'He walked with God.' That is all. There is no need to tell what he did
or tried to do, how he sorrowed or joyed, what were his circumstances.
These may all fade from men's knowledge as they have somewhat faded
from his memory up yonder. It is enough that he walked with God.
Of course, we have here, underlying the phrase, the familiar comparison
of life to a journey, with all its suggestions of constant change and
constant effort, and with the suggestion, too, that each life should be
a progress directly tending to one clearly recognised goal. But passing
from that, let us just think for a moment of the characteristics which
must go to make up a life of which we can say that it is walking with
God. The first of these clearly is the one that the writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews puts his finger upon, when he makes faith the
spring of Enoch's career. The first requisite to true communion with
God is vigorous exercise of that faculty by which we realise the fact
of His presence with us; and that not as a jealous-eyed inspector, from
whose scrutiny we would fain escape, but as a companion and friend to
whom we can cleave. 'He that cometh to God,' and walks with God, must
first of all 'believe that He _is_'; and passing by all the
fascinations of things seen, and rising above all the temptations of
things temporal, his realising eye must fix upon the divine Father and
see Him nearer and more clearly than these. You cannot walk with God
unless you are emancipated from the dominion of sense and time, and are
living by the power of that great faculty, which lays hold of the
things that are unseen as the realities, and smiles at the false and
forged pretensions of material things to be the real. We have to invert
the teaching of the world and of our senses. My fingers and my eyes and
my ears tell me that this gross, material universe about me is the
real, and that all beyond it is shadowy and (sometimes we think)
doubtful, or, at any rate, dim and far off. But that is false, and the
truth is precisely the other way. The Unseen is the Real, and the
Material is the merely Apparent. Behind all visible objects, and giving
them all their reality, lies the unchangeable God.
Cultivate the faculty and habit of vigorous faith, if you would walk
with God. For the world will put its bandages over your eyes, and try
to tempt you to believe that these poor, shabby illusions are the
precious things; and we have to shake ourselves free from its harlot
kisses and its glozing lies, by very vigorous and continual efforts of
the will and of the understanding, if we are to make real to ourselves
that which is real, the presence of our God.
Besides this vigorous exercise of the faculty of faith, there is
another requisite for a walk with God, closely connected with it, and
yet capable of being looked at separately, and that is, that we shall
keep up the habit of continual occupation of thought with Him. That is
very much an affair of habit with Christian people, and I am afraid
that the neglect of it is the habitual practice of the bulk of
professing Christians nowadays. It is hard, amidst all our work and
thought and joys and sorrows, to keep fresh our consciousness of His
presence, and to talk with Him in the midst of the rush of business.
But what do we do about our dear ones when we are away from them? The
measure of our love of them is accurately represented by the frequency
of our remembrances of them. The mother parted from her child, the
husband and the wife separated from one another, the lover and the
friend, think of each other a thousand times a day. Whenever the spring
is taken off, then the natural bent of the inclination and heart assert
themselves, and the mind goes back again, as into a sanctuary, into the
sweet thought. Is that how we do with God? Do we so walk with Him, as
that thought, when released, instinctively sets in that direction? When
I take off the break, does my spirit turn to God? If there is no hand
at the helm, does the bow always point that way? When the magnet is
withdrawn for a moment, does the needle tremble back and settle itself
northwards? If we are walking with God, we shall, more times a day than
we can count when the evening comes on, have had the thought of Him
coming into our hearts 'like some sweet beguiling melody, so sweet we
know not we are listening to it.' Thus we shall 'walk with God.'
Then there is another requisite. 'How can two walk together except they
be agreed?' 'He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to
walk even as He walked.' There is no union with God in such communion
possible, unless there be a union with Him by conformity of will and
submission of effort and aim to His commandments. Well, then, is that
life possible for us? Look at this instance before us. We know very
little about how much knowledge of God these people in old days had,
but, at all events, it was a great deal less than you and I have. Their
theology was very different from ours; their religion was absolutely
identical with ours. Their faith, which grasped the God revealed in
their creed, was the same as our faith, though the creed which their
faith grasped was only an outline sketch of yours and mine. But at all
times and in all generations, the element and essence of the religious
life has been the same-that is, the realising sense of the living
divine presence, the effort and aspiration after communion with Him,
and the quiet obedience and conformity of the practical life to His
will. And so we can reach out our hands across all the centuries to
this pre-Noachian, antediluvian patriarch, dim amongst the mists, and
feel that he too is our brother.
And he has set us the example that in all conditions of life, and under
the most unfavourable circumstances, it is possible to live in this
close touch with God. For in his time, not only was there, as I have
said, an incomplete and rudimentary knowledge of God, but in his time
the earth was filled with violence, and gigantic forms of evil are
represented as having dominated mankind. Amidst it all, the Titanic
pride, the godlessness, the scorn, the rudeness, and the violence,
amidst it all, this one 'white flower of a blameless life' managed to
find nutriment upon the dunghill, and to blossom fresh and fair there.
You and I cannot, whatever may be our hindrances in living a consistent
Christian life, have anything like the difficulties that this man had
and surmounted. For us all, whatever our conditions, such a life is
possible.
And then there is another lesson that he teaches us, viz. that such a
life is consistent with the completest discharge of all common duties.
The outline, as far as appearance was concerned, of this man's life was
the same as the outline of those of his ancestors and successors. They
are all described in the same terms. The formula is the same. Enoch
lived, Mahalaleel, and all the rest of the half-unpronounceable names,
they lived, they begat their heirs, and sons and daughters, and then
they died. And the same formula is used about this man. He walked with
God, but it was while treading the common path of secular life that he
did so.
He found it possible to live in communion with God, and yet to do all
the common things that men did then. Anybody's house may be a Bethel--a
house of God--and anybody's work may be worship; and wherever we are
and whatever we do, it is possible therein to serve God, and there to
walk with Him.
2. And now a word about the crown of this life of communion. 'He was
not, for God took him'
What wonderful reticence in describing, or rather hinting at, the
stupendous miracle that is here in question! Is that like a book that
came from the legend-loving and legend-making brains of men; or does it
sound like the speech of God, to whom nothing is extraordinary and
nothing needs to have a mark of admiration after it? It was the same to
Him whether Enoch died or whether He simply took him to Himself. If one
wants to know what men would have made of such a thing, if _they_ had
had to tell it, let them read those wretched Rabbinical fables that
have been stitched on to this verse. There they will see how men
describe miracles; and here they will see how God does so.
'_He was not_.' As I have said, he disappeared; that was what the world
knew. 'God took him'; that was what God tells the world.
Thus this strange exception to the law of death stood, as I suppose, to
the ancient world as doing somewhat the same office for them that the
translation of Elijah afterwards partially did for Israel, and that the
resurrection of Jesus Christ does completely for us, viz. it brought
the future life into the realm of fact, and took it out of the dim
region of speculation altogether. He establishes a truth who proves it,
and he proves a fact that shows it. A doctrine of a future state is not
worth much, but the fact of a future state, which was established by
this incident then, and is certified for us all now, by the Christ
risen from the dead, is all-important. Our gospel is all built upon
facts, and this is the earliest fact in man's history which made man's
subsistence in other conditions than that of earthly life a certainty.
And then, again, this wonderful exception shows to us, as it did to
that ancient world, that the natural end of a religious life is union
with God hereafter. It seems to me that the real proofs of a future
life are two: one, the fact of Christ's resurrection, and the other,
the fact of our religious experience. For anything looks to me more
likely, and less incredible, than that a man who could walk with God
should only have a poor earthly life to do it in, and that all these
aspirations, these emotions, should be bounded and ended by a trivial
thing, that touches only the physical frame. Surely, surely, there is
nothing so absurd as to believe that he who can say 'Thou art my God,'
and who has said it, should ever by anything be brought to cease to say
it. Death cannot kill love to God; and the only end of the religious
life of earth is its perfecting in heaven. The experiences that we have
here, in their loftiness and in their incompleteness, equally witness
for us, of the rest and the perfectness that remain for the children of
God.
Then, again, this man in his unique experience was, and is, a witness
of the fact that death is an excrescence, and results from sin. I
suppose that he trod the road which the divine intention had destined
to be trodden by all the children of men, if they had not sinned; and
that his experience, unique as it is, is a survival, so to speak, of
what was meant to be the law for humanity, unless there had intervened
the terrible fact of sin and its wages, death. The road had been made,
and this one man was allowed to travel along it that we might all
learn, by the example of the exception, that the rule under which we
live was not the rule that God originally meant for us, and that death
has resulted from the fact of transgression. No doubt Enoch had in him
the seeds of it, no doubt there were the possibilities of disease and
the necessity of death in his physical frame, but God has shown us in
that one instance, and in the other of the great prophet's, how _He_ is
not subject to the law that men shall die, although men are subject to
it, and that if He will, He can take them all to Himself, as He did
take these two, and will take them who, at last, shall not die but be
changed.
Let me remind you that this unique and exceptional end of a life of
communion may, in its deepest, essential character, be experienced by
each of us. There are two passages in the book of Psalms, both of which
I regard as allusions to this incident. The one of them is in the
forty-ninth Psalm and reads thus: 'He will deliver my soul from the
power of the grave, for He will take me.' Our version conceals the
allusion, by its unfortunate and non-literal rendering 'receive.' The
same word is employed there as here. Can we fail to see the reference?
The Psalmist expects his soul to be 'delivered from the power of the
grave,' because God _takes_ it.
And again, in the great seventy-third Psalm, which marks perhaps the
highwater mark of pre-Christian anticipations of a future state, we
read: 'Thou wilt guide me by Thy counsel, and afterwards _take_ me'
(again the same word) 'to glory.' Here, again, the Psalmist looks back
to the unique and exceptional instance, and in the rapture and ecstasy
of the faith that has grasped the living God as his portion, says to
himself: 'Though the externals of Enoch's end and of mine may differ,
their substance will be the same, and I, too, shall cease to be seen of
men, because God takes me into the secret of His pavilion, by the
loving clasp of His lifting hand.'
Enoch was led, if I may say so, round the top of the valley, beyond the
head waters of the dark river, and was kept on the high level until he
got to the other side. You and I have to go down the hill, out of the
sunshine, in among the dank weeds, to stumble over the black rocks, and
wade through the deep water; but we shall get over to the same place
where he stands, and He that took him round by the top will 'take' us
through the river; and so shall we 'ever be with the Lord'
'Enoch walked with God and he was not; for God took him.' This verse is
like some little spring with trees and flowers on a cliff. The dry
genealogical table--and here this bit of human life in it! How unlike
the others--they _lived_ and they _died_; this man's life was walking
with God and his departure was a fading away, a ceasing to be found
here. It is remarkable in how calm a tone the Bible speaks of its
supernatural events. We should not have known this to be a miracle but
for the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The dim past of these early chapters carries us over many centuries. We
know next to nothing about the men, where they lived, how they lived,
what thoughts they had, what tongue they spoke. Some people would say
that they never lived at all. I believe, and most of you, I suppose,
believe that they did. But how little personality we give them! Little
as we know of environment and circumstances, we know the main thing,
the fact of their having been. Then we are sure that they had sorrow
and joy, strife and love, toil and rest, like the rest of us, that
whether their days were longer or shorter they were filled much as ours
are, that whatever was the pattern into which the quiet threads of
their life was woven it was, warp and weft, the same yarn as ours. In
broad features every human life is much the same. Widely different as
the clothing of these grey fathers in their tents, with their simple
contrivances and brief records, is from that of cultivated busy
Englishmen to-day, the same human form is beneath both. And further, we
know but little as to their religious ideas, how far they were
surrounded with miracles, what they knew of God and of His purposes,
how they received their knowledge, what served them for a Bible. Of
what positive institutions of religion they had we know nothing;
whether for them there was sacrifice and a sabbath day, how far the
original gospel to Adam was known or remembered or understood by them.
All that is perfectly dark to us. But this we know, that those of them
who were godly men lived by the same power by which godly men live
nowadays. Whatever their creed, their religion was ours. Religion, the
bond that unites again the soul to God, has always been the same.