Build thee more stately mansions, 0 my soul,
As the swift seasons roll !
Leave thy low-vaulted past ! Let each new temple, nobler than the last. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!*
5. And, last of all, to walk with God means rest For harmony comes through obedience, and obedience always gives rest. There is harmony in music because in music there is no self-will. Music is built on law. Man did not make this law ; he has simply discovered it. If he breaks it the music ceases. Each Haydn and Handel is as much bound by it as each amateur. The same is true of man's relation to his every art. Find out its principles, and all the genius of that art is yours. But disobey its principles ; try to excel in any other way than by conformity to its nature, and all that art contends against you, and balks you at every step. We cannot change ocean current or tide, but we can build our ship and stretch our sail, and by adapting us to wind and wave we can gain any Liverpool or Queenstown. We cannot conquer lightning. Obedience pulls the sting out of the lightning and makes it harmless. Fire is a bad master, but a good servant. So is it in the spiritual life. If we obey the law of God we have
* T. S. WillMOtf. ' OliTer Wendell Holme*.
158 WALKING WITH GOD
"rest and peace in the beloved." He who is in love with his neighbour, filling the sphere in which God has placed him, has heaven in his heart already. Only through blue in the eye, scientists tell us, can blue out of the eye be seen. Only through C in the ear can C out of the ear be heard. Jerusalem which is above is recognized because that City has already descended from God.
^ After a hard day's work Bengel retired to rest. Some one heard his prayer : " Blessed Lord, we are on the same good old terms to-night." Then the good man slept. His life was keyed to the divine life. His heart kept time to the pulse of God. He had peace.^
II.
Enoch was not.
"He was not; for God took him"; that is, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has it, "he was not found." That expression "he was not found" seems to suggest that he was missed and sought for. Such a man would be missed. No doubt the men of that age knew him well. He was a preacher of righteousness, and had often warned them of a judgment to come. With his departure there was a palpable blank. " He was not found," because God had translated him.
1. Enoch would be missed because his life was a good life. Though a life so full of God, though so constant and so close in the most sacred of communions, yet neither monk's life nor hermit's life was Enoch's. It was a life in all its outward circum- stances as ours is, or may be, or should be. It was a life, not in the wilderness in a contemplative solitude, but in the thick and throng of society. Nor was it the select society of a religious community apart from worldly cares and common relationships ; it was a life domestic, not monastic — we read of his son Methuselah ; and it was after the birth of his son that he walked these noted three hundred years with God. Thus, as regards his own household, this distinguished piety flourished in plain, natural, domestic life. There is nothing exceptional, nothing exotic about it ; not a growth within the shelter of costly walls,
»M. J. M'Leod.
GENESIS V. 24 159
under fostering heat, with dainty soil and a covering of glass ; it was in the open and common air of the world. Indeed, so far from favouring, circumstances were against him. Enoch's age was a deeply corrupt age. It was a God and eternity forgetting world that the patriarch lived in. But he was no silent, unre- monstrating witness of the world's corruption and carelessness. He gave his living and lifelong example ; and, moreover, he spoke out. The Spirit of that God with whom he walked inspired his speech, and gave his words a heavenly sanction, so that his warniDgs partook of the nature of prophecy. Like Noah, Enoch was a preacher of righteousness and herald of judgment : " Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly com- mitted, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him " (Jude 14, 15).
If I should die to-night, My friends would call to mind, with loving thought. Some kindly deed the icy hand had wrought, Some gentle word the frozen lips had said: Errands on which the willing feet had sped — The memory of my selfishness and pride. My hasty words, would all be put aside, And so I should be mourned to-night
Oh, friends, I pray to-night. Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow. The way is lonely; let me feel them now. Think gently of me; I am travel worn; My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn. Forgive ! 0 hearts estranged, forgive, I plead ! When dreamless rest is mine, I shall not need The tenderness for which I long to-night.^