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tle Paul has however intimated that the circumstance was not of a very public nature, or at least that as happened afterwards in the case of Elijah there were some who did not credit it, for search was made after him; but Enoch was not found-He was not found for God had taken him. His cup of sorrow was exhausted in self-denials and reproaches. No lingering sickness should unsettle those firm nerves; no clod of the valley should press that honored head. He had bared his forehead to reproach in the cause of God his Maker, and the first of mortal flesh that forehead should be wreathed with ever-during amaranth in the paradise of God. So the faithful were taught how God rewarded fidelity; so the nations learned the value of that hope which sheds the light of life immortal through the mansions of the grave, and demonstrates the possibility of flesh however gross, of bones however frail being fitted for a station in the world of spirits where God the spirit reigns.

Of the nature of this change we can know very little. But when Elijah stood with Moses and his master on the mount of transfiguration, and "spake with him of his disease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem;" his rai ment was all white and glistering, and he wore the radience of a cherubs face. Such faces, we trust will many of you wear, when Messiah shall come with ten thousands of his saints to execute his judgments; such transfiguration shall be common, when the last generation of the called and faithful shall hear that same trumpet that awakes the slumbering dead, and exchange their wrinkles, or their weeds for the white and glistering raiment that flowed down to the feet of Enoch; raiment that shall flow round many forms as fair.

Let us not ask any questions, how God can change the laws and qualities of body, and fit it for inhabiting a world where all is spirit. Enoch proves to us that the change is really practicable. Elijah and Messiah under two other dispensations afford us like examples; and we question not his power when truth is so inviolate.

Let us take our stand like Enoch on the faith of God's Messiah; let us make our choice like Enoch of a friend who will not fail us; and though we prophecy like Enoch, and all men discard our message; though we take our stand like him and men villify our characters; yet light is our task in this christianized age, and short is our trial of three score years and ten. The God of Enoch has promised us the resurrection and the life; he will send forth all his horsemen and his chariots of fire; he will himself come down, and he will save his people.

And then when they approach, as they surely shall approach the crystal wall of heaven; when her self-moving gates expand "on golden hinges turning;" when they look back from that height to view once more earth, far distant dimly twinkling as a star of the smallest magnitude; then shall they feel as righteous Enoch felt, when that voice from heaven met him, "come in thou blessed of the Lord, come in;" and they shall judge what self-denial, or suffering, or deaths, can be weighed against that welcome "servant of God well done!" Patriarchs and prophets, martyrs and apostles; thou translated Enoch; thou martyr. ed Paul; may my lot be as your lot; may all these sheep have place in that grand cavalcade; when many translated bodies and bodies changed from death, shall crowd through heaven's great arch-way, till the courts of God be full,

SERMON IX,

BIOGRAPHY OF NOAH.

"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them." Gen. vi. 1.

Few events fall out under the government of God, that more naturally and intensely wrap the mind in wonder or cause the heart to thrill with pain, than the prodigious waste of loveliness and life which we are compelled to witness almost day by day. The loveliest flowers waste their fragance in the wilderness, or expand their beauties on the mountain top, where no eye ever sees them smiling in their loveliness, then drooping, fading, dying, on their stock. Man or beast cannot set their foot upon the grass without whelming in desolation many a little world of small but active beings that people by myriads every leaf and blade. Every shower that fructifies the earth, every frost that nips autumnal vegitation, deals destruction complete as it is wide upon the crowded population of these innumerable little worlds.

These things are suffered to pass almost unnoticed and unfelt by us, because we occupy a place so high in the scale of universal being, that all we have been noticing dwindles into insignificance when compared with those greater and more obtrusive changes which may in any way

affect ourselves. But ascend high as you please in the scale of this creation; still you will find that universal providence lavish of its gifts and prodigal of life. How often do you meet with men whose intellectual faculties are of prodigious mould; yet shrouded under the rubbish of irremediable ignorance; or buried in stations remote and obscure; when like the flowers of the desert they shed their fragrance round on beings quite unable to distinguish their loveliness or appreciate their worth? How often do we trace the path of desolation through all the regions of organic life, among beings who can feel, and suffer, and enjoy?—It is thus Almighty providence displays its own exuberance, creating or destroying in a moment, at a word, loveliness and life more varied and abundant than numbers can express, or human conception grasp. He occupies a station infinitely removed above the highest grades of created being. To his immensity all rises; all distances are equal; are as nothing; a single unit and numbers incomprehensible are managable alike in his plans and calculations; omnipotence knows no difference between lighting up a glow-worm and kindling a sun in heaven. And with the very same facility he peoples or depopulates a single leaf of clover, and a province of creation vast as Saturn. That hailstone that bruised, and destroyed a little world which before was flourishing in all its summers pride, is an event that finds its counterpart in the loftier scale of things, when omnipotence bursts a world of prodigious diameter; then comes the fragments to urge their course through heaven, at different distances and in different orbits, each are in magnitude a large and perfect world.

Of the causes of these changes, as we sometimes wit

ness them, or of the reasons which induce an all-wise providence thus lavishly to create and lavishly to destroy, it is not possible that we should, in the present state, be able to know much. One thing however we do know, that power in the hand of God is lodged where all should wish it, it obeys the dictate of unerring wisdom and undoubted goodness; and however distressing and tremendous the ruin he often brings, he never suffers it; but where' it ought to be.

Of this our world is a standing witness. We record today a ruin more extensive and tremendous than has ever been repeated, or than will ever be again; till the general conflagration shall melt the very elements and convert the earth to cinder. But while we sustain the credibility of the bible story by an appeal to facts of every order, done on every scale, we repeat the suggestion that omnipotence never trifles with any of its productions; goodness and wisdom, stability and righteousness, stamp all the ways of providence; and without abundant reason this curse shall

never come.

To the reality of the deluge, we have abundant and highly varied testimony in the actual state of the world and in the traditions of all nations. And to some of these proofs we propose inviting your attention, after we shall have traced fully the scriptural account in this and succeeding lectures. Our business to-day is with the fearful prepartions for this grand event; and with these circumstances in the conduct and general character of the world which made way for a catastrophe so signal,

Fifteeen hundred and thirty six years had already consecrated to human gratitude the goodness and patience of Almighty God, since the day that our first father brought

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