Enoch the Immortal
Standing in the Great Gallery, we have seen that the two first figures of the group bear the impress of youth. The first represents the spirit of childhood — the child of all times and of all places. The second represents the life unfinished, the life that has not seen its meridian sun, and whose work remains a fragment; this also is a morning view. We are now come to the study of a third figure; it is that of Enoch. Agazz we are in the light of the morning, in the atmosphere of youth. I have said that the characteristic of youth is to look forward, that it is distinguished by the absence of retrospect. Enoch is the representative of this morning attitude of life. His eye is on the west — on
the glory of the evening sun; only, it is not contemplated as a settzng. The gates of the eastern Paradise have closed behind him, but he turns not back to look at them. The rivers that issued from Eden are still beside him, but his gaze is not on these. He has forgotten yesterday, he has become oblivious of to-day; he is straining towards to-morrow. Enoch is the universal symbol of Man’s immortal hope. In the view of that old world, he is the man who escaped the sight of death. Examine your own hope of immortality in your most hopeful moments, and you will find that the experience you seek is the experience of Enoch. In your most vitalised hours your protest is not so much against annihilation as against the existence of death at all. What in such hours you wish to see is not merely a vision of something beyond the grave; it is a transfiguration of the grave itself. What you hope to find is, that death, as we understand it, has proved to be a delusion — that from the inside it has a totally different aspect from that which it presents to the outward eye. It is a very remarkable circumstance and has often struck me as not merely accidental, that the full-fledged hope of Christian Immortality has reproduced the primitive hope expressed in the translation of Enoch. ‘He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die,’ is the utterance in which Christ’s latest Gospel reveals the sense of Immortality. Is it not the same hope which centred round the personality of Enoch! It is not simply the solace that beyond the valley and the shadow there are mansions of abiding glory. It is the proclamation that for the spirit of Man the valley itself may be exalted and the shadow transfigured into asunbeam. The watchword of Christianity is the initial word of the Book of Genesis — ‘ Eternal Life ’ — not ‘life restored, not ‘life resuscitated,’ but ‘life eternal.’ There are many watchwords between; but the first is like the last. The initial note of immortality which is struck in the narrative of Enoch is the latest chord which vibrates in the teaching of the Son of Man.
I do not think we have sufficiently grasped the significance of this fact in relation to the hope of the Old Testament. We think of the Portrait of Enoch as a thing which has no national bearing. We think of it as the individual freak of a peculiar artist who tried to paint a future life which his nation did not believe in. On the contrary, I think the narrative of Enoch’s translation expresses the earliest conviction of the united Hebrew race. We have become so accustomed to believe in the late development of the Jewish faith in immortality, that we have come to look upon the narrative of Enoch as an excrescence. I hold, on the contrary, that the latest growth was the thing earliest planted, and that the belief in Eternal Life had its flower in the Gospel just because it had its root in the genesis of the Jewish commonwealth. For, be it observed that this earliest picture of immortality is the picture of Eternal Life. It is not resurrection; it is not even the awakening out of sleep. It is, in the strictest sense, immortality — undyingness. It is the record concerning a man whose animation was never suspended — not for an hour, not for a moment. It is the exhibition of one whose life on earth was so full of God that what we call death took for him the form of transition. That is what the large majority of Christian men and women among us actually hope for — that there may be a life within them whose continuity shall not be broken by the hand of Death. And what has its sublimest consummation in the Christian consciousness had its crude form in the Portrait of Enoch. That Portrait was God’s message of universal hope. Every man of the future aspired to be an Enoch. Every man strove to light a torch within his own soul which should not be put out by the gusts of the dark valley — a torch which should defy the power of the withering blast to extinguish and should forbid the damp of death to quell.
Do you doubt that such was the aspiration of the men who recorded the translation of Enoch. Look, then, at the earliest
Pictures in the Gallery. What is their prohe THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN
minent characteristic in relation to the hope of immortality? It is the effort to grasp Eternal Life, here and now. When I survey these Portraits, I can almost see the hand of the artist at work on the elaboration of the idea. I see one thought dominating the canvas — the perpetuation of that ideal which is expressed in the translation of Enoch. There is a perpetual attempt to resist the inroads of time, to keep the Portrait ever young. Nay, there is an inversion of the recognised order of life; the progress of each day is made a progress toward the morning. The men of the Pentateuch grow younger with the striking of the hours. Whenever their years are full, the inspired hand hastens to throw a mantle of youth around them. Their fullest blossom is in late autumn; their brightest glow is in old age; their lark’s song is at evening time. Abraham’s glory only begins where ordinary life is fading. Jacob becomes for the first time a poet when the shadows of age might well have chilled him. The dreams of Joseph’s youth become his certainties in the closing hour. Moses, whose manhood has run through a desert, beholds at the age of a hundred and twenty years a vision which the spirit of youth alone could see — the vision which belongs to an eye undimmed and a natural strength unabated. Now, what does all this mean? What but this, that the Picture of Enoch is no accident in the Hebrew annals. It is not something which occupies an eccentric position in the Gallery; it is a symbol of the earliest thought of the race which produced it. The idea expressed in the translation of Enoch, so far from being an eccentric idea, is the predominant thought of the Pentateuch and the latest sentiment of the Christian Evangel. The passion for Eternal Life is the first and the last passion of the Hebrew race. To live for ever, to see no corruption, to keep undimmed life’s pristine glow — that is the aspiration which feeds on the sight of Enoch, and that is the aspiration which permeates the morning and the evening of the Jewish day. The thought which kindles that morning and that evening is not the waking from the sleep of death; it is rather the hope that the soul will never sleep; it is the impulse of the spirit of Man to see its Promised Land before death, to meet God face to face in some period of the present world, and to have the life preserved by receiving a breath of the Eternal. The ideal of Enoch’s immortality is the spirit which pervades Genesis and the thought which inspires St. John. It illuminates the night of Bethel; it dispels the tears of Bethany. It is the Alpha and the Omega; it marks the beginning and the end.
And now the question occurs, Where lay this early hope of immortality? Each nation’s hope of immortality lies in the ideal of that nation; where the heart is, there will the treasure be. The Hindu’s hope lay in the mind’s power of thinking, the Roman’s in the hand’s power of acting, the Greek’s in the eye’s power of seeing. What was the Jew’s? A nation should reveal the ground of its hope at the very first, from the very dawn of its history. /wdah does. Here, on the threshold we have the germ of all her expectations and the secret of all her aspirings. Come and let us look at this early biographical notice. It is the summary of a life very brief, very uneventful, very prosaic — a life which to the outward eye would have revealed nothing but the commonplace. Whatever glory it has is within. Whatever claim to immortality it has is centred in the soul. The physical side presents nothing romantic, nothing brilliant, nothing which the world calls heroic. Thus briefly runs the record of its days: ‘And Enoch lived sixty and five years and begat Methuselah; and Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters; and all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years; and Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.’
Yet, brief as it is, this record is a biography — the description of a rounded life. Three times the curtain rises and falls. We see first an ordinary man — a life in no way distinguished
from his contemporaries — engrossed in family cares and engaged in secular pursuits. At the end of sixty-five years he has done nothing to mark him out from his fellows. Suddenly there comes a change — drastic, complete, revolutionary. Up to the birth of his son Methuselah he has merely ‘lived;’ he now begins to ‘walk with God.’ He makes a mysterious transition — a transition from the vegetative to the vital. How it comes, we know not. The dramas of the Bible are all internal; they are acted in the secret places of the soul. There may or there may not have been an outward catastrophe. There are lives which are transformed from vegetation into vitality by no visible hand; not every Saul of Tarsus needs a physical light to transfigure him. In any case, it is the inward act that the Bible photographs. Very deliberately is this indicated here. The narrative declares that when Enoch began to walk with God it made no change in his outward environment. He had lived sixty-five years as a man of the world occupied with the cares of a household. When he changes mere ‘living’ into ‘ walking
ENOCH THE IMMORTAL ny)
with God, he goes over precisely the same geround — he is still occupied with the care of ‘sons and daughters.’ No outward eye could have detected any difference. Religion is not a change of space; it is a change of spirit. It is not a new road, but a new perception. It finds its earliest glory in retracing the old way. Enoch, in his vegetating days, has gone the round of certain household duties, has borne certain burdens which as a parent he was bound to bear. When he begins to walk with God he walks on the same path where he had vegetated. He repeats the old duties with a new light in his soul. He bears the old burdens with a new strength in his arm. He meets the old faces with a new love in his heart. He treads again the path which he trod yesterday; but yesterday he walked alone, to-day he walks with God.
And now, for a second time, the curtain falls. And, when it rises again, we have a third and distinctively unique scene. Enoch himself has disappeared; there is no trace of
him. But there are traces of all his contemporaries. We are standing in the midst of a vast cemetery. Around us are the graves of a world — that world in which Enoch lived and moved. Inscribed on each tombstone are the names of those who had stood by his side, of those who had preceded him, of those who had followed him. Adam is there — outside the gates of Eden. Abel is there — in the field of his martyrdom and of his glory. Seth is there — in a piece of hallowed ground. Enos is there — and beside his grave is the first place of public worship. Cainan is there — inheriting the only possession which his race was des- -tined to keep. Methuselah is there — reminding us that, however long, life comes to an end. But Enoch is zo¢ there. There is no grave for him. There is the place where a grave should have been, and there is a tablet above the spot; but on the tablet are inscribed the words, ‘He is not here; he is risen.’
That is the picture of the life of Enoch. What is its message of immortality? Why is this man represented as escaping death? It is
1 “Cainan’ #zeans ‘ possession.’
on the ground of holiness; it is because he ‘walked with God.’ Do you think that is an accidental connection of ideas? It is the key-note to all the subsequent teaching both of the Old Testament and of the New — the prelude to all the coming music. ‘He walked with God, and God took him,’ are words which never cease to echo through every corridor of Bible history. They ring through the Desert; they resound through the Tabernacle; they peal through the Temple; they sing through the Exile; they breathe through the songs of the Restoration; they vibrate through the Sermon on the Mount. From Enoch to Moses, from Moses to David, from David to the Son of David, there is one prevailing note of revelation, and its message is this: The connection between morality and immorality. If the Jew doubted a future life, it was because he doubted human goodness. It was not the sight of a dead body that made him a sceptic; it was the sight of a dead soul. ‘The soul that sinneth, z¢ shall die, was the thought at the very root of his being. That a man without holiness should see the Lord was to him an impossibility. To abide in God’s Tabernacle, there was required a man with clean hands and a pure heart, free from life’s vanity and uncorrupted by earth’s treachery. The problem of the Jew was, ‘Who shall dwell in everlasting burning!’ and by that he meant, not ‘Who shall dwell in the flames of hell!’ but ‘Who shall dwell in the flames of heaven!’ — ‘Who shall abide with the burning purity of God!’ That was with him the one question, the crucial question. Physical difficulties were nowhere; intellectual difficulties were nowhere; his one dread of death was his sense of the soul’s unpreparedness for meeting the holiness of God.
That great spectator of the Gallery — the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews — has an observation regarding the Portrait of Enoch which to my mind singularly illustrates the point we are considering. He says, ‘By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, for before his translation he had this testimony — that he pleased God.’ For a long
time these words conveyed to me an impression of artistic incongruity. The thing which vesthetically jarred on me was the latter clause. I: seemed an anti-climax. To say that Enoch was translated to an upper world was a tremendous statement — a statement which lifted the mind at once to the very top of the hill. But to add that previous to this mighty event he had the testimony of having pleased God — was not this a coming down from the hill! Was it not like saying, ‘The man got a sight of the sun; but before he got a sight of the sun he had a glimpse of the candle’! Surely the getting to heaven was the climax of all blessedness, and rendered superfluous any statement of previous and minor revelations to his soul! So I reasoned; and I reasoned wrongly. For the art was really on the side of the writer to the Hebrews. What I called an anti-climax was in truth a culmination, a completion of the whole story, a statement without which it would be zot complete. Let us consider why.
No Jew would have accepted the belief that translation to heaven would zzse/f be a boon. Paul says that if the last day of the world
F were come and those who remained alive were to be caught up without dying, they would have as much need to be changed as those w’io pass through the valley of the shadow. And is he not right! Is he not right apart from religion altogether — as a mere matter of common sense! If you were told that, by the influence of lightning or some other known or unknown physical agency, one of your friends had been suddenly carried up to the planet Jupiter, would you not feel on his account considerable discomfort? Assuredly; and for this reason, that you had no evidence of your friend having received a previous revelation from that planet. Everything would depend on that previous revelation, on that foregoing ‘testimony.’ It would not help your peace to know that Jupiter is a grander planet than the Earth, nor even to be told that its inhabitants enjoy a happiness to which the Earth is a stranger. The question for you would be, Was the happiness
of Jupiter in congruity with the dnd of the
Earth? Had there come to your friend, unknown to you and in the silence of the night,
ee ete intimation of the nature of that world to which he was going, indications of a kindred sympathy, messages that he would not find himself “an alien, revealings that there was a place in that planet prepared for him? Nothing but thts would satisfy the solicitude of your soul. Now, before you criticise the writer to the Hebrews, remember that the same thought was in A#zs mind. He had before him the picture of a man taken up bodily into heaven. He did not feel that this was by itself a boon. He wanted to know something more. Was the man fit for his new environment? Was there a congruity between him and his fresh surroundings? Would he find when transplanted a soil where he could grow? Could flesh and blood see the kingdom of God; could corruption inherit incorruption! Did not translation suggest such a query even more than death did! Death was at least a weeding out of much that corrupts — of the old body and the lusts thereof. But to be lifted into heaven wz/k the old body, to be taken up with the faded garment still hanging round him, to be ushered into the presence of God without losing those elements which had attracted to the earth — this was something which wakened the inquiry, ‘Who is sufficient for these things!’
Do you not see now how the statement of Enoch’s preliminary message comes as a climax. It supplies the one thing needed to suggest exaltation. It says that Enoch was not transplanted into /forezgn soil. It says that translation was preceded by revelation — that before going out into the new world he had a picture of that world in his mind. It tells us that the beginning of the process was not the approach of earth to heaven; it was the approach of heaven to earth. He did not first go to Eshcol to try the taste of the grapes; he had specimens of the fruit droughé to him — sent into his desert as a foretaste. And this foretaste was the climax of the glory; it made the glory, when it came, not wholly new. The whelly new cannot be the wholly beautiful. Before I am translated into any scene I must have a testimony concerning that scene. The fields of God may be adsolutely lovely; but I want them to be relatively lovely — lovely to me. To be that, they must speak to my past, to my yesterday, to my remembrance. In so far as their beauty transcends me, they will be to me zo¢ beautiful. If they would speak to my heart, they must vemznd me of something.
And I think this keynote of the Jewish message explains a fact which has puzzled all the historians of the land of Israel — her extreme reticence as to the future life. No man can say that this reticence was the result of ignorance. Her youth had been spent in the very soil where the thought of immortality grew luxuriant. Egypt was of all lands that which dreamed most of the life beyond; its whole interest was in a world to come. It was for this it raised its piles of architecture; it was for this it inaugurated its rites of worship; its very manual of religious devotion was entitled ‘The Book of the Dead.’ From this land of the Eternal Shadows, Judah came;
we should have expected her to have shared in these shadows. We should have thought that the religion of Israel would have been a constant call to prepare for a world to come. On the contrary, such a note is conspicuous by its absence. On every experience of earth the changes are rung; but there is a silence over Man’s futurity. The Jewish Psalmody is the richest of all music; but it lacks a chord which vibrates in lower harmonies — the message of a world beyond. Why? Do you think it can be accident? No; it must bea designed silence — silence for a reason. And what better reason can there be than the thought whose keynote was struck in the translation of Enoch! The Jew is reticent about the future because with him the solemnity lies in the present. His first meeting with God is not to be on the farther shore; it is demanded here and now. Eternal Life is with him not something which /ollows death; it is something which precedes death. His God is not beyond the grave, and therefore his immortality is not beyond the grave. Immortality without God would be his despair.
If he is to go into another world and not be a stranger, he must carry something over from thes world; and he can carry nothing but God. Therefore his one solemnity is the meeting with God now — under the oak of Mamre or on the hilltop of Moriah. ‘Prepare to meet thy God, O Israell’ are very solemn words of the Old Covenant; but the contemplated meeting was not in a scene beyond the tomb, but on the earthly side of the Valley of Death.
TOO need first the vision of Thyself, O
Lord! I would not taste of death until I have seen Zee! Even were I told that death was but translation, I would not taste it till I had seen Zee! No chariot of fire can bear me to glory unless the glory be already in my heart! In vain Thy crystal river shall sparkle if I have no eye for beauty! In vain Thy choristers shall sing if I have no ear for music! In vain Thy day shall be nightless if I have no thirst for knowledge! In vain Thy sea
shall be stormless if I have no wish for expansion! In vain Thy work shall be painless if I have no mission for my hands! In vain Thy city shall be gateless if there be no love imprisoned in my soul! Not to seek Thee in heaven would I come; come and seek me on earth! JI would be translated defore death; I would taste Thy grapes in my desert. Thy Life is zot beyond the grave; it is here, it is now. I can reach it without dying; I can breathe it without expiring. I need not the wings of a dove to find it; I require not an angel’s flight to lead me to its rest. I have heard men say, ‘Death 1s the gate of Life. Nay; Zhou art the gate, and Death is the shady avenue. Not on the other side would I see Thy face unveiled; meet me on Zhzs bank of the crystal river! Meet me in the mist and in the rain! Come to me in my cloud! Speak to me in my struggles! Wait for me at the ofenzng of the valley! Translate me into Thy presence ere I tread the narrow way! Send me the morning before
the evening! Show me heaven ere I die!
i ee me a