Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Men of the Bible

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In such habitual fellowship there is constant growth in familiarity and intimacy. God becomes known more and more in the tenderness and considerateness of His love. He unfolds Himself to the soul of His friend in such love-compelling charm as that the believer is constrained to ever-growing reverence, gratitude, and devotion. The man is transfigured. His thoughts, motives, desires, actions, are all inspired by the Divine Mind and framed after a Divine Pattern. The limitations of human nature are relaxed, and the man expands into newness of life; he soars into heavenly places; he is charged with holy influences. "The trivial round, the common task," become _media_ to him, by which he can interpret and make known to all, the beauty of holiness as revealed to him by communion with God. It is a significant fact in the history of Enoch, that his piety shone brightest amid family surroundings. He was not an ascetic or an anchorite. He was a husband and a father. It is said that he "_walked with God after the birth of Methusaleh_." With what measure of fervour he served God before the coming of a child into his house, we are not told; but we are told that after that event "_he walked with God three hundred years_." Possibly he had not manifested special piety before. His children gathered round him, for we are told that after Methusaleh, he had "sons and daughters." But the blessing of children in no wise slackened his course of piety. Not infrequently, family cares and business responsibilities draw men's thoughts and desires from God; and many who in youth were ardent in religious exercises and unfailing in spiritual duties, in middle life and old age are found to be merely formalists in worship, and paralysed for useful work in the Church. The fine gold has become dim, through the fretting cares or the surging excitements of life. It is awful when such is the case, when the promise and interest of youth settles into impotence and rigidity, when the type which once had the die of thought fresh upon it is worn flat by overuse, or when the shell, once the home of life and bright with ocean's spray, lies with faded colour and emptied hollowness. This is melancholy, indeed, and many such wrecks of religious life are around us. But with Enoch, the increase of life's cares brought an access of fresh devotion. New gifts of Providence roused new feelings of gratitude, and he grappled himself the closer in attachment to the Giver of enlarged blessing. This is as it should be. Every gift of God should be a call to renewed praise and prayer, to a more perfect and joyous service. This record of Enoch's piety teaches that the highest spirituality of nature is not found in avoiding the duties and cares of life, or in seeking a cloistered and solitary existence. The piety of monkery is not the crown of living. It is neither an experience of healthy joy nor of abundant fruitfulness. The healthful influences of Christianity are immeasurably more beautiful when manifested in the joys of family and home life, or in the discharge of honest trade and commerce, than in the introspective gloom of the recluse, or the ceremonial round of the ascetic. It is remarkable that the record states that Enoch's walk with God lasted "_three hundred years after the birth of Methusaleh_." There was no break in his spiritual course; it was continuous growth and progress until the light of eventide deepened into the glory of heaven. II. "He pleased God." This is to win the highest prize of life. Not only because God is highest and noblest of beings, but also because His pleasure presupposes great moral and spiritual qualities, and unfolds itself in blessings of untold preciousness both in this life and that which is to come. The pleasure of the Lord is graduated to the intrinsic beauty or value possessed by the object which draws it out. It was manifested when the great creation stood in finished order before Him, and He pronounced it "only good." But of a higher kind is that pleasure said to be taken by Him in His only-begotten Son, in His people, and in His Church. Over these He rejoices with singing, as He rests in His love. Of such pleasure Enoch was the recipient, and it was bestowed upon him in a most signal and unique manner. Two especial qualities are indispensable to those with whom God is pleased. One is faith--"_Without faith it is impossible to please God_" (Heb. xi. 6). The other is uprightness--"_I know also, my God, that Thou hast pleasure in uprightness_" (1 Chron. xxix. 17). The former grace is the superlative and distinguishing feature of the people of God. It is indeed the foundation quality on which all others rest, and from which they spring. It is the broad separating act which marks the difference between the saint and the sinner. Without it man is in opposition to God. The Divine displeasure rests upon him, because absence of faith means want of confidence and want of sympathy. The unbeliever distrusts God, and has no fellow-feeling with Him or His ways. There is no more offensive feeling that can be shown by one being towards another than distrust. It irritates our sensibility; it arrays in opposition all the resentment of our nature. It is the parent of gloom, dissatisfaction, pessimism, and rebellion. It writes discontent on the brow, and bitterness on the heart. It is the fruitful parent of all ill in human nature. But faith pleases God. It draws the human and Divine into loving association. It leads the human to look to the Divine for counsel, to lean upon Him for help, to refer all things to His decision, to wait on Him for guidance in every step and enterprise in life. The faith of the patriarchs seems to have been characterised by entire simplicity and childlikeness. As manifested by Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, all of whom had the pleasure of the Lord resting on them in a pre-eminent degree, there was no stumbling or hesitancy. Some of them had their faith severely tried, but it came forth from the test victorious, as "gold tried in the fire." Therefore, if the command of God was hard, faith led to obedience; if the mystery of life was deep, faith drew them close to the Father; if the sense of sin and guilt was strong, faith never failed, but led them to look for the promised

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