The second theme regards the posterity of Jacob, and his God. The water-courses will be favorite places of dwelling, and God, their King, will be exalted:

"His branches shall flow along rivers,

And his seed beside

many waters.

And the flaming God, their King, shall be lifted up,

And his kingdom shall be exalted.

God, who brought him out of Egypt,

He is to them as the strength of an unicorn."

The first synonymous couplet asserts the multitude which shall make up this people and their favored places of abode. The second synonymous couplet asserts that God shall be lifted up, their King. The epithet megag reflects the fact that God who brought them out from Egypt was made known by the cloud of fire. The kingdom of God shall be exalted by this people. The third couplet is synthetical and brings together this people and their God. It affirms that God is the irresistible strength of this Jacob.

The third theme is elaborated under the figure of a lion, and represents the triumphant career of this people and the rest. after victory:

"He shall eat the nations his foes,

And their bones he shall crunch.
And he shall crush their walls."

The victor is re"Eat," "crunch,"

This tristich is occupied with the victories. morseless; his foes-their walls must perish. "crush," are the words which point to the figure under which the victor is viewed. The rest after conflict, the repose of the conqueror, is given in the final tristich:

"He shall crouch, lie down,

As a lion, as a lioness.

Who shall rouse him up?"

Such is the utterance that Balaam makes concerning Jacob. It is summed up in the words, through conquest to victory. The first hexastich is concluded in the last couplet:

"He who blesses thee shall be blessed;

He who curses thee shall be cursed."

This is benedictory as well as imprecatory. Blessing is the fact which is the logical outcome of all good-will to God and to those who love him; and just as truly is cursing the inevitable result for all who hate those who love God, and so hate God himself. In the treatment of the fourth oracle we may omit the discussion of the introduction, because of slight verbal difference from the introduction to the third oracle:

"The Saying of Balaam, son of Beor,

And the Saying of the man with open eye;
The Saying of him who heard the word of God,
And knew the knowledge of the Most High;
He, a seer, saw Shaddai,

And fell, though there was revelation to his eyes.”

The difference in the wording is momentous. To know the Most High, yet to fall, having revelation—this thought saddened the writer. Indeed, in sad reflection, he dwells upon the strange attitude to God of the highly gifted Balaam, in all this history connected with the king of Moab.

The fourth oracle has peculiar difficulties, arising from the localities named. Yet our purpose at present will not involve us in a discussion of these places; it is only with the form of the oracle and the translation which we make, illustrating this form and presenting our understanding of the oracle, that we now have to do. Yet the translation, we believe, may be maintained as strongly as the usual renderings. The oracle contains a hexastich and a tetrastich.

ORACLE IV.

"I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near.
The star paths from Jacob,

And the scepter rises out of Israel,
And smites the princes of Moab,

And destroys the children of Seth.

"And it shall be, Edom shall have possession,

And it shall be, Seir shall have possession,

His enemies; but Israel shall do valiantly.

And one from Jacob shall rule and destroy their remnant

in anger."

The statement of the structure of this oracle is as follows: First theme, hexastich.

Second theme, tetrastich.

The first theme is beautifully figurative, and it also states to Balak the final future of Moab. There is no evasion. The destruction of Moab was to be accomplished. The star of Jacob was to set forth in a course of victory, the scepter of Israel was to be extended by triumph. Moab was to be crushed as by the blow from a lion, and all nations about Moab were to be destroyed.

The second theme relates to Edom, which should remain an enemy to Jacob; but ultimately in anger the ruler from Jacob should destroy this remnant, even Edom, whose dwelling-place is Seir. Subsequent events confirm the fulfillment of this oracle. We affirm that Balaam lived before the establishment of the united kingdom. We deny that any ardent advocate of the glory of Israel put these words in the mouth of the prophet, for one whose faith involved the truthfulness of God could not honor God by forging a lie in order to set forth his truthfulness. The limitation of the prophetic vision of Balaam was set by the united kingdom. The triumphant progress of this united kingdom will exhaust all that these prophecies require. The tetrastich in the fourth oracle has ample fulfillment in the disasters inflicted upon Edom by the united kingdom. Throughout all these oracles Israel and Jacob are co-extensive terms and may be interchangeable.

If our statements above are well founded, then we have a good basis for concluding what must be the character of the literature of the united kingdom; and therefore great assistance in the problem of the origin of Old Testament literature. At least this may be claimed, that there is prophetic literature in this Old Testament, traceable, not to man, but to God. The whole study of these oracles of Balaam emphasizes the conviction that Balaam spoke only what God imparted to him; and this message from God was power unto life for his people and power unto death for their enemies.

W. W. Martin.

ART. III.-THE CHINAMAN IN AMERICA.

THE "Chinaman in America" is not now nearly so much of a problem as he was ten or twelve years ago. Then the political arena, the halls of legislation, the platform of the "sand-lot" orator, and the pulpit of the sensational preacher resounded with the noise of a wordy conflict over what was considered a burning national question, while the columns of ambitious dailies and solemn reviews alike were burdened with deliverances on the absorbing theme. All, or nearly all of our fifty millions of people, were more or less interested in the mild-eyed native of Far Cathay, and were immensely stirred over the problem as to what should be done with him.

His industry, economy, docility, inoffensiveness, reliability, and, withal, his blood relationship to the common brotherhood of humanity, together with his guaranteed rights and privileges under established treaties, were dwelt upon by his friends until he seemed almost too good to associate with the kind of people among whom his lot was cast in America; while, on the other hand, his ignorance, depravity, churlishness, heathenism, duplicity, and general worthlessness, together with the impending danger of a Mongolian invasion and the overthrow of American institutions, were delineated by his enemies with such frightfulness of detail that he appeared for the time being a pest of the most virulent type, against which the most radical quarantine measures must at once be taken. The workingmen," socalled, came to the front with the oft-vociferated slogan, "The Chinese must go!" And soon the great political parties of the country were vying with each other in efforts to trim sail for fresh anti-Chinese breezes, and were endeavoring to retain the support of the commercial and educated classes of the East without losing the "workingmen" of the Pacific coast. Few have forgotten how nearly the far-famed " Morey letter" came to defeating James A. Garfield, then candidate for the presi dency. On both sides, during that famous agitation, there was not a little of misapprehension, and in many instances much of insincerity and self-interest. Those who befriended the Chinaman in America, as a rule, either overestimated his virtues or made too little of his vices, while his enemies, generally

speaking, were both extravagant and insincere in their denunciations. With them it was very largely either political claptrap or selfish jealousy of persons more capable, more industrious, and more thrifty than themselves. Still, there was at bottom a real issue involved, the question of foreign immigration and what we should do about it, which yet remains practically undecided.

With the immediate result of that agitation all are familiar. By action of Congress, the president approving, steps were taken for the emendation of the Burlingame Treaty; the exclusion and various restrictive laws were adopted in succession, and gradually the question of Chinese immigration ceased to be one of absorbing popular interest.

Long before these restrictive measures were adopted, and even before the anti-Chinese agitation had reached its height, the immigration of these foreigners had practically ceased; in other words, the tide had set the other way, and the number of Chinese in America was on a steady decline. The influx fell from a total of 19,038 in 1875 to 7,011 in 1880, at which time the census showed an entire Chinese population of 105,679. There was a temporary increase of the immigration in 1881, owing to the prospect of early exclusion, but this represented a very large number who had gone home for a brief period and whose business interests or preferences brought them back. The entire number that found admission to the country from 1820 to 1890 is variously set down at from 277,789 to 290,655, while from Europe during the same period we received 13,692,576, often in a single year nearly double the total that ever came from Asia. Probably at no one time in our history have we had more than 150,000 of these people on our shores, and that only in the early seventies, or late in the sixties, when there was an unusual demand for their services as cominon laborers. The demand becoming less pronounced the tide turned, and the decrease has been steady and persistent, until at this date probably not more than 75,000 Chinese remain in the country.

From facts of this sort it would therefore appear that the danger of our being overwhelmed by a "Mongolian invasion" never was very serious as compared with a similar danger from the European side, while a study of comparative statistics of wages paid on the eastern and western shores of the continent

47-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.