"He walked with God."
Therefore he knew God. The articles of his creed were not many, but he
was fixed on this foundation-truth of all religion. Further than this,
he knew God as taking a living interest in His creatures, as one who
could be approached by them in prayer and communion, and who was
sympathetically responsive to their needs. He somehow knew God, also,
as being righteous and holy, and he must have had a rudimentary idea of
the Christ, as it unfolded itself in the great promise of a deliverer
from evil made to our first parents in Paradise. However scanty in
number were the articles of his creed, they were not scanty in results.
They produced a great life and a great name. The results were that "he
walked with God." Walking is the habitual exercise of a man's life. A
man runs sometimes. Under great strain, or the demand of special
circumstances, he runs, but finds that exhaustion follows; or if he
runs too frequently, total collapse is the inevitable consequence. Two
of the most eminent ministers of our times recently died owing to
overstrain and over-exertion. But we have some now living who have
done signal service for the Church during a ministry of fifty years,
and who are still hale and having a green old age. To walk at a steady
pace, fulfilling life's responsibilities and the demands of duty, is to
fulfil the will of God and serve our generation. This rule refers to
man's religious and spiritual life. To walk onward and upward in the
highest things is to grow in excellence and grace.
As man is a social being, he must walk with someone in life. Perpetual
solitude dries up the springs of existence, and true manhood is
shrivelled up. Solitary confinement is the saddest and cruellest
punishment that can be inflicted by man on his fellow. The prisoner in
the Bastille, when his reason reeled through prolonged silence and
loneliness, was saved from mental collapse by the friendship of a rat;
and a similar story is told of an English prisoner, who, under similar
circumstances, found solace in the company of a pigeon. Man craves for
fellowship and friendship. Happiest is he who has the noblest
companion. God alone fills the deep craving of the heart for a
congenial and helpful presence, and Enoch "_walked with God_." The
words imply regular, unbroken, well-sustained communion with Him. With
a sublime and lofty aspiration Enoch had risen above shadows, idols,
and pretences, and with simple, manly faith had grasped the unseen
substance and reality, the personal God, the Father of us all.
This "_walking with God_" may be fairly inferred to have been carried
out in all the affairs of life. The statement has no exceptions in it.
Other saints have their failings and sins recorded with an admirable
candour, but we are left to conclude that this was a saint of pure life
and character. In tending his flocks and herds, in carrying out the
barter of the markets in the early world, in commanding his children
and ordering his household, in preaching righteousness and foretelling
judgment, the great law of his life was here, "_walking with God_."
When such unbroken intercourse with God is maintained, all duty and
labour have a new meaning, and are suffused with a new glory. Every
occupation or profession becomes a transparency by which divine truth
and purity are translated to the world. No man is then a menial or a
slave, but a free man, living in love and by love. He becomes an
evangel, who, by words of holiness and deeds of sacrifice, adorns the
doctrine of God and Christ in all things. Nothing is common, nothing
is unclean; all life is sanctified and beautiful; the man is a temple
consecrated by and for God alone.
In such habitual fellowship there is constant growth in familiarity and
intimacy. God becomes known more and more in the tenderness and
considerateness of His love. He unfolds Himself to the soul of His
friend in such love-compelling charm as that the believer is
constrained to ever-growing reverence, gratitude, and devotion. The
man is transfigured. His thoughts, motives, desires, actions, are all
inspired by the Divine Mind and framed after a Divine Pattern. The
limitations of human nature are relaxed, and the man expands into
newness of life; he soars into heavenly places; he is charged with holy
influences. "The trivial round, the common task," become _media_ to
him, by which he can interpret and make known to all, the beauty of
holiness as revealed to him by communion with God.
It is a significant fact in the history of Enoch, that his piety shone
brightest amid family surroundings. He was not an ascetic or an
anchorite. He was a husband and a father. It is said that he "_walked
with God after the birth of Methusaleh_." With what measure of fervour
he served God before the coming of a child into his house, we are not
told; but we are told that after that event "_he walked with God three
hundred years_." Possibly he had not manifested special piety before.
His children gathered round him, for we are told that after Methusaleh,
he had "sons and daughters." But the blessing of children in no wise
slackened his course of piety. Not infrequently, family cares and
business responsibilities draw men's thoughts and desires from God; and
many who in youth were ardent in religious exercises and unfailing in
spiritual duties, in middle life and old age are found to be merely
formalists in worship, and paralysed for useful work in the Church.
The fine gold has become dim, through the fretting cares or the surging
excitements of life. It is awful when such is the case, when the
promise and interest of youth settles into impotence and rigidity, when
the type which once had the die of thought fresh upon it is worn flat
by overuse, or when the shell, once the home of life and bright with
ocean's spray, lies with faded colour and emptied hollowness. This is
melancholy, indeed, and many such wrecks of religious life are around
us. But with Enoch, the increase of life's cares brought an access of
fresh devotion. New gifts of Providence roused new feelings of
gratitude, and he grappled himself the closer in attachment to the
Giver of enlarged blessing. This is as it should be. Every gift of
God should be a call to renewed praise and prayer, to a more perfect
and joyous service.
This record of Enoch's piety teaches that the highest spirituality of
nature is not found in avoiding the duties and cares of life, or in
seeking a cloistered and solitary existence. The piety of monkery is
not the crown of living. It is neither an experience of healthy joy
nor of abundant fruitfulness. The healthful influences of Christianity
are immeasurably more beautiful when manifested in the joys of family
and home life, or in the discharge of honest trade and commerce, than
in the introspective gloom of the recluse, or the ceremonial round of
the ascetic. It is remarkable that the record states that Enoch's walk
with God lasted "_three hundred years after the birth of Methusaleh_."
There was no break in his spiritual course; it was continuous growth
and progress until the light of eventide deepened into the glory of
heaven.