That acceptance with God must precede a walk with God is a thing so evident that it should not need a moment's insisting on. To walk with God, one must first be with Him; to be with Him, one must first have come to Him,-have sought Him out, and found Him; for, alas! naturally, with Him we are not. A breach has taken; place between God and His creatures; and in the far-off country in which man is, both what He is and that He is can be debated questions:" He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that seek Him out."

The way of acceptance, Abel has already declared to us. That way, as it alone meets the need of a truly convicted soul, so it discovers God to the soul. Henceforth, He is known, and as known, rejoiced in, loved, and worshiped. Henceforth, the world, once so dark and empty, is lighted, cheered, and peopled by His presence. Henceforth, our walk is to be characterized as a walk with God.

How marvelously does Scripture present in these three brief words the whole practical life of faith! Into how many volumes may they be-nay, have they been, expanded, without exhausting their significance! The moral character, the spirit, the power, the joy, the triumph, of such a life are all here indicated. Take any other feature, how utterly defective would it be! And this is the statement as to Enoch to which the apostle refers apparently as the " testimony that he pleased God." What indeed pleases the love that seeks us, so much as the heart's answer of practical delight in Him intimated in such a walk! Let us consider it in some main features, then, and the Lord give us an understanding heart! Enoch, translated that he should not see death,-Enoch, caught away before the flood in which the old world perished,- and of whom is recorded the first, far-off prediction of the coming of the Lord,-is surely, as many have seen, the type of that Church which, in contrast with Jewish saints as such, is not removed from the earth by death, but caught away alive "to meet the Lord in the air." To us who are expecting Him, therefore, Enoch should be an example, appealing to us in the strongest way. In his days, indeed, we read of but one Enoch. In ours, in the full brightness of a revelation such as has been vouchsafed to us, how many should there be!

And yet the first characteristic of a walk with God is that it is in a certain sense necessarily alone. On this it is needful continually to insist. It is that which passes in secret between the soul and God that gives it its character for Him, and measures, so to speak, what the life is. Faith, even in the midst of a crowd, individualizes-isolates us. On the "white stone" of approval the name written- the name by which He knows us,-speaks of some, thing secret between our souls and Him:" a new name written, which no man knoweth, save he who receiveth it." When His glory is revealed to us, it makes us in such sense His as He can share with no other. In the deepest exercises, the most ecstatic joys, we must be alone. And the path of faith is ever that in which His word comes to us alone. "What shall this man do?" if asked, as we are prone to ask it, as if it affected our own course in any wise, must be met by the rebuke of the Lord, as in the case of Peter:"What is that to thee? follow thou Me."

A walk with God of necessity means for us one only Master. In the presence of God, could there be even a second ? Every heart that knows it will say at once, Impossible! The yoke of discipleship, easy as indeed it is, is in this respect imperative:he that forsakes not all that he hath cannot be Christ's disciple. This implies a path not only individual, but at all costs individual; the maintenance of one will only, which we are responsible to learn, too, from Himself. How great a matter is this individuality, when in it is involved the whole question of Christ's authority over us,-of a true, divine path!

If the walk be with God, the moral character of it is of course guaranteed. By which, it surely is not meant that the assumption of being with God is to be allowed to justify whatever may seem inconsistent in it; but contrariwise, that unrighteousness and evil in the path negative its being of God necessarily. This should be too simple to need saying, yet in fact the application seems often strangely difficult to make. The first thing, before faith and love, which the apostle exhorts Timothy to follow, is "righteousness:" "Follow righteousness, faith, love." It is the first, and if you will, the lesser thing, but the only way by which the greater can be reached, and the road traveled by the pure in heart.

Righteousness levels the road ; faith determines its direction; love is faith's goal; for if it works by love, it is on that account toward love that it works. And let us remember, we do not know the road by the people who walk on it, but by its own characters; and the pure in heart, by their walking on the road.

Again, therefore, a walk with God determines our associations. How strangely significant is the inability of Christians often even to understand this! If one's walk is really with God, does it not necessarily follow that only those who walk with Him are to walk with us? Are we not otherwise seeking impiously to make Him walk with the evil that He hates? It is impossible. His own words are express:" Come out from among them, and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing, and "- thus, and not otherwise,-" I will receive you, and will be a Father to you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

These, then, are tests as to the walk with God. How many, alas! do they disqualify! yet who that knows the blessed One to whom we have been brought can think without astonishment and dismay of the people bought with the precious blood of Christ bartering the joy of communion for the world that cast Him out; and turning their dear-earned service into the enemy's advantage? "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider."

But "Enoch walked with God." Let us look a little more closely at what is implied in this, for as yet we have only looked at it from the outside, as it were, and seen more what attaches to it than what it is in itself.

In the first place, then, it means, relationship with a living Person.

Now, of relationship in the Christian sense Enoch knew nothing. He was one of those who, although children, had not yet the place of children. He had not the Spirit of adoption, could not cry, Abba, Father, knew not of the fullness of salvation now preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; and yet the word of God is express, he walked with God. Noah too is said to have walked with God ; and Abraham is called by God Himself His " friend." Enoch was in relationship with One who as a living Person walked with him. And God and he were agreed; for " how can two walk together, except they be agreed?" It is a great thing to be with God as one agreed with Him. Do we all who know redemption, and the child's place with God,-know yet much of what it is to walk thus with Him ?

For, therefore, this is not to cry, Abba, Father, to pray to Him and be heard, to receive from His blessed hand:all these there may be, and no walk with Him at all. It is quite another thing to walk from day to day as of one mind with Him, in known accord. This is a life of wonderful joy and power and dignity:to be at one with His interests upon the earth, and maintain them in practical devoted-ness of intelligent service. How many among Christians even can speak much from actual knowledge of such a life ? With a large number, salvation-nay, even their own salvation, is the important matter:a personal interest absorbs by far the greatest part of their attention. With how many, indeed, a steady pursuit of their own blessing is their avowed principle, which they suppose will suffice to justify any course of conduct! Spiritually, they do not imagine it to be what the apostle would reprove,-that they "seek their own, not the thirds of Jesus Christ."

How many, again, have no very distinct thought at all of any thing beyond what they feebly call their "duty;" in itself, no doubt, a word which embraces all that it is possible for any to do, and immensely more than any one ever does, for " When ye have done all," says the Lord, " say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it is our duty to do." And "if any one knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." We can never, then, by any possibility, get beyond duty, and the word is one full of power and sweetness, when it stands for the debt so impossible to cancel, so sweet ever to owe-to Him who has bought us for His own with the shedding of His precious blood. But in truth, how little it often stands for,-a cold, fancied measurement of the immeasurable, a pacifying of conscience with nothing very particularly wrong, where yet nothing either is right! It would surely be impossible to bring a walk with God under the idea merely of duty. Duty to walk with Him!

The first requisite of such a walk is surely that we appreciate it. Think of who it is that invites us to living companionship with Himself! Can a cold-hearted half-response suit the blessed Person who seeks us for Himself? If the answer on our part be not frank and sincere, must not all the vigor of the life be lost? What He wants is heart, not service,-He whom all things gladly serve!

And yet appreciation can only be shown in surrender of will and life to Him. We can walk with Him on no other terms than that He shall be master; and in this there is nothing dreadful, nothing but what, if indeed we know Him, we must know to be as good as it is necessary. "His commandments are not grievous." Do we need that to be argued out? The blessedness of eternity is stated in just such a brief sentence as that " God is all in all."And this is perfect order, holiness, happiness, all in one. Yet we look at the cross, and we shrink. Into what depths, we think, may it be His will to lead us. Marah lies with its bitter waters at the very entrance of a road which is all the way through the desert. True, but it was sweetened Marah; "and there He made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He proved them, and said, 'If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and wilt keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee.'"How sweet a promise that true obedience should be the way of blessing and of good; that as Marah did, things that seemed contrary should change into their opposites for them-bitter to sweet, and sorrow to joy!"And who is he that shall harm you," asks the apostle, if ye be followers of that which is good?"

He anticipates an objection here:" But and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye;" and," if ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye" Such sufferings he will not put down among sorrows. Would Paul have given a doleful account of the road h%traveled ? Those who look at it from outside may think it hard; but do we, any of us, ever think of pitying Paul? Do you pity Israel at sweetened Marah?

Suffer we shall, no doubt, for who can escape? The only question is, are we to suffer on the path with God, where suffering itself has its joy and fruit, or suffer for sin and without Him? Is it not strange indeed that for the child of God there should be a moment's hesitation ?

A walk with God means oneness of mind with Him. True, we have to be taught it; for naturally, His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. Yet how precious the lesson, day by day, to learn by fresh and wonderful discoveries the perfection of those ways and thoughts! To be taught of His Word and guided by His eye, while carried, too, in what grace, in the arms of His strength:" they go from strength to strength" therefore,-no wonder! Carried on to final victory, sure from the first; where dependence means, not discouragement, but rest.

How far-seeing an Enoch thus could be we know by the record which Jude gives us:"And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, ' The Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.' " How keen the eye of faith exercised by the iniquity around as it looks over the intervening centuries to that consummation for which still we wait! You may say, That was prophecy; but we should do wrong, nevertheless, to separate the prophetic office from the soul of the prophet. There might be a Balaam, no doubt, whom the wisdom of God might use for its own purposes:of such I do not speak. Elijah, the man of God, jealous, as he says to Him Himself, for Him, the man whose effectual fervent prayer availed much, though he were of like passions with ourselves, as James pointedly reminds us,-such is the model of the Lord's prophets. Of these it could be said, " Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets." How blessed the place of those who have chosen their path with God ever! For Enoch, it ended in heaven without seeing death; and so with Elijah. "By faith" says our passage in the Hebrews, "Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated Him:for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God." Surely it was not to the dispraise of others that they went to heaven by a very different road. It pleased God thus to give testimony to Enoch; to others in very varied ways:but it was a blessed end of a path as blessed, the seal upon a life upon which no shadow of death passes. Flow simple and beautiful,-a walk with God here, passing as without necessity of change into a walk with Him in joy forever. And we who wait for such a transition as was Enoch's, should we not make it our care to walk with Him now even as Enoch did? ( To be continued, D. V.)