on some distant land, and the consequent interest and curiosity which either branch would feel for the fortunes of the other— whether these were the circumstances that encouraged and maintained an intercourse among mankind in spite of the numberless obstacles which must then have opposed it, and which we might have imagined would have intercepted it altogether; or whether any other channels of intelligence were open of which we are in ignorance, sure it is, that such intercourse seems to have existed to a very considerable extent. Thus, far as Abraham was removed from the branch of his family which remained in Mesopotamia, "it came to pass that it was told him, saying, behold, Milcah, she hath also borne children unto thy brother Nahor;" and their names are then added.* In like * Genesis, xxii. 20.

manner Isaac and Rebekah appear in their turn to have known that Laban had marriageable daughters;*-and Jacob, when he came back to Canaan after his long sojourn in Haran, seems to have known that Esau was alive and prosperous, and that he lived at Seir, whither he sent a message to him;† -and Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, who went with her to Canaan on her marriage, is found many years afterwards in the family of Jacob, for she dies in his camp as he was returning from Haran, and therefore must have been sent back again meanwhile, for some purpose or other, from Canaan to Haran; and at Elim, in the desert, the Israelites discover twelve wells of water and three-score and ten palms, the numbers, no doubt, not accidental, but indicating that

* Genesis, xxviii. 2.
Ibid. xxxv. 8.

+ Ibid. xxxii. 3.

some persons had frequented this secluded spot acquainted with the sons and grandsons of Jacob;*-and Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, is said " to have heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel his people." And when Moses, on his march, sends a message to Edom, it is worded, "thou knowest all the travail that hath befallen us-how our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time," together with many more particulars, all of which Moses reckons matters of notoriety to the inhabitants of the desert. And on another occasion he speaks of "their having heard that the Lord was among his people, that he was seen by them face to face, that his cloud stood over them, and that he went before them by day-time

* Exodus, xv. 27. Numbers, xx. 15.

† Ibid. xviii. 1.

in a pillar of cloud, and in a pillar of fire by

night." for the vestiges of so many laws which we meet with throughout the East, even in this very early period, as held in commonand the many just notions of the Deity, mixed up, indeed, with much alloy, which so many nations possessed in common-. and the rites and customs, whether civil or sacred, to which in so many points they conformed in common. Now all these unconnected matters hint at this one circumstance, that intelligence travelled through the tribes of the Desert more freely and rapidly than might have been thought, and the consistency with which the writings of Moses imply such a fact, (for they neither affirm it, nor trouble themselves about explaining it,) is a feature of truth in those writings.

And this may, in fact, account

* Numbers, xiv. 14.

XXII.

THROUGH SOme or other of the channels of information enumerated in the last paragraph, Balak, King of Moab, is aware of the existence of a Prophet at Pethor, and sends for him. It is not unlikely, indeed, that the Moabites, who were the children of Lot, should have still maintained a communication with the original stock of all which continued to dwell in Aram or Mesopotamia. Neither is it unlikely that Pethor, which was in that country,* the country whence Abraham emigrated, and where Nahor and that branch of Terah's family remained, should possess a Prophet of the true God. Nor is it unlikely again, that, living in the midst of idolaters, Balaam should in a degree partake of the infection, *Numbers, xxiii. 7.