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THE ANTEDILUVIANS

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 14, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 31, No. 18.

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THE ANTEDILUVIANS.

By D. H. LAMSON

In a recent issue of the Detroit Weekly Tribune was an extract from a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher on the above subject. The writer, often admitting the longevity to which those people attained, and their immense stature as compared with men of the present day, takes up the subject of their intellectual capacities, and argues that though well developed physically, they were mere pigmies in thought, great gawky, awkward creatures; in short, intellectual no-bodies, whose only object in life was to eat, drink, procreate and die, with scarcely an aspiring thought, or performing a single act worthy of record. Such is the history of our progenitors by a master mind of the present day; and how is this information obtained? No proof is offered, nothing but bare assertion. It is but vain imagination, self-laudation, striving to fulfill the prophecy of the Devil to our first parents, “Ye shall be as gods.” “Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased.”
Man was made in the image of God. He was pronounced, with all the rest of creation, very good. Gen. i, 27, 31. Lo! this only have I found, that God hath made man upright. Eccl. vii, 29. These are testimonies from the Lord, and from him to whom greater wisdom was given than any had attained to before, or any should obtain after. I Kings iii, 12. To be good, to be upright, is to be great, in the highest sense. To form such a character as this was the great object in life of holy men of old. They obtained the evidence, many of them, that their ways pleased God. Of them the apostle says, “The world was not worthy,” enumerating them from Abel down. Two of them at least were translated to Heaven, to be the companions of God, and Christ, and angels. Awkward creatures, forsooth! Great gawkies in Heaven! Yes, according to H. W. B., but not according to the Bible. Let God be true.
As to the peculiar smartness of the present age, its inventive genius, &c., a sufficient answer will be found in Eccl. i, 9; iii, 15; also Spir. Gifts, Vol. iv, chap. 41.
The hope of meeting these ancient worthies, together with the good of all ages, has ever been a joy to me, and should this hope ever be realized, I should expect to see men perfect in form and feature, lofty in stature, mighty in mind, fresh as it were from the hand of God. How far above Enoch and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in their own estimation, are the men of this generation? Too good, too wise, to be in their company. The latter may be found outside of the city of God. May you and I, dear reader, have a place with the former within its everlasting walls, for they will be there. Matt. iii, 2. Luke xiii, 28. D. H. LAMSON.