your souls. Bright will be the days of your pilgrimage, smooth your passage to the tomb. Sorrow may indeed find its way to your hearts, but it will not be that sorrow which is mixed with the bitterness of remorse. The bosom may heave its sigh, and the eye may shed its tear, but the Conscience will still be happy and at peace. Your youth will be lovely as the morning light, your manhood radiant as the noon-day sun, and your old age still and serene as the evening sky. And when your days are numbered, and Heaven takes you to itself, you will stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, not with presumptuous confidence, but with humble hope of pardon and life. The judg

ment will be set, and the Books will be opened, and the voice of your Redeemer and Judge will proclaim your acceptance, "Well done, ye good and

and say, *

faithful servants, enter ye into the joy of your Lord."

* Matt. xxv. 21.

SERMON,

ON WALKING WITH GOD.

PREACHED IN

ST. MARGARET'S CHURCH,

WESTMINSTER,

ON SUNDAY, THE 15TH OF NOVEMBER,

SERMON X.

GENESIS v. 24.

ENOCH WALKED WITH GOD, AND HE WAS
NOT, FOR GOD TOOK HIM.

THE world was now upwards of six hundred and twenty years old, when Enoch, of the line of Seth, and the seventh from Adam, was born into it. At this time mankind had declined so widely from the path of righteousness, that ignorance of God, and depravity of heart, obtained amongst them to a most alarming degree. They were hastening with rapid strides to those extremes of wickedness, which showed, in the days of Noah, that *"6 every imagi

nation of the thoughts of their hearts

was only evil continually."

"The days of Enoch were three

* Gen. vi. 5.

T

+ Gen. v. 23.

hundred sixty and five years." During this period he lived a life of the highest excellence, displaying an illustrious pattern of every virtue, that could adorn the human character, and setting an example of the purest piety, that could dignify the human soul. He had faith in God, earnestly expecting good things to come. He not only kept himself free from the contagion of a wicked world, but did all in his power, * by his example, by his reproofs, by his exhortations, and by the warnings of a prophetic spirit, to correct and reform mankind, to bring them back

* Dr. Patrick, in his Commentary on Gen. v. 22, observes as follows: Of all the rest Moses only says, they lived after they begat those sons here mentioned; but of this man (Enoch) that he "walked with God," that is, was not only sincerely obedient to God, (as we suppose his forefathers to have been,) but of an extraordinary sanctity beyond the rate of other holy men, and held on also in a long course of such singular piety, notwithstanding the wickedness of the age wherein he lived. And the very same character being given of Noah, vi. 9, it may incline us to believe, that, as Noah was "a preacher of righteousness," so Enoch, being a prophet, was not only exemplary in his life, but also severely reproved the wickedness of that age by his word.