PREFACE. THE following notices of Scripture Characters are republished in this shape, in compliance with the wishes of those to whose judgment the writer defers. In preparing them for the Cottager's Monthly Visitor, he availed himself of the aids that were within his reach, and he makes this general acknow. ledgment, that he may not be suspected of a desire to pass that for his own which he derived from others. SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. ENOCH. ENOCH was a man of fame, and a prophet", but he had qualities of a higher class than these; he was a man of extraordinary goodness and probity. He walked with God, Moses tells us; and St. Paul says of him, that he pleased God,-a beautiful expression, which contains the highest degree of praise. And his eminent piety was crowned with a privilege, which God has seldom grantednamely, an exemption from the law, which condemns to death the whole posterity of Adam. In each of the three great periods of the Church, there has been an instance of a man taken up into heaven in body and soul, in order to support the hopes conceived by all true believers of arriving at the same happiness. Enoch a Jude, ver. 14. B b Gen. v. 24. |