The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1910-10-26
Enoch, Man Who
Walked With God
By REV. c. A. S. DWIGHT, D. D.

ants whose dignity Is all derived
from their heavenly Master. The
names and histories of man? of these.
as portrayed in the Scriptures, are
coupled with teil-tale epithets or brief
characterizations, which have now
become familiar as household words,
that are significant Of the peculiar
aptitudes and achievements of the
men to whom they are applied. OF
one man in the Bible a phrase Is used
applied elsewhere to one other, Noah)
which is strangely suggestive and
wonderfully i~nsplring-for it Is said
of Enoch that he walked with God"
All men, good and bad, walk in the
sight of God, and all good men may
be said to walk before or in the pres.
ence of God-guided by his EYE,
shone upon by MS glory, and sur
rounded by tokens of his love-but of
that primal, pre-eminent man Of an
early rude age it is declared that he
walked with God" which must mean
something very illustrious, and denote
a nightly almost, if not quite, unex-
ampled in. the whole course of human
history.
The character of Snoch, as viewed
through the heightened vistas of the
varying ages, seems to shine with a
pure white light almost, if not quite,
unearthly. Its CLEAN was never light
ened on man-made affairs, the sheen Is
not dimmable by earth-born mists or
garish glare or historic contraven-
tons. We cannot know just what
were the psychologist qualities Of this
holy, happy man, but we may be sure
of one thing, that his character was
%singularly pure, far above that of his
fellows, or the u%nexampled honor Of
walking with God" and of being
translated without hint or hurt Of
death would never have been given to
him. BE ye holy, for l am holy" must
have been fulfilled in marvellous de-
gree in Enoch's case. He was a sinner,
as were others Of his contemporaries,
but somehow, in close contact with
the fires of the Divine holiness, the
dress Of his own humanity was burn
ed away so that ever before he was
caught aawy to paradise, he became
detached from earth and filled with
the very spirit of heaven.
Enoch walked with God it appears,
as a prophet. God may have revealed
to him in quiet, tender convers many
wonderful secrets Of his plans. What
did Enoch see in prophecy? Who
knows but that in those ecstatic 800
years there may have passed be-
fore his vision, revealed by the d.
rect will and wish of Jehovah, the
outlines of redemption-the coming
history of the ages, exhibited as it
were, in an elongated panorama, all
illustrating the wonders of grace and
centering about the cross, whose dis
tant CLEAN Enoch's quickened eyes
may have clearly seen? Paul, in a
later age, was taken up into the third
heaven - why may Enoch not have
been granted the vision of a redeem
ed earth? We cannot saoy that it was
so-but We may wonder whether such
dreams and visions did not come to
that holy and unique man.
We are told, at any rate, in the
epistle of Jude, of a wonderful vision
which Enoch had of the consumma-
ton Of human history, when the Lord
will come with ten thousand of his
angels to visit a dire punishment on
ungodly mein-a message which seems
to have been a quotation from or an
adaptation of, a prophecy in the Book
of Enoch, which last is a collection of
ap%ochryphal stories regarding mony
matters in nature and in life which
the chruch has declined to introduce
into the canon, and does not receive
as veritable Scripture. The general
truth holds good at all events that
the nearer one walks with God and
the more transparent Is the moral
nature of any believer the broader
and grander is the vision which such
a Il enjoys of eternal things-for in
the highest ranges of Christian ex
p~erience being is seeing.
There is need today for the trans
parent, guileless, reverent, meditative
Enoch-like type Of character-a frame
or fashion of moral being which may
seem, indeed, quite foreign to the
"zeitgeist" or prevailing spirit Of the
times. Yet in a rushing age, more, If
anything, than in any other, "a men
need the close converse with their
Maker to KEEP them poised amid So
cial agitations steadily against the
assaults Of temptation, and clear
eyed amid the whirl and swirl of
numberless worldly distractions. II
should not be thought, because Enoch
lived in a simple age, that, therefore,
he enjoyed exceptional opportunities
for being religious, while In this char
acteristically worldly day it Is quite
out of the question to maintain a
spiritual frame. The fact Is that
Enoch liVcd in an age that was rude,
riotous and coarse, when vice was
rampant, when the sanctions of So
ciety itself were largely lacking, when
there were no Bibles, churches, En-
deavor societies, religious clubs or
religious books or weeklies, and,
therefore, 1t was all the more to his
praise that, under conditions even
more unfriendly, perhaps, to right
eousncss than those that obtain to-
day, he walked with God and COM
ported himself as BETTER a saint of