observe two leading facts in the history of this good man. The first is that "he walked with God," and the second is that "God took him." Upon these two I beg to offer you a few practical observations. May the God and Father of us all give you grace to lay them to heart. I shall first say something about what we are told of his manner of life. He walked with God. Observe

1. If we look back, as far as our memory wil carry us, to our earliest years, or if we notice the dispositions of the youngest children of our acquaintance, we shall be convinced that the object for which we have from our birth most earnestly contended is the liberty to gratify our own inclinations without respect to the will or convenience of others; in fact, to do just as we liked, without let or hindrance; and we may add, from experience of our own feelings, and observation of those of others, that the things wherein we most desired to please ourselves were those against which we had been warned or commanded by others older and wiser than ourselves. Selfwilledness, therefore, seems the natural disposition of us all from our birth.

2. There would be no possible harm in consulting our own will on every occasion if we had all remained as perfect in mind and body, and as like God as Adam and Eve were before they fell into sin, for then we could have no will but what God implanted, and our greatest delight, and, therefore, our strongest inclination would be to please Him, and His Spirit would shew us continually how that was to be done; but since the fall, the Scriptures inform us, and we must know of ourselves, that, instead of having the likeness of God, we are all shapen in iniquity, and born in sin, Ps. li. 5; our hearts are carnal, that is fleshly, instead of being spiritual, and therefore, by nature, we hate God, Rom. viii. 7. "Foolishness," which is only another name for wickedness, see Psalm xiv. 1, we are told "is bound up in the heart of a child," Prov. xxii. 15. "As soon as we are born," God says, we go astray," Ps. lviii. 3. What worse guides, therefore, could we have than our own tastes or desires, seeing that these are against God and His holy law, and can only lead us into sin and the condemnation that awaits the guilty?

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3. God has wisely and kindly given us parents to correct and restrain us when disposed to wander into the ways of evil, and to guide us into the paths of righteousness and safety. The love of their children is implanted in their breasts, and this love impels them to make every effort for their present and future good, and to controul in them those evil propensities which, if not checked, will hurry them into mischief and ruin. God has strictly enjoined obedience to parents, because they are supposed to know what is good for us better than we can know it ourselves, and when they love God, and are faithful followers of Jesus Christ, they will lead their children to Him, and pray Him to make them His children, and take them under His care in this life, and into His kingdom in the life to come. This we suppose pious Jared did, and in this way Enoch came to walk with God, which means that he was God's child, and chose to serve God rather than to please himself. From strictly obeying his parents Enoch learned to obey God, for in that case his first lesson was one of self-denial, and without this we cannot be the disciples of Christ, or the children of God, Mat. xvi. 24. Submission to parental authority is, therefore, in itself, a most wholesome discipline, besides being well pleasing to the Lord, see Eph. vi. 1-3, Col. iii. 20.

4. Jesus Christ is our great Example in all that is good and lovely and profitable to ourselves. Children cannot do better than imitate Him, for as a child He walked closely with God, his Father, and He dwells in glory with that Father now. Though He was God as well as man He became subject to earthly parents, and gave them reverence, Luke ii. 51. When He grew up He declared His intention to fulfil all the duties imposed upon man, even those from which, because He had no sin, he might have been excused, Mat. iii. 15. On no occasion did He consult His own pleasure, Rom. xv. 3, nor seek to do His own will, John v. 30, vi. 38, but it was His meat to do His Father's, John iv. 34. We cannot wonder, therefore, that His Father was well pleased with Him, and took more than one occasion of declaring it, Mat. iii. 17, xvii. 5.

Thus, my dear young friends, you see how necessary it is for us to lay the Holy Spirit's description of

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Enoch's manner of life to heart-in the first place, be, cause it has been written for our instruction, and in the next, because, we all like sheep by nature go astray, we turn every one to his own way," Is. liii. 6, and our heavenly Father has graciously sent us a good Shepherd to bring us back, and to direct our steps "into the way of peace." Those who find and pursue that way walk with God. He is their companion, protector, and guide; and, therefore, unless we are walking with Him, we are yet in our sins, and in the broad way that leads multitudes to destruction, Mat. vii, 13.

Let me now engage your attention to the second great fact recorded in Enoch's brief biography— namely, that God took him. Observe

1. God's having taken Enoch reminds us of the fact that there are more young than aged persons taken away by death every year, because few, comparatively speaking, live to be old. God will take many of you away before those bright prospects are realized which now beckon you onward in the race of life—“ Prepare to meet your God," Amos iv. 12.

2. Some of you will live to be old; but death will find you at last in a state of preparedness greatly influenced by the discipline of your childhood and youth. “Řejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement," Eccl. xi. 9. Remember

(1.) Enoch was early dedicated to God-so have you been in your baptism.

(2.) Enoch had abundant opportunity of pleasing himself-more, probably, than any of you have.

(3.) Enoch was born in sin, and was, therefore, subject to evil inclinations like you.

(4.) Enoch had parents, we have reason to believe, who were faithful to God, and lived to thank Him for them. I hope yours are faithful too. Could you see into futurity, the stricter they are with you, the better you would love and value them.

(5.) Children like to accompany their parents. Enoch chose God in Christ Jesus as his parent for

ever, and walked with Him-listened to His conversation-asked Him questions-held confidingly by His hand-kept up with Him, and set his heart on going with Him whither He went, and abiding with Him for ever. So, long before his earthly journey would have naturally ended, God took him according to His own desire. You cannot expect to be taken just now as Enoch was, for "God translated him that he should not see death," Heb. xi. 5; but if you follow Enoch's example, you shall be taken from the grave, to which we must all go, by Jesus Christ at His return to this world, and shall be received into His glorious kingdom, there to meet with Enoch, and Abel, and Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and all the elect people of God who were once born into this wicked world just as you have been, but who preferred Christ as a friend and companion, and His work of redemption, His word and His precious promises, as objects of interest and pursuit, to all the pleasures, riches, and honours which Satan could offer them. They, therefore, seeing what this world was, and desiring something far better, kept close by God while they lived, and departed in the full hope of a glorious resurrection through the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. When Jesus comes, they "shall be caught up in the clouds to meet their Lord in the air, and so shall they ever be with the Lord," 1 Thess. iv. 17.

Let us now review Enoch's manhood. During this season, too, he walked with God, which includes

1. That with, we may suppose, an average share of intelligence, cultivated and matured by observation, reflexion, and parental instruction-with a heart full of the lively emotions of youth-with a body sound, vigorous, and active, and with a term of life before him such as placed old age and death at an immense distance, he was called upon to choose a path to walk in through this world-one that promised the largest amount of enjoyment-the fewest obstructions to ease and comfort-and the brightest prospects to the young aspirant after friendship, opulence, renown. With every solicitation to carnal indulgence, and to join the ranks of the godless and the gay, he chose the path that led to God-the path in which he could ever enjoy His presence and protection, and where he

could cultivate acquaintance with Him, and listen to His voice.

2. He left the world behind him and came to God. He heard the voice of his Beloved saying to him, "This is the way, walk thou in it," Is. xxx. 21, and he obeyed it, although a thousand voices said, "Come with us we shall find all precious substance-we shall fill our houses with spoil-cast in thy lot with us," Prov. i. 11, 13, 14. But he replied to them, "Depart from me ye evil doers, for I will keep the commandments of my God," Ps. cxix. 115. Enoch was enabled, by Divine grace, to see that "the earth was defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because they had transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant; therefore had the curse devoured the earth and they that dwelt therein were desolate," Is. xxiv. 5, 6, and feeling that all things earthly were shaking to their fall, and that there was no resting place there for his soul, he said to Jesus, "Bid me come unto Thee on the water "— over the billows of sin and affliction, and through the storms of Divine wrath. And Jesus said to him,

3. He believed. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him," Heb. xi. 6. To estimate the faith by which such men as Abel, Enoch, &c., were enabled to come to God, we must take a few facts into account which effect all who desire to draw nigh now, as much as they did the saints of ancient times.

(1.) God had said to guilty Adam, "Depart,"— "He drove out the man;" not only the individual who had disobeyed, but all his posterity federally, that is, by covenant, included in him, in fact, all mankind, and this necessarily, not only because it was the penalty attached to sin, but because a polluted creature and a holy Creator could no longer associate.

(2.) When God said to Abel or Enoch, "Return," He must have opened a door to them, different from that by which their whole race had been driven out— a door of pardon, and a door of regeneration. God remained the same God, and if they had remained the same people as sin and the curse had made them, they