The Patriarchs: Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.Bellett, J. G. (John Gifford)
Religion
The Patriarchs: Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.
Bellett, J. G. (John Gifford)
Bible -- Biography; Patriarchs (Bible)
And if the days and years did not measure it, nor signs announce it, did
the world, I ask, witness it? Or was it, though so glorious and great,
silent and secret?
The language of the apostle seems to give me my answer, and so does all
the analogy of Scripture. He "was not found, because God had translated
him." This sounds as though man had been a stranger to that glorious
hour. The world seems to have inquired and searched after him, like the
sons of the prophets after Elijah; but in vain. 2 Kings ii. 17; Heb. xi.
5. And this tells us that the translation had been a secret to man; for
they would not have searched, had they seen it.
All scriptural or divine analogy answers me in like manner. Glory, in
none of its forms or actions, is for the eye or ear of mere man.
Horses and chariots filled the mountain; but the prophet’s servant had
to get his eye opened ere he could see them. Daniel saw a glorious
stranger, and heard his voice as the voice of a multitude; but the men
who stood with him saw nothing--only a terror fell on them. The glory on
"the holy hill" shone only in the sight of Peter, James, and John,
though the brightness there at that moment (night as it was) might have
lighted up all the land; for the divine face "did shine as the sun."
Many bodies of saints arose, attendants on the Lord’s rising; but it was
only to some in the holy city they showed themselves. The heaven was
opened over the head of the martyr of Jesus, in the very midst of a
multitude; but the glory was seen only by him. Paul went to Paradise,
and Philip to Azotus; but no eye of man tracked either the flight or the
journey. And beyond all, when Jesus rose, and that, too, from a tomb of
hewn stone, and from amid a guard of wakeful soldiers, no ear or eye was
in the secret. It was a lie, that the keepers of the stone slept; but it
is a truth, that they saw no more of the resurrection than had they done
so. Silence and secrecy thus mark all these glorious transactions.
Visions, audiences, resurrections, flights, ascensions, the glory down
here, and the heaven opened up there, all these go on, and yet mere man
is a stranger to all. And the translation of Enoch takes company with
all these, I assuredly judge; and so, I further judge, will another
glorious hour soon to come, in which "they that are Christ’s" are _all_
to be interested.
I have now reached and closed the fifth chapter. The first part of the
Book of Genesis will be found to end here. For these chapters (i.-v.)
constitute a little volume.
I. This chapter opens the volume with the work of creation.
II. Creation being complete, the Lord, the Creator, takes His delight
in it; and in the midst of it, and over it, places the man whom He had
formed in His own image, with all endowments and possessions to make his
condition perfect.
III. Man, thus made perfect, being tried and overcome, we see the
_ruin_ which he wrought, and the _redemption_ which God provided.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account