'Enoch walked with God and he was not; for God took him.' This verse
is like some little spring with trees and flowers on a cliff. The
dry genealogical table--and here this bit of human life in it! How
unlike the others--they _lived_ and they _died_; this man's life was
walking with God and his departure was a fading away, a ceasing to be
found here. It is remarkable in how calm a tone the Bible speaks of
its supernatural events. We should not have known this to be a miracle
but for the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The dim past of these early chapters carries us over many centuries.
We know next to nothing about the men, where they lived, how they
lived, what thoughts they had, what tongue they spoke. Some people
would say that they never lived at all. I believe, and most of you,
I suppose, believe that they did. But how little personality we give
them! Little as we know of environment and circumstances, we know
the main thing, the fact of their having been. Then we are sure that
they had sorrow and joy, strife and love, toil and rest, like the
rest of us, that whether their days were longer or shorter they were
filled much as ours are, that whatever was the pattern into which
the quiet threads of their life was woven it was, warp and weft, the
same yarn as ours. In broad features every human life is much the
same. Widely different as the clothing of these grey fathers in
their tents, with their simple contrivances and brief records, is
from that of cultivated busy Englishmen to-day, the same human form
is beneath both. And further, we know but little as to their
religious ideas, how far they were surrounded with miracles, what
they knew of God and of His purposes, how they received their
knowledge, what served them for a Bible. Of what positive
institutions of religion they had we know nothing; whether for them