Sept. 1, 1868. 2. Enoch alone was translated, though others in a state of salvation were living at the time. That fearful process of moral and social corruption which came to the full at the era of the deluge, “when few, that is eight persons, were saved by water," although it had in fact attained an advanced stage even at the time of Enoch's translation, was by no means so universal as at the later period; and we may therefore reasonably conclude that the number of the children of God then living must have been considerably larger. Indeed, "by applying the elementary rules of arithmetic to data contained in the fifth chapter of Genesis, it will be found that when Enoch was translated, all the patriarchs therein mentioned were alive, with the exception of Adam and Noah, the former of whom died fifty-seven years before, and the latter was not born till sixty-nine years after that event." We are, then, clearly warranted in asserting that though Enoch was the only individual then living who was deemed worthy of the signal honour of translation, he was by no means the only individual then living in a state of grace. And as it was in Enoch's day, even so shall it be in the day of that coming rapture of Christ's waiting saints, of which his translation was so significant a type. In fact I have no doubt that Dr. Seiss is quite correct when he says, "I have no idea that a very large portion of mankind, or even of the professing Church, will be thus taken. The first translation, if I may so speak, will embrace only the select few, who watch and pray always,' that they may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.' (Luke xxi. 36.) In that night there shall be two in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left." (Luke xvii. 34, 36.) The idea is that the great body of the Church even will be "left." And this assumption of the saints to immortality, which may occur any of these passing days or nights, and certainly is to be devoutly awaited as very near, is the first signal act by which the great period of the consummation is to be introduced. 3. The translation of Enoch was unaccompanied by public or sensible attestation. "And Enoch walked with God," we read in Genesis," and he was not; for God took him." "To be not," says Dr. Jamieson in his recent commentary, "is a soft archaic expression, several times used in the book of Genesis in speaking of a person who is no longer visible in his usual place, or met with in the world, without reference to the mode of his disappearance. (Chap. xxxvii. 30; xlii. 13, 36.) The versions give different explanations of the phrase. The Samaritan has he did not appear;' the Syraic, he ceased to be;' the Arabic, he died;' the Targum of Onkelos, he was not found, because the Lord did not make him die ;'" while the apostle Paul, following the Septuagint, translates it, "and was not found, because God had translated him." Whether, as we know actually occurred in the case of Elijah, a fruitless search was made for the missing patriarch, we cannot say; but this at all events seems quite clear: that so far as the inspired record informs us, his sudden disappearance was the only evidence afforded his contemporaries of the wondrous fact of his translation. And as it was in the case of Enoch, even so, if we read the prophetic page aright, shall it be in the case of Christ's waiting saints, when the hour of their removal shall have struck. No warning signal announced to the antediluvian world the moment when Noah entered into the ark; yet "as it was in the days of Noah, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man 66 Sept. 1, 1868. be." No trumpet-peal sounded over guilty Sodom as the angels "laid hold upon his hand, and brought him forth, and set him without the city;" yet, as it was in the days of Lot, even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed." (Luke xvii. 26-30.) No thundercrash proclaimed the fact of Enoch's translation, we are simply and sublimely told that "he was not, for God took him;" and so, again, shall it be in the great day of the Lord's coming to receive his saints unto himself. Swiftly as in a tropical clime the darkness of the night succeeds the blazing day; silently as the shadows flee away before the light of the morning; secretly as the dews exhale beneath the beams of the uprisen sun; shall the waiting saints of Christ be rapt away to be for ever with their Lord: they will not be found, because God will have translated them. Friends shall be seated around the cheerful board, when "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," one shall be taken and the others left. The railway train will be speeding on its journey, when, with a speed more rapid than its own, two, it may be or three, of its occupants will be removed. The ocean steamer shall be ploughing the Atlantic billows when suddenly some of its passengers will have reached a heavenly port. Christian brethren shall have met together to worship God, or, it may be, to partake of the memorials of Christ's dying love; when, without the briefest interval, the worship of some shall be transferred to a higher sanctuary, and the eyes which a moment before beheld only the broken bread and poured-out wine which show the Lord's death till he come, shall see the King in his beauty, and be made "exceeding glad with his countenance.' O wondrous thought! amazing anticipation! De we indeed in any measure realize the fact that so it shall be? De we really believe, as we lie down in our beds each night, that our closing eyes may open amid the splendours of the new Jerusalem? Do we really cherish the thought, as each morning dawns, that before yon sun sets in the western sky, we may be inhabitants of that city which "hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it; for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof"? If we did-if this coming glory was to us a reality and not a mere opinion-what manner of persons ought we to be-must we be-in all holy conversation and godliness? How slight a hold would the world have upon us: how hateful would be every thought of evil; how earnest the cry of our hearts, “Come, Lord Jesus; come quickly." II. But I proceed briefly to notice, in the second place, the circumstance mentioned by the apostle Jude, that Enoch was the seventh from Adam. By any one ignorant of the significance of Scripture numbers, it might perhaps be asked, "Why is this fact, that Enoch was the seventh from Adam. mentioned here? What additional emphasis does it give to the apostle's statement? What matters it whether Enoch was the seventh, the eighth, or the tenth from Adam?" But when we remember the almost scientific precision with which numbers are used in the prophetic word, and the very special significance which attaches to the number seven, we can, at once, appreciate its force as used in the present connection. Throughout the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, seven is the number denoting that which is temporarily but not finally complete-perfection as regards things connected with the present world. The cabalistic reason of this may be thus explained: three is the signature of the Trinity, and four of the earth; as has recently been pointed out in these pages in reference to Sept. 1, 1868. the Cherubim. Hence as 3+4=7, so the number seven itself admirably embodies the thought of the relation in which God at present stands to this world. In contradistinction to seven stands twelve, the number of final completeness. For as 3×4=12, so when God's purposes are finally accomplished, then God shall be fully glorified on earth, and the earth fully blessed in him. This mystical significance of the number seven is recognised by the most learned and able writers on prophecy. "Seven," says the learned Mede, "is a number of the revolution of times, and therefore in this book (the Apocalyse) the seals, trumpets, and vials also are seven." " Seven," observes B. W. Newton in his valuable Thoughts on the Apocalyse, "is the number of rest, especially after labour. It indicates completeness that can be rested in; the mind in this case being directed, not to any consequences that may follow, but simply to the completeness and perfectness of that which is presented before us. The seventh day, the seventh year, and the seventh seventh year, were periods of rest and satisfied joy. Indeed seven may properly be called the number of completeness. When man by his sin ruins that which God had made perfect, and it becomes necessary for him to make all things new, then we read of an eighth day." Now this gives a deep and most appropriate meaning to the mention of the fact, by the apostle Jude, that Enoch was the seventh from Adam; since, taken in connection with the circumstance of his miraculous translation which we have already considered, it clearly sets him before us as a wonderful type of the waiting Church at the time of the second advent. Of those, that is to say, who shall witness the completion of God's present dispensational dealing with this world, and who, while standing upon the threshold of a new and more glorious economy, shall yet be exempt from the desolating judgments which are to precede its actual establishment. And thus we see that, as Bengel says with his wonted suggestiveness, "The seventh from Adam is an expression not without mystery; for in him who is thus described, freedom from death and a sacred number are combined: for every seventh object is most highly valued. The first coming of Christ was foretold to Adam; the second to Enoch. The seventh from Adam prophesied the things which shall close the seventh age of the world." III. And this brings us to the last point which I designed to touch upon, namely, the peculiar character of Enoch's prophecy. It had express and exclusive reference to the closing days of this dispensation, and the second glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Behold, the Lord cometh with the myriads of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." Jude had spoken, in the preceding part of his epistle, of certain false teachers who had "crept in unawares into the Church even then, an evil race who would moreover continue increasingly to infest it till their measure shall be filled up by the "mockers of the last times " (ver. 18.) And with this agrees the testimony of Paul, in his second Epistle to the Thessalonians (ii. 7, 8). "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he that now withholdeth be taken out of the midst; and then shall the lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." And with that of Peter also: "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." (iii. 3, 4.) Now, it was "of these" or "concerning these," as Jude expressly tells us, that Enoch prophesied. And it is surely remarkable that this most ancient prophecy, delivered thousands of years before the birth of Christ, should have reference to the Lord's second advent alone; the first, with all its momentous consequences, being passed over and ignored. It is the Lord coming to exercise judgment upon the impenitent; not the Lord coming to save the lost, of whom Enoch prophesied. And was not this a testimony peculiarly befitting "the seventh from Adam?" Does he not thus again appear to typify the waiting Church of these last days? The Lord cometh! The Lord cometh with his holy myriads! The Lord cometh to judge his enemies! This is the sum of Enoch's prophecy; and this is, indeed, "truth for the last days;" the only remaining message for those who have rejected God's gospel and denied his Son, and who, having endured with much longsuffering, he is at last about to reject. One word more and I may conclude. In the three bright aspects of Enoch's character, presented to us in Scripture, and to which I briefly referred at the commencement of these remarks-his faith, his walk, his testimony; we surely have indicated to us the three great wants of the Church in these last days, and the three special graces, in our personal possession of which we may recognise the divine ea nests of our meetness to participate, should we be alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, in that promised, glorious exemption from the common lot of fallen humanity, of which Enoch's translation was so beautiful a type. Not without Enoch's faith, let us rest assured, shall we be deemed worthy of an Enoch-like translation. Not without Enoch's walk shall we be found in the position of those wise and ready virgins who go in with the Bridegroom to the wedding. Not without a word of testimony, similar to Enoch's, concerning the coming of the King and Judge, shall the precious promise to the Philadelphian Church be made good to us. (Rev. iii. 10.) But if these things be indeed in us, and abound, then may we, in a well-grounded confidence, and with most blessed self-application, take up the poet's language and say: Earth, what a sorrow lies before thee, None like it in the shadowy past; Birken' eal. 66 The sharpest throe that ever tore thee, "I see the fair moon veil her lustre, "I see the shadows of the sunset; And wrapt in these the Avenger's form;. But I shall be above the storm. "There comes the moaning and the sighing; BUT I SHALL BE BEYOND THEM ALL." W. MAUDE, THE RAINBOW: A Magazine of Christian Literature, with Special Reference to the OCTOBER 1, 1868. THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD. THE HE whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, and it will be subject to vanity and bondage until the time come for the manifestation-the "apocalypse"-of the sons of God. But this revelation of the sons of God depends upon the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 66 'When Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." Then "the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty"—the liberty of the glory-" of the children of God." This is the fore-announced order of these sublimely magnificent events. We cannot alter the divine arrangement if we would; and we should be jealously careful over our lips, lest at any time our public speech suggest that we have another way of accomplishing the deliverance of a burdened creation. It is easy to utter pulpit sentiments, drawn from the immense storehouse of traditional theology, which come into direct collision with the revealed purpose of God; and the injury which is thereby done to the scriptural intelligence of congregations, and to the cause of truth generally, is by no means slight. The promised emancipation will come in no other way than that which God has declared. The promised universal jubilee is certain; but the Lord himself is "THE DELIVERER," and his personal appearing, when he shall come the second time without sin unto salvation, is at once the occasion and the cause of this wonderful deliverance. There are many things which the Lord's servants can do, by his direction and grace, as instruments in his hands, but they cannot undo the bonds which bind the universal creaturehood of the world. To work the amazing miracle of an emancipated creation is clearly beyond their reach. In this splendid exhibition of divine compassion we must stand by as adoring witnesses; our hand gives neither impulse nor finishing touch to E |