was taken up into heaven in a glorious manner unto his Father and our Father, unto his God. and our God.

This mercy bestowed upon a righteous individual, an individual, however, partaking of the corrupted nature of Adam, was a grace connected with the early promise of God. It was vouchsafed with respect indeed to the faith and piety of the man, but for the sake only of the Redeemer, whose covenant with the Father was made before the world, and whose merits and blood, to be in after-times displayed and shed for the benefit of transgressors, were, according to that covenant, to commence their efficacy from the moment he was promised as the future Saviour of mankind.

Enoch, though eminently righteous, was nevertheless by birth an inheritor of corruption, and in heart and life not altogether without spot or blemish. He could not, therefore, have been translated, had not the Son of God previously consented to die for a fallen world, and had not the grace of God, in consequence of this consent, and in anticipation of the future sacrifice for sin, been in its measure and degree bestowed upon man from the beginning of transgression. He pleased God because he had faith in Christ, that is, because he believed that God would, accord

ing to his promise to Adam, send a Redeemer into the world to be bruised for its salvation; and because upon the foundation and strength of this faith he lived a life of holiness and virtue. He was blessed, he was translated and admitted into the presence of God only through Christ; for there is no salvation for any that ever lived or shall live but through Him-there is no access to the Father but through the Son; no entrance into everlasting life but through Him who purchased it for others with his blood, and deserved it for others by his righteousness.

Thus we connect the translation of Enoch with the counsel of God in Christ. Bishop Horne observes, "It is appointed unto men once to die; this is the general rule; but we meet with an exception in the case of Enoch, and another in that of Elijah. Thus it pleased God to vouchsafe the world two rehearsals of the ascension of the holy Jesus; one for the building up of those before the law, the other of those under the law, in the faith of that great and important article ; and both, that we of these latter days might admire the wisdom of God in foreshewing what has been accomplished, and adore his mercy and power in the accomplishment of what was foreshewn."

E

NOAH'S PREACHING AND SACRIFICE.

"God

Neither the preaching, nor the example, nor the translation of the righteous Enoch had any effect in reforming a wicked world, or awakening it to a sense of the impending danger. saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."*

Nearly 670 years, therefore, after the translation of Enoch, he sent a flood of waters, and destroyed every living thing that was upon the face of the earth, except Noah and his family, and the creatures taken into the ark which God had commanded him to build, and which Noah by faith and moved with fear" did build "to the saving of his house." This good patriarch had "found grace in the eyes of the Lord," because" he was a just man and perfect in his generations and walked with God." In consequence of which he with his wife, his sons, and

66

Gen. vi. 5-7. ↑ Heb. xi. 7.

Gen. vi. 8, 9.

his sons' wives was selected for preservation, and for the purpose of repeopling the earth, and of communicating to the new generations the history of mankind from the creation of the world.

Now Noah was well qualified to give an account of the antediluvian world from the beginning, to relate the reign of innocence in paradise, the temptation of the serpent, and the fall of Adam and Eve, the promise of a Conqueror in the seed of the woman, the sentence of the Almighty upon sin, the banishment of the transgressors from Eden, the death of Abel, the punishment of Cain, the birth of Seth in the room of Abel, the godliness and translation of Enoch, and every thing else necessary for mankind to know; for he had heard every particular from his father Lamech and his grandfather Methuselah, both of whom lived and conversed with Adam, and were not taken from the world till just before the flood, when Noah was about 600 years old. Here we have a very simple and natural way of accounting for Noah's certain and accurate knowledge of events from the beginning, without calling in the aid of supernatural communication.

There can be no doubt that this good patriarch often declared to his children and his children's children (for he lived 350 years after the

flood) the promise which God made to Adam respecting the coming of the seed of the woman to bruise the serpent's head. Thus were the tidings of the first grant of grace in the promise of a Deliverer, and consequently the first preparatory movement of the counsel of God in Christ, communicated to the new world by him who had lived in the old, and who, without a needless reference to immediate revelation, had received his information from sources so credible and authentic.

And that the ancient institution of sacrifice, which also forms a part of the same counsel, as being typical of the great sacrifice of Christ, might be preserved, we find that Noah, as soon as he came out of the ark, built an altar, and offered burnt-offerings upon it unto the Lord. "Noah," says Bishop Wilson, “ I having been preserved from the flood by a miraculous providence, the first thing he did was to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving for his deliverance, and for God's faithfulness and truth in continuing in him and in his posterity the blessing of the promised seed. This was so acceptable to God, that it drew down a blessing upon the whole earth, and a promise that it should never be destroyed again by water."-" And God said to Noah, This is the token of the covenant which