that he needs also a fitness for that happy abode which the Holy Spirit alone can give him. If I were lifted just as I am, and with my existing physical organization, and placed in Saturn, Jupiter or Mars, I could not live there. Their gravity, their density, their whole structure, as astronomers can calculate, would render it absolutely impossible that, with my present physical organization, I could live at all, or, at all events, that I could live happily there. Every inhabitant must be fitted for the orb in which he dwells; and any one who knows this world, and what man is, notwithstanding the terrible degeneracy that has fallen upon both, can yet see that, physically, man was made for this earth, and that this earth was made for man. Now, the great law that we find in our experience extends into the better land: it is made for the holy, and the holy are made for it. There needs not only an adaptation of the place to the inhabitant, but an adaptation of the inhabitant to the place. And thus, without a complete revolution of nature, not a reformation only, without a complete transformation of intellect, and head, and heart, and taste, and sympathy, and preference, if we were placed in heaven, it would be agony, not oy and to be projected from it and cast into the depths of ruin would be our inevitable desire, though it would be our certain and terrible destruction. It is, therefore, the immutable and everlasting law which God's word proclaims upon the earth, which the saints in glory echo from their happy mansions, that except a man be born again by the Spirit of God, he never can be fit to enter there.

All these the texts of the Bible, written on the sacred page, are not more obligatory or forcible because I have supposed them to be enunciated by the blessed in heaven being dead yet speaking. This only we may ask, that if a saved one were allowed to descend from the realms of glory, and to occupy the place where the minister of Christ stands, with

what thrilling eloquence, with what earnest persuasion, with what force of argument, with what weight of appeal, with what solemnity of tone, would he speak to the vast multitude who are journeying onward and onward, either to a woe that never can be exhausted, or to a blessedness that has no measuré, no suspension and no end! But I forget, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from the dead."

Let us regard these truths as being as fresh as if an angel now spoke them. Let us hear the testimonies, remonstrances and eloquent persuasions, just as if the most loved one that has preceded us to heaven were to come down and speak them in unearthly tones, and with unearthly eloquence. It is God's own word, ever fresh, ever applicable, ever true. Its obligations rest upon us with a weight and pressure, at this moment, which we can no more fling from us than we can fling from us our own immortality. Whilst we are saved by grace, we are not saved in indolence. It is not true that we are borne to heaven without knowing it. It is not God's law, in any department of human life, that a man should get on without toil. If one wish to prosper in trade, he must be up early and go late to bed. If he wish to make progress in learning, he must read very hard. If one wish to get on in commercial matters, one must study the markets, the ears ever listening, the eyes ever open. If one wish to be a firstrate poet, labor is essential. It is a great mistake to suppose that ministers preach by inspiration, or that poets write by instinct. It is all very pretty to say so; but the best sermons are always the result of the hardest toil, and no poet ever wrote what will be remembered except by labor as well as thought. And my streng conviction is, that in the world of mind the difference of intellect is comparatively little; it rests much more on the difference of application. And if this be true in God's natural world, why should it be dis

pensed with in God's higher world? It is not; for every expression in this Book denotes energy, labor, toil. " Strive," (dywvigetɛ) literally, "Agonize to enter in at the strait gate.” Lay aside every weight," like the racer in the Olympian games, "and run the race set before you, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of your faith." And those who now occupy the starry heights of glory are there by grace most truly, most surely; but they did not reach their repose without toiling, running, striving. We see the crown, but we see not the path that has led to it.

We see the glory that is

entered, but we are ignorant of the toils which must have preceded it.

"The mighty pyramids of stone,

That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,
When nearer seen and better known,
Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

"The distant mountains, that uprear
Their frowning foreheads to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

"So heights by good men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upwards in the night."

CHAPTER III.

THE TRANSLATED ONE.

And after he was dead and gone,
And e'en his memory dim,

Earth seemed more sweet to live upon,

More full of love, because of him.

"By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God."— HEBREWS 11: 5.

THE simple historical fact to which this passage relates is told in very few words in Genesis. It is said in the fifth chapter, at the twenty-fourth verse, "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him;" which is translated by the apostle, "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased," or, as it is in the original passage in Genesis, "that he walked with God."

Now, there seems to be something exceedingly appropriate in bringing in the record of the translation of a saint amid the melancholy statement of the effects of sin that then began to develop themselves in the fallen world. Perhaps God meant also by this statement to foreshadow him who, indeed, according to the prophecy, should die; but who, according to the promise that is in the prophecy, should rise again. Probably Abel, the first martyr, was to be the symbol and the figure of Jesus Christ, the great Propitiation for our sins,

whose "blood speaketh better things than the blood of Abel;" and so Enoch's translation may have been meant to be a type of the resurrection and ascension of him who has entered within the vail, and ever liveth in the true holy place to make intercession for us. In these we see the promise, "The woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head," more and more unfolding itself; and in the death of the martyr Abel, as in a mirror, the death of Jesus reflected backwards on the world; and in the ascension and the translation into glory of the sainted Enoch, a dim foreshadow of that great resurrection in which, and by which, we, too, shall rise from the dead.

Abel and Enoch's different circumstances may be meant to teach us another lesson. In Abel's martyrdom by Cain the murderer, we have an illustration of the reception that true and living religion may expect in this world. In the translation of Enoch, the sainted follower of God, we have an illustration of what religion, true religion, may expect in the world to come. And, lest men should be discouraged by seeing a truly pious man made a martyr, God adds the other fact, that a truly pious man is sometimes, and in this case certainly was, translated, that he should not only escape the pangs of martyrdom, but should not even see death. Hence, let us not be depressed by seeing real religion persecuted in this world; for we know that it is only for a season, and that it shall be consummated by a translation, lasting, glorious and blessed.

This incident of the translation of Enoch occurred, as we can easily see from the history, about the time of Adam's death. Jude calls him, "The seventh from Adam." In Adam's death men read this terrible lesson, "The wages of sin is death." In Enoch's translation they read that glorious sentiment, "The gift of God is eternal life." In the one case they beheld what sin can do; in the other, what grace