Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and NumbersMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Pentateuch -- Commentaries; Bible. Pentateuch -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Then there is another requisite. 'How can two walk together except they
be agreed?' 'He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to
walk even as He walked.' There is no union with God in such communion
possible, unless there be a union with Him by conformity of will and
submission of effort and aim to His commandments. Well, then, is that
life possible for us? Look at this instance before us. We know very
little about how much knowledge of God these people in old days had,
but, at all events, it was a great deal less than you and I have. Their
theology was very different from ours; their religion was absolutely
identical with ours. Their faith, which grasped the God revealed in
their creed, was the same as our faith, though the creed which their
faith grasped was only an outline sketch of yours and mine. But at all
times and in all generations, the element and essence of the religious
life has been the same-that is, the realising sense of the living
divine presence, the effort and aspiration after communion with Him,
and the quiet obedience and conformity of the practical life to His
will. And so we can reach out our hands across all the centuries to
this pre-Noachian, antediluvian patriarch, dim amongst the mists, and
feel that he too is our brother.
And he has set us the example that in all conditions of life, and under
the most unfavourable circumstances, it is possible to live in this
close touch with God. For in his time, not only was there, as I have
said, an incomplete and rudimentary knowledge of God, but in his time
the earth was filled with violence, and gigantic forms of evil are
represented as having dominated mankind. Amidst it all, the Titanic
pride, the godlessness, the scorn, the rudeness, and the violence,
amidst it all, this one 'white flower of a blameless life' managed to
find nutriment upon the dunghill, and to blossom fresh and fair there.
You and I cannot, whatever may be our hindrances in living a consistent
Christian life, have anything like the difficulties that this man had
and surmounted. For us all, whatever our conditions, such a life is
possible.
And then there is another lesson that he teaches us, viz. that such a
life is consistent with the completest discharge of all common duties.
The outline, as far as appearance was concerned, of this man's life was
the same as the outline of those of his ancestors and successors. They
are all described in the same terms. The formula is the same. Enoch
lived, Mahalaleel, and all the rest of the half-unpronounceable names,
they lived, they begat their heirs, and sons and daughters, and then
they died. And the same formula is used about this man. He walked with
God, but it was while treading the common path of secular life that he
did so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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