in these later days God Himself stepped across the broad gulf separating Him from our sinful race. In the person of His Son He came and walked visibly among us, inviting and winning our confidence, Himself setting the example of reconciliation. And this old earth cannot lose those blessed footprints, or the memory of that Divine Presence. The little company of those who walked with Jesus has grown into a great multitude which no man can number. It is not true that our earth has been growing faithless and godless since Enoch's day.

But if it were true, so far as it ever is true for any of us that our immediate surroundings in our own little world are those of worldliness and unbelief, or selfish money-making, or godless pleasureseeking, that cannot keep away from God anyone who holds Enoch's creed, "that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." It is our privilege to have His company, if we will go His way, if we will not go any way where He refuses to go with us.

that

We can have that company if we want it, if we want it most of all. And I believe, too, that after a while we may know that we have it; our Divine Companion will let us know from time to time that He walks beside us, that He is listening to us, that He is teaching us, that He is

pleased to have us walk beside Him. And how short the most tedious day would seem if we found ourselves in such company! And how easily we could reconcile ourselves to the vexatious privations and hardships of the journey if they did not trouble Him. Walking with God; walking back and forth with God; when we went out to our work in the morning, God going with us; and when we came back at even, God coming with us; that might be a daily occupation for you and me.

Will

"And he was not, for God took him." that hold true, too? You have known it true of some of God's saints. We never hear of the sudden departure of some peculiarly faithful Christian that these words do not occur to us. A moment ago, yesterday, last week, here they were beside us, bringing heaven nearer by their devout and heavenly spirit; they were worshipping with us, lifting up our feeble petitions on the wings of their stronger faith; and now they are not, because whatever the logic of reason may say, the logic of the heart gives this as the unquestionable conclusion-" they are not, because God has taken them."

But we must not restrict the comfort of this saying to such cases of sudden departure or immediate translation. Often God takes His servants down into the dividing valley by a more gradual

descent.

For some time past the man has not been found in his accustomed place of usefulness, yet God has not taken him, but for many days, or years, we watch his sufferings and the slow dissolution of his mortal frame. But how often we find those very sick-beds and chambers of weariness the Lord's chosen abiding-places. The patient sufferer testifies that he had hardly known how much it meant to walk with God till he had lost the power to walk at all. As the earthly tabernacle dissolves, we seem to see a little of what God has been building up behind it. The man was cast into this furnace of affliction bound and alone; but shading our eyes, we can see his soul loosed, and that Divine Companion walking with him in the fire like the Son of God. And when at last the time comes to say of him, "He is not," for him, too, we add with all confidence, "for God has taken him."

"Walking with God." But do we? It is a searching question for preacher and hearer. We often come up to God's house seeking Him, and He is to be found always in the place where two or three are gathered in His name. Every worshipper sometimes seems to feel the Divine Presence there. Shall we have the same company as we walk home again, and for the rest of the day, and the days following? Shall we have this testi

mony from those who know us best, and from Him who knows us altogether, that we please God, and spend our lives walking with Him, back and forth, day by day? That is the high privilege to which God has summoned His elect.

CHAPTER X

IT IS I MYSELF

We have been studying God's choice of men, a choice to service and to privilege. The privilege, as it is set forth in Scripture, is fellowship with Himself for time and for eternity. Our last chapter gave a representation of this privilege taken from the Old Testament. Our study shall now conclude in this chapter with a representation of the same privilege taken from the New Testament.

It is the interview of our Lord with His disciples after He was risen from the dead, as it is described in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth verses.

The disciples were troubled, terrified. They supposed that they had seen a spirit, or, as we should say, a ghost. Huddled together in that closed upper room, a sad and lonely company, mourning. for the dear Lord who had been put to death, all their hopes dying with Him, suddenly they saw in the midst of them an appearance like His form, and heard a sound like His voice; but they thought it was only a ghost, a shadow, a vanishing hallucination, and they cried out in fear. But He an