Our blessed Lord, when departing out of this world, saith to his disciples, _I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, there ye may be also_. And does not _Enoch_’s translation say as much, as if he had been sent again by God to say, _God has taken me from this world into heaven, to make it manifest to you, that where I am gone, there are ye to come also_. Behold here the adorable goodness of God to the first and succeeding ages of the world! These two great articles of faith, which are now the comfort of the Christian world, namely, victory over death, and ascension into heaven, had even then the utmost and most convincing proof given to them by God. The old world, from the first man, were all in a covenant of redemption.――Life and immortality was both by doctrine and example, made known to them, and nothing remained as a mystery or wisdom hidden in God, to be revealed in the last times, but that one thing which could not be manifested, till by its own actual existence it manifested itself, namely, the wonderful process of Christ in our fallen nature. By which process alone it was that all the faith, as well before as after Christ, had all its efficacy. Hence it is, that the faith and religion of the first world was in substance, the very Christian faith and Christian religion, one and the same way, and power of salvation; which oneness consists in this, that _Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever_, was the same mediator between God and man from the beginning of the world, one and the same power of life and salvation to murdered _Abel_, as to martyred _Stephen_. This faith from this original, was their peace with God thro’ Jesus Christ, the very same faith of which Christ saith, _He that believeth in me shall never die_. The same faith of which he again saith, _If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink; he that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water_. That this was the catholic, saving faith, common to all the ♦patriarchal ages, we are assured by the Spirit of God in the epistles to the _Corinthians_ and _Hebrews_, telling in express words, “They did all eat the same spiritual meat, did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.” ♦ “patriarchial” replaced with “patriarchal” Are we not told, that very same thing of the patriarchal generations, which Christ said to those that believed in him, that by eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, they have eternal life? In the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the _Hebrews_, the same spirit, speaking of the patriarchal ages, saith, “All these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were perswaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on earth,――who desired a better country, that is, an heavenly.”