THE spiritual course of some of the most devoted servants of God is described in the simple but suggestive record, that they walked with God. "Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him." Gen. v. 24. "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." Gen. vi. 9. The same expression is used, although with some variety of adaptation, in respect to the saints both of the Old and New Testaments. It will be interesting to trace out its full meaning, and learn from it the gracious condescension of Almighty God in coming down, as it were, to tread this earth with the children of men, and the close and spiritual character of that communion with their Heavenly Father to which they are invited. We need not take up the personal history of the two patriarchs who are specially said to have walked with God, excepting to remark that their lives supply evidence of the active energy and diffusive usefulness which characterises one who walks with God. Walking with God is not to desert the ordinary paths of life, to renounce the claims, the duties, and the anxieties of our social relations, for the abstractions of solitude; Enoch and Noah lived and worked amongst their fellow men; not shunning intercourse with them, but endeavouring to make that intercourse conducive to the Divine glory. In the cities and amongst the multitudes of the antediluvian world their voices were to be heard, announcing the message which had been entrusted to them of God. Enoch boldly declared to an infidel and godless people the coming of the Lord with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment upon all; and Noah built his ark and preached of righteousness for the warning and instruction of a later generation. Vol. 60.-No. 286. 5 B Here would seem to be instruction and encouragement for those whose lot is cast in these days amidst the busier scenes of human life, and especially for those who, like Enoch and Noah, have to preach for God, and labour for God, in our large cities and towns, where "ungodly deeds are ungodly committed, and hard speeches spoken against God by ungodly sinners." They may have to be instant in season and out of season, and yet walk with God. God has nowhere taught that the busy and contemplative, and the active and devotional life are to be cultivated apart the one from the other; they are found in their most perfect developements in combination. Not only in the tracings and outlines which we have of such lives as those of Enoch and Noah, but in the fuller details of the apostle's life, in which journeyings, and perils, and labours, and the care of all the churches, did not exclude fastings, and keeping under of the body, and prayer without ceasing, and the very highest degree of spiritual union and communion with God.* The same point stands out in the character of the Great Exemplar. After His busiest days, He rose a great while before day, for retirement and prayer, or spent the whole night in devotional converse with His Heavenly Father; so in the last stage of His life, the day was devoted to instruction in the temple, but at night Jesus refreshed His soul at the Mount of Olives.† In considering somewhat fully this walk with God as constituting the highest privilege and dignity of our earthly state, our attention is first directed to the NATURE of this walk. In what does it consist? what kind of life does that man lead, of whom the Holy Spirit, were He recording his character, would say,-He walks with God? Every phase of life has its marks and peculiarities; the student's life is marked by diligent pains and untiring effort in the pursuit of knowledge; the worldling's life is devoted to pleasure and personal enjoyment; the business man rises early and late takes rest, and eats the bread of carefulness in the prosecution of his schemes. We have no difficulty in classifying our fellow men by the characteristics which their daily lives present. They propose to themselves certain objects; in the pursuit of these their very existence centres. Now, we would be as real and practical in spiritual things as in earthly; a man proposes to himself to walk with God, what should we expect to be the nature of his course. The very term walking with God helps us to decide this. There must be, first, the realization of God's presence; we may think of an absent friend, or write to an absent friend, but we cannot walk with him unless he is present; he must be at our side, going out and coming in with * 1 Cor. xi. 23-28; 1 Cor. ix. 24-27; Gal. ii. 20; Phil. iii. 7—14. † Mark i. 21-25; Luke vi. 12, xxi. 37. us, sitting down and rising up with us. Now, in how many cases similar to those of Enoch and Noah is this view of the believer's privilege most precious. They lived in hard times, times of ease and prosperity, and worldly indulgence, and utter forgetfulness of God. They looked round in vain for one like minded with themselves, one with whom they might take sweet counsel, and walk to the House of God, and in the ways of God as friends; they found none such amongst their fellow men, but they found it in God. They realized God in nature, in providence, and in grace; they saw His works, they felt His presence. He was to them a God at hand and not afar off, filling heaven and earth with His glory and goodness. Herein is the very essence of the walk with God, to think of God, not only as manifested in majesty in the highest heavens, but here, actually dwelling in the hearts of His people by the Holy Spirit, "as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.", Another feature in this walk with God is the communication of God's mind and love. There is no satisfaction in walking with a dumb person; we can look back upon many a pleasant walk in our youth or later years, but the pleasure of such walks consisted in having a companion to our own taste. The sensualist would select one who could detail the indulgences. and excesses of a life of sin; the worldling, one who could depict the giddy round of gay and fashionable life; the literary man, one who could improve his mind and traverse with him the intricate and abstruse paths of science; without congenial converse the walk would be dull and irksome, for communion of thought and feeling gives life and reality to social interLet us apply this, then, to the believer's walk with God. God has graciously condescended to use this figure of His relation to His people, it is not for them to decline the privilege or forego the comfort herein implied. We may expect, then, that one of our chief enjoyments in this walk will be to listen to the thoughts, purposes, and depths of the Divine mind. These Enoch and Noah might derive from spiritual revelations, the saints of latter days from the written record of the Bible; in other words, he who seeks to walk closely with God will be a very diligent and prayerful student of His word; he will read it as though God therein was actually speaking to himself individually; at one time he will be raised to holy adoration, as the divine friend unfolds the mysteries of His own glory and attributes, proclaiming Himself, "the Almighty God, the Great I AM, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." At another time the discourse will be of man's lost and miserable estate course. the heart will be laid open and shown to be deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, so that none can know it, save He that searcheth the heart and trieth the reins. The believer would be confounded and dispirited did he not know that he who has thus conversed with him is one who heals as well as wounds, who binds up the broken-hearted, giving the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. God converses too with him who walks with Him of His purposes of grace and mercy in Christ Jesus to sinful man; revealing to him the mysteries of the covenant wellordered in all things and sure, and assuring him of his own individual interest therein. He sets forth the personal privileges of His people, their spirit of adoption, their peace and joy in believing, their lively hope; and He unfolds something of their future glory, when, seeing their Lord as He is, they shall be like Him, and have their place before the throne for ever and ever. Moreover, in à close walk with God the believer will be privileged to receive something in the way of special and confidential communication from God; not new revelations, but such a particular application by the Holy Spirit of the written word, as to make it a voice from God to the individual soul. A very faithful servant of Christ remarks:-"I had a somewhat remarkable instance of Divine guidance last Friday, in a private case of conscience, which had troubled me for some time. It was as if I had seen, with my bodily eyes, my own adorable Saviour pointing out the particular passage, and shedding a flood of light on the sacred page."* So Simeon found it, when, on one occasion, he was more than usually depressed by the contempt and persecution which he often had to bear; human companions shunned him, and he had literally to take his walk with God. He went forth with his Testament in his hand, and lifting up his heart in prayer that God would speak to him a word of comfort and encouragement, opening the book his eye rested on the words: "They found a man of Cyrene, Simon (or Simeon) by name; him they compelled to bear his cross." (Matt. xxvii. 32.) "When I read that," he remarks, “I exclaimed, Lord, lay it on me, lay it on me; I will gladly bear the cross for thy sake; and I henceforth bound persecution as a wreath of glory around my brow."+ There is no more mar vellous property of God's Word than its adaptation to the particular cases and necessities of man under every possible variety of state and circumstances. The contents of Holy Writ have been the common property of the church from generation to generation; its precepts and its promises stand recorded on each page of the holy volume; but the power of these sacred * Mission Scenes in Burmah, by Rev. J. Baillie, p. 287. + Simeon's Life, p. 676. truths is only fully realised, when the Holy Spirit so operates upon the individual mind as to enable it to comprehend the meaning, and feel the power, and receive the teaching of one passage or another with an appropriation which is as though God himself were speaking to the soul, for instruction, for guidance, for assurance, for comfort. A third point in this walk with God, is the expression of our own thoughts and feelings. This is an essential part of that communion and fellowship expressed by walking one with another. Such association implies interchange of thought; the confidential communication of the hindrances and difficulties which lie in our pathway in life; the relation of our plans and prospects, our hopes and fears, and all those other matters affecting our temporal or spiritual welfare which one feels it a relief to unbosom to a loving and kindred heart, with a view to counsel, assistance, and sympathy; especially if our friend be our superior in position, in intelligence, in wealth, or in influence, we then feel it to be a privilege to seek his advice, and to ask his help. These are the two definite forms which the expression of our feelings assumes in walking with God. We are ignorant and short-sighted, weak and irresolute, with little command even over ourselves, and no power to control the ever varying circumstances of this earthly state. Our Heavenly Friend is the Almighty God; how great the privilege, then, of being able to advise with Him upon every thing which concerns us. And this we have the fullest opportunity of doing. The Holy Scriptures, in one point of view, are the written and infallible advice and counsel which God has given to the children of men for their direction through the perplexing mazes of their earthly course. Hence the Psalmist speaks of the blessedness of "the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night."* And again: "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought thee: oh, let me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." In walking with God, then, the Bible will be carefully consulted with a special view to find therein the true standard of a holy life; the principles which should guide the servant of God in his intercourse with the world; the measure of honesty, and integrity, and truthfulness, which should characterize him in even the smallest matters no less than in those of greater comparative importance. Hence we find the analogous expressions of walking in the ways of |