Dost thou remember Enoch, the best of human kind, and too pure to continue long in this fallen world? Twenty-seven years ago, while he was yet in the flower of youth, having passed but three hundred and sixty-five of the days of the years of our pilgrimage on earth, he was suddenly called to walk with God on high. At an age when other young men employ their time in hunting the lion and the bear, or in the pursuits of the dance, the song, or the harp, to please the gay daughters of the land, or in attending the great school of Mehujael, to learn the art of the scribe or the knowledge of the elder, all his hours were given to the worship of the Almighty. To him alone, of all the sons of the west, did the angel descend on the beam of morn, or amid the dew of night. His visions from above were frequent, for he was highly favoured of God. He builded an altar of stone at Saphitz, and he spake the words of peace and hope to those who were sick of heart. The wise man, Peladah, who taught the wisdom of this world at the temple of Izdak, was heard by thousands, but Enoch by tens of thousands. He told us that the way of the wicked man was as the way of a fox among thick thorns, and the way of the just man like the way of the horse among the thin groves of beautiful willows that border the pleasant pastures on the eastern bank of Zegulah.

EPISTLE IV.

From the wine-press of Kaldu, upon the bank of the brook Sipham, the nineteenth day of the seventh new moon in the year of Creation, 1159.

UZAR, the son of Zaphnah, the son of Adam, to Metheg-karkulah, the son of Zivan, the son of Notphar, the son of Seth, the son of Adam. Health to the young friend of my soul.

Many days have I seen, but few have as yet fallen to thy lot. But ah! thou stripling of the hills of Gobar, how great have been the changes in the world, since thou didst first tend thy father's flocks in the vales of the south country of Habii. In the short time of one hundred and fifty years, we seem to have passed from a world of beauty, and order, and peace, and love, to a world of darkness, and confusion, and wo, and war. When thou didst first begin to know thy right hand from thy left, the countries of the east and the south, of the west and the north, were all in a state of peace and happiness. The traveller found a brother or a sister in every one whom he met upon his way. Some of the beauties of Eden were still to be seen from the top of the mountain of Debar. The cherubim still

spread their bright wings on the east of the garden, and the flaming sword of the LORD turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. Altars were erected upon the high hills and under the green trees, and sacrifices were offered to the LORD God alone, and not to idols, the work of men's hands. The elders of the people spake the words of truth and love, and exhorted the sons and daughters of men to praise God, and do justice to all mankind. The words of the patriarchs were as laws. Those who heard them remembered and obeyed them. When one departed from the rules and precepts of the elders, he was banished to the wilderness until he manifested repentance. Then there were neither temples nor prisons. God was worshipped at the altar or in the open field. Few were the transgressions of the laws of the elders, and sentences were pronounced upon the offenders before the people, when they were assembled at the feasts of the new

moons

Twice in each year, at the fourth and tenth new moons, the elders of the cities of the plains, and the elders of the villages of the mountains, assembled at the altar in the field of Jekuthiel, by the great stone of Laoch, to praise God, and commune with one another upon the changes proper to be made in the rules and laws for the government of the people, and the order of the sacrifices. Once in twenty-five

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years a new chief of the elders was chosen. Every ten years the chiefs of the cities and the heads of the villages were appointed by the voice of the greater number of the council of elders. When any chief or head of the people died, the chief of the elders named another to fill his place until the time of the meeting of the council. No one sought for offices or honours, but the elders elected those of good report for justice, and charity, and truth. They also elected the great high priest, who appointed all the inferiour priests, with the advice of a select number from the great council of elders. In the first days of the world, soon after Adam and Eve had been driven from the garden of Eden, it was impossible to appoint aged men to the offices of the priesthood. But in the year of the world 622, the year in which Enoch was born, it was decreed that the great high priest should be at least five hundred years old, and the inferiour priests four hundred and fifty. The laws have been changed since that time so as to require that the priests and chief elders should be men of much greater age. But the law was broken by the very elders who made it, when Iphedeiah died, to promote Enoch to the office of great high priest, when he was no more than two hundred and ninetynine years of age. Enoch, as thou knowest, was the most just man upon the face of the earth. But when the wise and good elders who make the laws

are the first to break them, canst thou wonder that so evil an example has been followed by the vain and the wicked?

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IN the year One Thousand and One, fourteen years after Enoch disappeared from the earth, and walked with God in Heaven, we beheld the great changes of which Enoch had prophesied. In the days of Enoch, men had multiplied on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them. The select band of youth, who had obtained the name of the Sons of God, by their pure lives, and their constant attendance upon the altars, and whom the elders had forbidden to marry, departed from the duties of their office and the commands of the elders, took them wives of the daughters of men, and in one hundred years their sons became giants, and corrupted themselves with the vanities of the world. As a punishment for the sins of their fathers and mothers, it pleased God that these sons of wickedness should grow unto three times the stature and