The Evangelical Pulpit. THE PIETY AND DEPARTURE OF ENOCH. A Sermon, BY THE REV. W. S. EDWARDS, AT THE CONGREGATIONAL CHAPEL, CITY ROAD, SUNDAY EVENING, "And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him."-GEN. v. 24. THE days had come when men began to multiply upon the earth; population had vastly increased; family after family had risen; and the range of intercouse had widely extended. The sad narrative of Abel's unnatural decease, is followed by a tabular statement of successive generations, and another bright spirit illumines the historic page. The second hero of the Bible is Enoch ; and the record which inspiration has furnished of his character and course is singularly terse and significant. We have no pompous parade of his virtues; no glowing catalogue of renowned and illustrious achievements; but in few and emphatic words his whole history is briefly summed up. Now, I attach importance to this fact. The life of a man is much sooner told than people commonly imagine. There is no necessity for sounding it forth with a flourish of trumpets; character will live when written words have perished. The hand of inspiration might have doubtless recorded much more. might have been furnished with a graphic delineation of his course; with a beautiful sketch of his progressive attainments in holiness; with a sublime narration of his intercourse with God; with a splendid description of his triumphant departure from this low diurnal sphere-but no! Enoch's record was on high! written, noted down, minutely described on the annals of eternity. He was canonized not on earth, but in heaven; and sublimely, singularly devoted as his career unquestionably was, yet passing by the whole, all that inspiration has recorded is simply this-"Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him." We But the record of Enoch is not to be undervalued, because of its brevity; bulk is not the truest estimate of worth. Moral excellence needs no cumbrous heap of words to recommend it. The statement may be short, while yet the meaning may be vastly comprehensive; and such is most certainly the fact with regard to what is said of Enoch; for, like a proverb, or an apothegm, it derives additional significance from the very fewness of words in which it is embodied. It should also be remarked, that the very position in which the record is found, imparts yet a brighter lustre to the character it so graphically No. 3. D sketches. Name after name is recorded and hastily dismissed. It is reasonable to suppose that many of these were devoted and pious individuals; but still their devotion and piety are not noted for the information of successive generations. In relation to these there is absolute silence. The hand of inspiration rapidly sweeps through the catalogue until it stumbles upon Enoch, and there it pauses. He was a character too illustrious; a man of piety too sublime and elevated to be only casually named: there was a sacred radiance investing his course too bright to be quenched in the sepulchral darkness which enshrouded the race of his cotemporaries. His was a moral lustre and an ultimate reward more splendid than the whole, and as if to mark the fact, to give it preeminence, and weight, and influence, on generations yet to come, he is not merely named, but most significantly described, and most illustriously commemorated. Some of the others probably served God, honoured God, lived to God; but, as for Enoch, he "walked with God;" he was the noblest, loftiest spirit of the age, and the pen of inspiration not only stops to record it; but— even to repeat it. First, it states, "And Enoch walked with God, after he begat Methuselah three hundred years." And then, as if delighting to linger on the fact, and desiring to invest it with a moral grandeur greater still, and worthy of all subsequent ambition, again the fact is stated, and in one bold stroke, his history, and his portrait, and departure are sketched with the pencil of heaven in the short but truly graphic sentence-in the brief, but beautifully express language," And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." What a marvellous announcement! What a singular end! There are two facts which require our investigation-The character of Enoch's piety, and the peculiarity of Enoch's end; "Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." In the first place then, we have to investigate the character of Enoch's piety-" Enoch walked with God." This language is expressive of a state of spiritual enjoyment which Enoch did not always possess; a degree of practical moral excellence which Enoch had not at one time attained. It is said, as I have already informed you, that Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years." Now, prior to this period, Enoch had lived sixty and five years; and though it is doubtless probable that he had made no inconsiderable attainments in personal and practical religion before this, still the record of this fact would seem to convey the intimation that it was not until he had reached this period of his life, that a course, so remarkably distinguished, and so singularly devoted, received its commencement. This was not a degree of spiritual elevation which Enoch had reached all at once. No! doubtless he had many a struggle, and many a defeat, ere he acquired it. But year after year he struggled with all its difficulties; battled with all its oppositions; grappled with all its obstacles; until, at last, he mastered them all, and stood erect in the conscious dignity of the victory, by faith, which overcometh the world. After a constant, incessant, progressive conflict, with the world, the flesh, and the devil, he stood an honoured victor. Or if his foes were not absolutely vanquished, yet still they were doubtless subdued, and in calm and undisturbed serenity and peace, he "walked with God." The spiritual life is progressive. In nature we have first the blade, then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear. In science, we have rays at first, dimmer than starlight, isolated facts, uncertain theories, partial experiments, brilliant discoveries, great practical inventions. And so it is, too, in the operations of grace; we go from strength to strength. There must be the blasts of winter, and the storms of spring, and the sunshine of summer, ere we stand all ripe and ready for the gathering of the harvest of a better world. Walking with God is by no means easily attained; there is often a protracted, a trying process, ere it is acquired. You do not attain it as soon as you are regenerated; you may have very much to do, and perhaps very much to suffer, before you can come to it. There are gradations in grace as well as in glory. Peter quailing before the servant maid in the hall of the high priest, and Peter confronting boldly the Jews at the feast of Pentecost, were vastly different men. Nicodemus timidly stealing to Jesus by night, and Nicodemus openly attending the funeral of his crucified Lord, were by no means the same. What was once only weak, had now become strong; and what was once only feeble, had now become mighty. Dream, not, therefore, that you have already attained; you are not to be idle, but to be vigilant ; neither past experience nor present attainments can suffice. Onward! onward! is our watchword; progression is the law of the spiritual life. We grow from babes to young men, and from young men to fathers in Christ Jesus. While Enoch's piety was distinguished, it was also gradatious and progressive. It was by a succession of conflicts and victories, that at last he reached it. At the end of sixty and five years, "Enoch walked with God." There is also another fact which deserves to be borne in particular remembrance. Enoch was a father-the head of a family; there was resting upon him the responsibilities and cares of a numerous household. He had sons and daughters, and all the attendant anxieties associated with parental obligation Now, of course, he would have to provide for his household-he would have to toil for their sustenance in infancy-to impart instruction proper and needful in youth, and communicate knowledge adapted to practical benefit in manhood. And at a period so remote, the difficulties attending this would be proportionably great. The discharge of parental obligation could not be easily transferred to others; its delegation to competent persons would be almost impossible. You can easily judge, therefore, how numerous and how peculiar would be the difficulties with which Enoch would have to contend, in his position as the parent of a numerous family. But did he seek to evade or avoid them? Did he arrive at the conclusion that the culture of hightoned piety was incompatible with the cares and responsibilities of a family, and therefore abandon the one for the sake of the other? No, my brethhe served God, not by a cowardly retreat, but by active toil; not by monastic seclusion, but by manly conflict; not by running out of the world, but by abiding in it, and battling with it. On the walls of a monastery I read some time ago this inscription, "Here men come to learn how to live." What! learn how to live! How can men learn how to live, themselves shut out from life? ren; How can men fight the fight of faith when they have none to fight with? Who is the hero? He who turns and runs away, or he who throws away the scabbard, and boldly grapples with the foe? Alas! for the sanctity of monks and nuns. Are they better than Enoch? Was his piety nurtured in absolute solitude? Ah, no, my brethren; he abode with God in the station which providence had assigned to him; he walked with his Maker in the active fulfilment of his domestic and social obligations. It was not in retirement. It was in sanctified intercourse and fellowship that he attained that distinction that devout pre-eminence which inspiration has recorded. He did not seek a ladder to climb to heaven by himself, but he walked abroad on the earth, and tried to get a multitude to climb there with him. There is also another fact which is here suggested—a fact brethren, which relates to the other, and perhaps no less, injurious extreme. Though Enoch was in the world, and not shut out of it, yet, doubtless, he had learned by faith to live far up above it. His cares neither excluded his devotion, nor extinguished his piety; amidst his numerous and his pressing anxieties he kept up an intercourse with heaven, maintained a course of integrity and uprightness, and continually advanced in the inward enjoyments and the outward developement of practical religion. Amidst the whole he doubtless found both time and opportunity for prayer and for devotion, and for repeated and protracted labours both of faith and of love. This is the lesson which, in this bustling age, the church will have to learn. We are not so much afraid of your becoming hermits, as we are of your becoming worldlings. We are not satisfied with daily bread, with a reasonable share of food and raiment-we must have luxuries, elegant furniture, expensive and showy parties, houses and lands; and these absorb both time and wealth; both the one and the other are valued for secular, rather than spiritual benefit; the consequence is, that the exchange is preferred to the closet, the shop to the sanctuary, the state of funds to the state of the heart. We forget the proverb-"He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent." With many professors the lust after wealth is the one besetting sin; they think of little else all the week long; God is scarcely ever in their thoughts! their seats are always vacant at the hour of prayer, for they will never close the shop while a penny can be taken. Ah! in a huge metropolis like this, it is not an easy thing to "walk with God,"-not an easy thing to preserve the flame of genuine religion. Here is our danger; the love of money shuts out the love of Christ; and mammon usurps the throne of God. Oh, this avarice! it is the one gigantic vice of the times in which we live; it has turned this vast metropolis into a bulky machine, in shape and semblance like a treadmill; it has covered it with a race toiling from early morn to dewy eve for nothing else than worldly gain, and the evil has wrought its way through every rank and class, exhausting all the energies, and leaving little but spiritless languor for higher and better things. Oh, my brethren, while in the world, like Enoch, try to live above it. Grace is a plant which will only thrive when fanned by the breath of devotion, and watered by the out-pouring of the Spirit from on high in answer to the prayers and supplications of the closet and the house of God. We pass on to the consideration of one or two other facts which seem naturally to arrange themselves under this department of our subject. How did Enoch attain to this remarkable distinction? By what process did the man secure to himself this intimacy with God, and all those distinguished, those singular privileges and advantages associated with it? Now from the hour of the fall down to the present moment, the method of acceptance with God has been always the same. Like Abel, therefore, he doubtless came to God with sacrificial blood as the typical representative of the grand atonement to be offered in the fulness of time. I imagine that Enoch had clearer views and more exalted conceptions of all this, and of what all this involves than any of his cotemporaries. His mind was in high-toned sympathy with every portion of the plan, and thus in harmony of thought and feeling with the method of grace which divine wisdom had revealed, he continually came unto the Father, and lived in the possession and enjoyment of his favour. "By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him;" but before his translation, he had this testimony, that he "pleased God." Another subject of reflection relates to this remarkable distinction itself. In what did walking with God consist? and what are the facts which this singular phraseology would seem naturally to suggest? Now, doubtless, there is much in this statement, at least so I think, which no human language can exactly express, and which no human thought can exactly conceive. But some of the facts which the term is intended to convey, may undoubtedly be clearly understood. There was friendship. Enoch was God's friend, and God was Enoch's friend. "Two cannot walk together except they be agreed;" and between God and Enoch a perfect agreement existed, and that agreement was founded, mind you, on the submission of Enoch to the mind of God. Enoch was a man of like passions with ourselves, born with the same depraved nature, and subject to the same depraved propensities; but Enoch had come to God as a sinner-had humbled himself in the way which God had appointed, and in virtue of the atonement thus offered-offered as a typical representation of the atonement to come-Enoch was accepted. Now this was the basis on which the friendship was established, It was not a friendship founded on equality; it was not like the friendship which exists between a man and his neighbour, but rather like the friendship which exists between a father and his child. On the penitential expression of his grief, and the practical exercise of his faith, Enoch was no longer regarded as a stranger, but received and welcomed as a son, as the heir of grace and of everlasting life; he became the object of God's intimacy, was admitted to the possession of God's favour and God's affection; God took him into his fellowship-then there was intercourse. Persons do not generally walk together in silence, there is an interchange of thought-there is a familiar expression of feeling there is an intimate fellowship-a sympathy of mind with mind. Now there was something similar to this in the case of Enoch. Yes! he kept up an intercourse-a communion with God. "By prayer and supplication he made known his requests, and the ear of God was always open to receive them. God heard and God answered. Wherever he went, he carried with him the consciousness of God's presence. "He walked with God." He saw him in the cloud-capped mountain, and in the wide-spread plain ; he saw him in the sun that gilds the day, and in the stars that light the night; he saw him in the grass that clothed the field, and in the woods. that skirted the hills. By a holy thoughtfulness he extracted heaven from earth; by a holy mechanism he constructed a ladder, ascending step by step like the angel in the mystic dream of Jacob, until he stood face to face before the Creator, as a man talketh with his friend. Every spot was a Bethel, every place a house of God, every corner the gate of heaven, every step a walk with God, every district hallowed ground, every breeze emitted a whisper, every flower and every atom a reflection of his nearness. God was in all his thoughts, God was always with him; he had beset him behind and before: he was about his bed, and about his path; and Enoch rejoiced in that thought; it was not a terror, but it was a delight; as he was with God, so God was with him. There was an intimate intercourse, a fellowship between them; an outgoing from the one, and a forthcoming from the other. "Enoch walked with God.' But further. There was a progressive assimilation to the mind of God. Between two minds brought into close association, into frequent and intimate contact, there is a process of action and reaction continually going on; by an influence of which probably, both parties are unconscious at the time, they |