Sweetwater gets lodgings in the same building with Brotherson He bores a hole In the wall to spy on Brotherson. He visits him and assists the inventor In his work. A girl sent by Sweetwater with Edith Chailoner’s letters is ordered out by Brotherson. He declares the letters were not written by him. Sweetwater is unmasked by Brotherson. who declares ne recognized him at once.* The discovery is made that the letters signed “O. B. were written by two different men. Sweetwater goes to Derby in search of the second X; B whom he expects to locate through one Doris Seott, mentioned in the She is found acting as nurse for Oswald Brotherson. who is critically sick an jJ calls the name of Edith in his delirium. Sweetwater comes across a peculiar hut In tne woods. He sees a load of boxes marked "O. Brotherson.” taken into the hut under the supervision of Doris Scott. Boris tells Challoner of seeing in ajlream tne face of the man who killed Edith. The door bell rings and she recognizes in the visitor the man of her dream. It is Orlando Brotherson. who requests an interview with his brother. It develops that Orlando is working on a flying machine. Oswald is told of Edith’s death. ° tells his brother of his repulse by Miss Challoner. Ortando asks his brother to assist in tests of his air car, as hr can trust no one. else., Oswald refuses owing to his weakened condition. Sweetwater offers his services as an assistant ana shows he knows something of Brotherson's idea. CHAPTER XXXVll.—Continued Great God! he sees it! They all »ee It! Plainly against that portion of the disk which still lifted itself above the further wall, a curious moving mass appears, lengthens, takes on •hape, then shoots suddenly aloft, clearing the encircling tops of the bending, twisting and> tormented trees, straight into the heart of the gale, where for one breathless moment it whirls madly about like a thing distraught, then in slow but triumphant obedience to the master hand that guides it. steadies and mounts majestically upward till it is lost to their -lew in the depths of impenetrable darkness. .? Orlando ’ Brotherson ' has accomplished his task. He has invented a mechanism which can send an air-car •traight up from its mooring place. Ab the three watchers realize this, Oswald utters a cry of triumph, and Doris throws herself into Mr. Challoner’s arms. Then they all stand transfixed again, waiting for a decent which may never come. But hark; a new sound, mingling Its clatter with all the others. It Is the rain. Quick, maddening, drenching, it comes; enveloping them in wet in a moment. Can they hold their faces up against It? 'And the wind! Surely it must toss that aerial messenger before it and fltig it back to earth, a broken and despised toy. “Orlando?” went up in a shriek. “Orlando?" Ohffor a ray of light in those faroff heavens! For a lull in the tremendous sounds shivering the heavens and shaking the earth! But the tempest rages on, and they can only wait, five minutes, ten minutes, looking, hoping, fearing, without thought of self and almost without thought of each other, till suddenly as it had come, the rain ceases and the wind, with one final wail of rage and defeat; rushes away into the west, leaving behind it a sudden silence which, to their terrified hearts, seems almost more dreadful to bear than the accumulated noises of the moment just gone. ‘ Orlando was in that shout of natural forces, but he is not in this stillness. They look aloft, but the heavens are void. Emptiness is where life was. Oswald begins to sway, and Doris, remembering him now and him only, has thrown her strong young arm about him, when —what is this sound they hear high up, high up, in the rapidly clearing vault of the heavens! A throb —a steady pant—drawing near and yet nearer —entering the circlet of great branches over their heads—descending, slowly descending—till they catch another glimpse of those hazy outlines which had no sooner taken shape than the car disappeared from their sight within the elliptical wall open to receive it It had survived the gale! It has reentered its haven, and that, too, without colliding with aught around or any shock to those within, just as Orlando had promised; and the world was henceforth his! Hail to Orlando Brotherson! Oswald could hardly restrain his mad joy and enthusiasm. Bounding to the. door separating him from this conqueror of almost invincible forces, be pounded it with impatient fist "Let me in!" he cried. “You’ve done the trick, Orlando, you’ve done the trick.” "Yes, I have satisfied myself,” came back in studied self-control from the other side-of the door;, and with a quick turning of the lock, Orlando stood before them. They never forgot him as he looked H that moment. He was drenched, Uttered, palpitating with, excitement; the majesty of success was in his tft and in the bearing of his Incomdurable figure. As Oswald bounded towards him, hs i /ached out his hand, but his glaaos * as fur Doris. be went on, in tones «t

pressed elation, “there’s ho flaw in my triumph. I have done all that I set out to do. Now —” Why did he stop and look hurriedly back into the hangar? He had remembered Sweetwater, Sweetwater, who at that moment was stepping carefully from his seat in some remote portion of the car. The triumph was not complete. He had meant — But there his thought stopped. Nothing of evil, nothing even of regret should mar his great hour. He was a conqueror, and it was for him now to reap the joy of conquest. CHAPTER XXXVIII. Night Three days had passed, and Orlando Brotherson sat in his room at the hotel before a table laden with telegrams, letters and marked newspapers. The news of his achievement had gone abroad, and Derby was, for the moment, the center of Interest for two continents. His success was an established fact. The second trial which he had made with his car, this time with the whole town gathered together in the streets as witnesses, had proved not only the reliability of its mechanism, but the great advantages which it possessed for a direct flight to any given point. Already he saw fortune beckoning to him in the shape of an unconditional offer of money from a first-class source; and better still —for he was a man of untiring energy and boundless resource—that opportunity for new and enlarged effort which comes with the recognition of one’s exceptional powers. • All this was his and more. A sweeter hope, a more enduring joy had followed hard upon gratified ambition. Doris had smiled on him —Doris! She had caught the contagion of the universal enthusiasm and had given- him her first ungrudging token of approval. It had altered his whole outlook on life in an instant, for there was an eagerness in this demonstration which proclaimed the relieved heart. She no longer trusted either appearances or her dream. He had succeeded in conquering her doubts by the very force of his personality, and the shadow which had hitherto darkened their intercourse had melted quite away. She was ready to take his word now and Oswald’s, after which the rest must follow. Love does not lag far behind an ardent admiration. Fame! Fortune! Love! What more could a man desire? What more could this man, with hl® strenuous past and an unlimited capacity for an enlarged future, ask from fate than this. Yet, as he bends over his letters, fingering some, but reading none beyond a line or two, he betrays but a passing elation, and hardly lifts his head when a burst of loud acclaim comes ringing up to his window from some ardent passer-by: “Hurrah for Brotherson! He has put our town on the map!” W’hy this despondency? Have those two demons seized him again? It would seem so and with new and overmastering fury. After the hour of triumph comes the hour of reckoning. Orlando Brotherson in his hour of proud attainment stands naked before his own soul’s tribunal and the pleader is dumb and the judge inexorable. There is but one witness to such struggles; but one eye to note the waste and desolation of the devastated soul, when the storm is overpast. Orlando Brotherson has succumbed; the attack was too keen, his forces too shaken. But as the heavy minutes

I > EH I I —————— * — “Did You Love Edith Challoner as Much as That?”

pass, he slowly regathers his strength and rises, in the end, a conqueror. Neverthless, he knows, even in that moment of regained command, that the peace he had thus bought with strain and stress is but momentary; that the battle is on for life; that the days which to other eyes would carry a sense of brilliancy—days teeming with work and outward satisfaction—would hold within their hidden depths a brooding uncertainty which would rob applause of its music and even overshadow the angel face of Love. He quailed at the prospect, materialist though he was. The days—the Interminable days! In his unbroken strength and the glare of the noonday sun. he forgot to .take account of the nights looming in black and endless procession before him. It was from the day phantom he shrank, and not from the ghoul which works in the darkness and makes a grave of the heart while happier mortals sleep. And the former tenor seemed 4sr>

INITMIS

ANNA KXTHARTNTgEEEN AUTHOR OP “THE LEAVENWORTH CASE' “THE FILIGREE nAILIHE BOUSE OFTHEWHBPERUW MMS ILL.USTBATIONS BY CHABLES.W.ROSSEB

midable enough to him in this his hour of startling realization, even if he had freed himself for the nonce from its controlling power.' To escape all further contemplation of it he would work. These letters deserved attention. He would carry them to Oswald, and in their consideration find distraction for the rest of the day, at least Oswald was a good fellow. If pleasure were to be gotten from thesetokens of good-will, he should have his share of It. A gleam of Oswald’s old spirit in Oswald’s once bright eye, would go far towards throttling one of those demons whose talons he had just released rem his throat; and if Doris responded too, he would deserve his fate, if he did not succeed in gaining that mastery of himself which would make such hours as these episodes in a life big with interest and potent with great emotions. Rising with a resolute air, he made a bundle of his papers and, with them in hand, passed out of his room and down the hotel stairs. A man stood directly in his way. as he made for the front door. It was Mr. Challoner. Courtesy demanded some ishow of recognition between them, and Brotherson was passing with his usual cold bow, when a sudden impulse led him to pause and meet the other's eye, with the sarcastic remark: “You have expressed, or so I have been told, some surprise at my choice of mechanician. A man of varied accomplishments, Mr. Challoner, but one for whoiii I have no further use. If, therefore, you wish to call off your watch-dog, you are at liberty to do so. I hardly think he can be serviceable to either of us much longer." The older gentleman hesitated, seeking possibly for composure, and when he answered it was not only without irony but with a certain forced respect: “Mr. Sweetwater has just left for New York. Mr. Brotherson. He will carry with him, no doubt, the full particulars of your great success.” Orlando bowed, this time with distinguished grace. Not a flicker of relief had disturbed the calm serenity of his aspect, yet when a moment later, he stepped among his shouting admirers in the street, his air and glance betrayed a bounding joy for which another source must be found than that of gratified pride. A chain had slipped from his spirit, and though the people shrank a little even while they cheered, it was rather from awe of his bearing and the recognition of the sense of apartness which underlay his smile than from any perception of the man’s real nature or of the awesome purpose which at that moment exalted it. But had they known —could they have seen into this tumultuous heart—what a silence would have settled upon these noisy streets; and in what terror and soulconfusion would each man have slunk away from his fellows into the quiet and solitude of his own home. Brotherson himself was not without a sense of the incongruity underlying thl» ovation; for, as he slowly worked himself along, the brightness of his look became dimmed with a tinge of , sarcasm which in its turn gave way to an expression of extreme melancholy—both quite unbefitting the hero of the hour in the first flush of his new-born glory. Had he seen Doris’ youthful figure emerge for a moment from the vine-hung porch he was approaching, bringing with it some doubt of the reception awaiting him? Possibly, for he made a stand before he reached the house, and sent his followers back; after which he advanced with an unhurrying step, so that several minutes elapsed before he finally drew up before Mr. Scott’s door and entered through the now empty porch into his brother’s sitting-room. He had meant to see Doris first, but his mind had changed. If all passed off well between himself and Oswald, if he found his brother responsive and wide-awake to the interests and necessities of the hour, he might forego his interview with her till he felt better prepared to meet it. For call it cowardice or simply a reasonable precaution, any delay seemed preferable to him in his present mood of discouragement, to that final casting of the die upon which hung so many and such tremendous Issues. It was the first moment of real halt in his whole tumultuous life! Never, as daring experimentalist or agitator, had he shrunk from danger seen or unseen or from threat uttered or unuttered, as he shrank from this young girl’s no; and something of the dread he had felt lest he should encounter her unaware in the hall and so be led on to speak when his own judgment bade him be silent, darkened his features as he entered his brother’s presence. But Oswald was sunk in a bitter revery of his own, and took no heed of these signs of depression. In the reaction following these days of great excitement, the past had re-asserted itself, and all was gloom in his once generous soul. This, Orlando had time to perceive, quick as the change came when his brother really realized who his visitor was. The glad “Orlando!" and the forced smile did not deceive him, and his voice quavered a trifle as he held out his packet with the words: **l have come to show you what the world says of my invention. We will soon be great men,” he emphasised, as Oswald opened the letters. “Money has been offered me and—read! read!” he urged, with an unconscious dictatorialness as Oswald paused in his task. "See what the fates have prepared for us; for you shall share all my honors, as you will from this day share my work and enter into all

my experiments. Cannot you enthuse a little bit over it? Doesn’t the prospect contain any allurement for you? Would you rather stay locked up in this petty town —” “Yes; or—die. Don’t look like that, Orlando. It was a cowardly speech and I ask your pardon. I’m hardly fit to talk today. Edith—” Orlando frowned. “Not that name!" he harshly Interrupted. “You must not hamper your life with useless memories. That dream of yours may be sacred, but it belongs to the past, and a great reai.ty confronts you. When you have fully recovered your health, your own manhood will rebel at a weakness unworthy one of our name. Rouse yourself, Oswald. Take account of our prospects. Give me your hand and say: ‘Life holds something for me yet. 1 have a brother who needs me if I do not need him. Together, we can prove ourselves invincible and wrench fame and fortune from the world.’ ” But the hand he reached for did not rise at his command, though Oswald started erect and faced him with manly earnestness. “I should have to think long and deeply," he said, “before I took upon myself responsibilities like these. 1 am broken in mind and heart, Orlando, and must remain so till God mercifully delivers me. I should be a poor assistant to you—a drag, rather than a help. Deeply as I deplore it, hard as it may be for one of your temperament to understand so complete an overthrow, I yet must acknowledge my condition and pray you not to count upon me in any plans you may form. I know how this looks—l know that as your brother and truest admirer, I should respond, and re spond strongly, to such overtures as these, but the motive for achievement is gone. She was my all; and while I might work, it would be mechanically. The lift, the elevating thought is gone.” Orlando stood a moment studying his brother’s face; then he turned shortly about and walked the length of the room. When he came bfck, he took up his stand again directly before Oswald, and asked, with a new note in his voice: “Did you love Edith Challoner so much at that?” A glance from Oswald’s eye, sadder than any tear. “So that you cannot be reconciled?” A gesture. Oswald’s words were always few. Orlando’s frowfi deepened. “Such grief I partly understand,” said he. “But time will cure it. Some day another lovely sac “We’ll not talk of that, Orlando." “No, we’ll not talk of that,” acquiesced the inventor, walking away again, this time to the window. “For you there’s but one woman—and she’s a memory.” “Killed!", broke from his brother's lips. “Slain by her own hand under an impulse of wildness and terror! Can I ever forget that? Do not expect It, Orlando.” “Then you do blame me?” Orlando turned and was looking full at Oswald. “I blame your unreasonableness and your overweening pride.” , Orlando stood a moment, then moved towards the door. The heaviness of his step smote upon Oswald’s ear and caused him to exclaim: “Forgive me, Orlando." But the other cut him short with an imperative: “Thanks for your candor! If her spirit is destined to stand like an immovable shadow between you and me, you do right to warn me. But this interview must end all allusion to the subject. I will seek and find another man to share my fortunes! (as he said this he approached suddenly, and took his papers from the other’s hand) or —" Heqe he hastily retraced his steps to the door which he softly opened. “Or,” he repeated—but though Oswald listened for the rest, it did not come. While he waited, the other had given him one deeply concentrated look and passed out No heartfelt understanding was possible between these two men. Ciossing the hall, Orlando knocked at the door of Doris’ little sittingroom. No answer, yet she was there. He knew it in every throbbing fiber of his body. She was there and quite aware of his presence; of this he felt sure; yet she did not bld him enter. Should he knock again? Never! but he would not quit the threshold, not if she kept him waiting there for hours. Perhaps she realized this. Perhaps she had meant to open the door to him from the very first, who can tell? What avails is that she did ultimately open it, and he, meeting her soft eye. wished from his very heart that his impulse had led him another way, even if that way had been to the edge of the precipice—and over. For the face he looked upon was serene, and there was no serenity in him;*'rather a confusion of unloosed passions fearful of barrier and yearning tumultuously for freedom. But, whatever his revolt, the secret revolt which makes no show in look or movement, he kept his ground and forced a smile of greeting. If her face was quiet, it was also lovely—too lovely, he felt, for a man to leave it, whatever might come of his lingering. Nothing in all his life had ever affected him like it. For him there was no other woman in the past, the present or the future, and, realizing thiataking in to the full what her affection and her trust might be to him in those fearsome days to come, hs so dreaded a rebusf —he, who had been the courted of women and the admired of men ever since he could remember —that he failed to respond to her weir

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come and the simple congratulations she felt forced to repeat. He could neither speak the commonplace, nor listen to it? This was his crucial hour. He must find -support here, or yield hopelessly to the maelstrom in whose whirl he was caught. She saw his excitement and faltered back a step—a move which she regret- ■ ted the next minute, for he took advantage of it to enter and close behind him the door which she would never have shut of her own accord. Then he spoke, abruptly, passionately, but in those golden tones which no emotion could render other than alluring: “I am an unhappy man, Miss Scott I «ee that my presence here is not welcome, yet am sure that it would be so if it were not for a prejudice which your generous nature should be the first to cast aside, in face of the outspoken confidence of my brother Oswald. Doris, little Doris, I love you. I have loved you from the moment of our first meeting. Not to many men is it given to find his heart so late, and when he does, it is for his whole life; no second passion can follow It. I know that I am premature In saying this; that you are not prepared to hear such words from me and that it might be wiser for me to withhold them, but I must leave Derby soon, and I cannot go until I know whether there is the least hope that you will yet lend a light to my career or whether that career must burn Itself to ashes at your feet. Oswald—nay, hear me out—Oswald lives in his memories; but I must have an active hope—a tangible expectation—if I am to be the man I was meant to be.. Will you, then, coldly dismiss me, or will you let my whole future life prove to you the innocence of my past? I will not hasten anything; all I ask is some indulgence. Time will do the rest" “Impossible," she murmured. But that was a word for which he had no ear. He saw that she was moved, unexpectedly so; that while her eyes wandered restlessly at times towards the door, they ever came back in girlish wonder, if not fascination, to his face, emboldening him so that he ventured at last, to add: “Doris, little Doris, I will teach you a marvellous lesson, if you will onlyturn your dainty ear my way. Love such as mine carries infinite treasure with it. Will you have that treasure heaped, piled before your feet? Your lips say nd, but your eyes—the truest eyes I ever saw —whisper a different language. The day will come when you will find your joy in the breast of him you are now afraid to trust.” And not waiting for disclaimer or even a glance of reproach from the eyes he had so wilfully misread, he withdrew with a movement as abrupt as that with which he had entered. Why, then, with the memory of this exultant hour to fend off all shadows, did the midnight find him in his solitary hangar in the moonlit woods, a deeply desponding figure again. Beside him swung the huge machine which represented a life of power and luxury; but he no longer saw it. It called to him with many a creak and quiet snap—sounds to start his blood and fire his eye a week —nay, a day ago. But he was deaf to this music now; the call went unheeded; the future had no further meaning for him, nor did ho know or think whether he sat in light or in darkness; whether the woods were silent about him, or panting with life and sound. His demon had gripped him again and the final battle was on. There would never be another. Mighty as he felt himself to be, there were limits even to Ms capacity for endurance. He could sustain no further conflict. How then would it end? He never had a doubt himself! Yet he sat there. Around him in the forest, thy night owls screeched and innumerable small things without a name, skurried from lair to lair. He heard them hot.

Marks the Man of Business

Ability to Recognize Worth, No Matter Where Met, Is One of the Greatest of All Gifts. “Seeing” men is an art. It amounts almost to second sight. Often, in a business “line,” some man makes his way mysteriously and rapidly to the top, or near to it. He does not seem to have greater trading ability than many others, nor has he bee” favored by a larger capital or a more magnetic personality. But he rises. His faculty of “seeing” men has been the magical force. “Seeing” men means recognizing, perhaps under an unpromising exterior, what a man really is or may grow into, and attaching him to an organization or staff. There are business executives that are geniuses in doing this. Their success is brought about in great measure by the efficiency of the body of men they have picked in this way. It happens many times that a captain of affairs hunts for years for a lieutenant of certain qualities. He finds him at last, in Cinderella-Hke garb, far down the commercial ladder, a person a hundred other men who really wanted a man of jnst this type have passed carelessly over. They could not “see. It Is no trick at all to dUcover the man who has triumphantly made a record, who is already a personality

Above, the moon rode, flecking the deepest shadows with the silver from her half-turned urn, but none of the soft and healing drops fell upon him. Nature was no longer a goddess, but an avenger; light a revealer, not a solace. Darkness the only boon. Nor . had time a meaning. From early eve to early morn he sat there and knew not if it were one hour or . twelve. Earth was his no longer. He roused, when the sun made everything light about him, but he did not think about it. He rose, but was not conscious that he rose. He unlocked the door and stepped out into the forest; but he could never remember doing this. He only knew rater that he had been in the woods and now was in his room at the hotel; all the rest was phantasmagoria, agony and defeat. He had crossed the Rubicon of this world’s hopes and fears, but he had been unconscious of the passage. (TO BE CONTINUED.) What Novel Readers Like. That old question whether the poor prefer to read stories about themselves rather than about the rich has been revived in England and discussed by serial writers. Some believe that most readers, whether poor or rich, prefer novels dealing with a class different from their own. and some maintain that the majority of readers are more Interested in their own class. Nobody knows. Btrt something undoubtedly depends upon the novelist himself. Dickens had no difficulty in interesting everybody in the poor. Thackeray made the wellI to-do and the rich interesting. So does ! Mrs. Wharton. And innumerable , others. On the other hand. Jack London, Kauffman, James Oppenheim and possibly two or three others have sketched wonderful pictures of lowly and obscure lives. The “great American I novel,” which may have been written, but is still awaiting publication, will deal neither with the rich nor with the poor exclusively, nor with the middle class, but with all sorts and conditions of men. It will be a novel of ! democracy—neither aristocratic nor proletarian. Canvassing and Suffrage. ’ If you should happen to meet a handsomely gowned woman carrying what looks like a mop handle in one hand and a lot of tinware in the other do not imagine she is moving. She is merely working for the cause, according to the New York Times. * One of these workers who was encountered by an acquaintance explained the system. In order to get inside the homes she was selling a vacuum washer and while she explained its saving qualities she put in a word for woman suffrage. In the Fifth avenue and West Side homes she talked to laundresses, but on the East Side she saw the women of the house. All of the profits made on the washer are turned ovsr to the organization. This particular worker, who lives tn the fashionable part of the city, said she had five lieutenants out working other districts. Life Untfer Pressure. The bed of the Arctic seas is very fine and plastic, while in the other zones of the Atlantic the bed is covered with reddish mud and an accumulation of the remains of animals that lived in the surface waters, died, and •lowly sank. The pressure of the sea Increases about one atmosphere to every ten meters, so every additional hundred meters adds the pressure of ten atmospheres. When deepsea fishes are brought to the surface they lose their scales, their teguments become brittle, and they are so inflated by in ternal distension caused by the lessened pressure that in many cases ! they burst asunder. —Harper s Weekly.

in this trade or that. Unfortunately such a man is unfailingly costly. What he has done, moreover, is no positive guarantee as to his future exploits. Men "of great reputation as lieutenants many times prove great disappointments when they shift. The chief who “sees” picks a man whose reputation Is yet to be made, and thereby gets the profits himself.—Cromwell Childe, in Harper’s Weekly. Victim for Each Building. The belief, illustrated in the ballad of “The Bridge of Arta,” that a human victim is required to insure the stability of a bridge or building survives in Greece today, J. A. Lawson says. There is no murder now. It suffices to obtain, preferably from an enemy or an old person, a hair, nail paring, shred of clothing, old shoe Or a thread or stick marked with the person's height or footprint measure, and bury these beneath the foundation stone. The victim dies within-a year, but the building Is safe. Even a shadow will do. Mr. Lhw* son was himself dragged back by a friend in Santorini so that his shadow might not fall across such a fata) spot; and the mayor of Agrinian told him that his four predecessors had all died from lettering their shadows fall on foundation stones lato by them

iNItMIONAL SIJNDAYStIIOOI LESSON - (By E. O. SELLERS. Director of Eveuinf Department, The Moody Bible Institute, Chicago.)

LESSON FOR NOVEMBER 2 BALAK AND BALAAM. LESSON TEXT-Numbere 22:1-6, 24:1d« 19. Read Numbers chs. 21-24. GOLDEN TEXT—“A double-mln<Ud man, unstable In all his ways." Jan. 1:8. Following our last lesson the Isreat Ites marched along the borders of tha wilderness meeting with much opposb tion.' In Num. 20 we are told of the death of Aaron. They met (21:1-3) and overthrew him. Moving around Edom was a difficult procest and the people became discouraged. Again they murmured against God and against Moses. Swift punishment followed in the form of fiery serpents, Num. 21:4-11. Confessing their sins Moses interceded on their behalf and the look at a brazen serpent suggested to them the necessary attitude of faith towards God. After sundry wanderings, the dwelling among the Amorites and the overthrow of sundry tribes, we come to their encounter with Balak. As they journeyed the report of their victories preceded them and Balak sought to protect himself against these strange “people come out of Egypt,” by other means than that of war, for, said he, “they are covering the face of the earth.” See Ex. 15:15. Little Known About Balaam. Here Balaam appears upon the scene. Little is known about . him. He evidently had a knowledge of Jehovah and yet was a sorcerer or spiritist, dealing with evil spirits, and was, probably, a Mldlanite. I. The Call to Curse, Ch. 22:1-6. There are six personal pronouns in verse; Balak sought to fight fire with fire, to save his own face. He feared those whom God blessed. The world today hates those whom God blesses. Had Balak been wise he would have cast in his lot with Israel and not have miserably perished in battle along with his unwilling tool, Balaam. (See Num. 31:8, Josh. 13:32.) • e Balaam at first refused Balak’s invitation (v. 13), but Balak sends more exalted messengers and greater offers of honor and rewards, promising him honor in the kingdom it he would but curse Israel (v. 17). Balaam again returns word that this is impossible (v. 18) for he cannot go beyond the word of Jehovah, not that he was in sympathy with that word at all, but he, was conscious of Jehovah’s power. However, asked Halak's messengers to tarry over night that perhaps Jehovah would permit him tq go. Thus Jehovah lets him go upon the condition that he speak only the word he should receive from God. Eagerly (“early-in the morning,” v. 21) taking advantage of this permission, but not yet knowing what word it is that Jehovah would have him speak, he starts upon his journey. Hence it is written that “God’s anger was kindled against him as he went.” Balaam wanted to go, for “he loved the wages of unrighteousness" (2 Peter 2:15, Jude 11). but had felt that" he was held in leash by the power of Jehovah. 11. A Challenge by the way. Ch. 22: I 22-35. The angel of Jehovah, as the agent of his anger, Interposed to save : Balaam from himself. Lust had so blinded his eyes that even ah ass > saw more clearly than he. God rebuked him and those who trafficked with evil spirits in order to produce i results are mocked by the fact that a dumb ass found voice and spoke. Finally, after repeating hl's conditional permission that he was to speak only the word Jehovah was to give him, he is permitted to proceed with the “princes of Balak.” Balaam a Prophet. 111. The changeless message, Ch. 24. Read carefully the intervening chapters. In them we have the acount of Balaam meeting Balak and of his brief but wonderful prophecy concerning Israel. Balaam gives us a wonderful description of one who is a prophet (24:16). He (1) ’ heareth the words' of God.” (2) "knoweth the knowledge of the most high, (3) “seeth the vision of the almighty. Verse 17 is a wonderful phophecy of I the Lord Jesus, who is “a star,” for ' he “lighteth every man who cometh ‘ into the world.” (See also 2 Pet. 1:19.) ,He is called “a sceptre” because o°f his kingly sway (see Lk. 1: 32, 33, Heb. 1:8). From the context we read how once his lips were opened he declared a wonderful prophecy concerning these whom Balak considered his enemies and with prophetic | eye he sees the coming glory of I Israel. Balak’s anger is kindled, and : he seeks to drive Balaam away, but each time there comes forth from his i lips one of these unweleoime prophecies.x These marvelous prophecies which fell from Balaam’s as an instrument, taught that this- entire under world of evil is under control of Jehovah and its curses upon his people are important. He may even compel unwilling instruments, if needful, to become agents for. the accomplishment of his purposes. Balaam's sad end strikingly illustrates the fact that a man may admire the ideal of righteousness and the beauty of holiness and yet failing to yield his own life to those principles fail utterly in the consummation of his life and his influence. He taught Israel to sin (Num. 31:16 and Rev. 2:10), yet he failed to curse them. How often this Is true of unrighteous Christian leaders. God opened to Balaam a door to '.rue greatness and the way to high et honor, yet he esteemed the things of time and sense as more to be de- v sired (Num. 22:17)y He has hia counterpart today l« z those who have extraordinary knowledge of the things . of God, who have heard the word of Jehovah and who can see the visions of the almighty, but who love money wd ease and whose corrupt lives are eadlva hundreds Into «in.