I own, beloved, that I greatly admire this fine expression of the mind of Christ in these earliest saints. They take the only way which the holiness of God could sanction. They are "partakers of _His_ holiness." The light they walked in was _God’s_; the holiness they partook of was _God’s_. 1 John i. 7; Heb. xii. 10. This is a peculiar thing. That light is not merely righteousness. It is the light of grace also. Yea, and the light of heavenly strangership in a polluted world. It is a light which reproves the course of this world, and makes manifest other principles and hopes altogether. There may be righteousness, and the watching and praying which escapes temptation; but there must be a walk according to these principles and hopes, to form a walk "in the light, as He is the light." These earliest believers beautifully shine there, I believe. They were not under law. They come between Adam and Moses. They had not precepts, as I have already shown. But they were in the light, as God is in the light. And if afterwards Abram did not need to be told to have his altar and his tent--if he needed no precept from the Lord how to order the marriage of his son, or how to answer the king of Sodom--so these saints of still earlier days understood the holiness of the call of God, and took their journey for a heavenly country at the bidding of the pollution of the earth. I own indeed, again, that I greatly admire this. It is the beauty of the Spirit’s workmanship in His elect vessels. All is His. "How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty!" They learn the word in spirit ere the voice of the Spirit uttered it--"Arise, depart, for this is not your rest; it is polluted." The details about these antediluvian believers are very scanty; but through it all there is this heavenly character. They do not supply history for the world; but they do supply instruction for the Church. This is heavenly. No spirit of burning or spirit of judgment had purged the blood of the earth, and they shrink instinctively from it. In the spirit of their minds they leave it. "What communion has light with darkness? what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness?" their conduct asks. Their _religion_ is that of separation from the world, and so are _their habits_. They call on the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord is the revelation He has been pleased to make of Himself. Immanuel, Jesus, "the Lord our righteousness," Jehovah, God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost--these are among His names graciously and gloriously published by Himself. And "to call on the name of the Lord" was service or worship of God in spirit and in truth.