God. Is it possible to be otherwise? Who that has learned the elements of theology, or the simplest lessons of his Bible, does not know that the natural heart is enmity to God? The Bible does not tell us that we are born enemies to God; we might be so accidentally, but it tells us that the essence, the concentrated essence of enmity to God, is lodged in every man's heart, and that all the explosions of war, of envy, jealousy, malice, hatred, are but the buddings of the fruits, and the developments of the seminal enmity that is latent, dear reader, in your and in my human heart. If our hearts be enmity to God, then it is quite plain that we cannot walk with him, and rise upwards to one to whom we are not only enemies, but enmity. One asks of God, "How can two walk together except they be agreed?" Two friends can walk together, or two relatives, who are at one: but if they are not at one with each other, not merely in conviction, but in

heart, if the one hates the other, or totally differs from the other, they cannot walk together; their attempt would only add to their common misery. Before we can walk with God this heart that is enmity must be made love; the elements of hostility to God must be extracted from it by him who can change it. We may know whether we are walking with God, by introspection, if I may use the word; that is, by looking into our own hearts, and seeing and feeling what is there. If we cannot do this, we may judge by our outward life whether the inner life be an inspiration from God. In order to reconciliation with its Maker, the heart must not be merely patched up, but altogether changed. A Christian is not a man improved by civilization, learning, courtesy, refinement; but a new creature, - the creation of God, and not the manufacture of priest or pope. This is not a doubtful disputation, a conjecture of man, a problematical inference of a rash interpreter, but the clear and oft-repeated declaration of God's holy word. He says, "Except a man

be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;" "Uncircumcision availeth nothing; but a new creature ;" all things becoming in such a transformation new; we ourselves turning from darkness to light, loving what we once hated, and hating what we once loved. This is the shortest definition of the change. Unless this deep inner change take place, we cannot walk with God; and if we do not walk with God we are not in the way to heaven, or destined either to be transferred or translated. On the contrary, we are in the way that leads from heaven, "dead in trespasses and sins,” “walking after the course of this world," and approaching to the confines of that woe from which there can be no retreat or emancipation forever.

In order to walk with God, we must not only be reconciled and by faith united to him; but we must also have perfect, unwavering, or, if not perfect, growing confidence in God, as father and friend. I never could walk with a man with any measure of comfort of whom I had a silent suspicion that he would either kill me, or poison me, or lead me into a snare, if it should be in his power. I could not walk with one of whose designs I had constant suspicion. I would not consent to be the friend of a man who would betray me on the most convenient occasion, or cheat me on the first opportunity, or do me other mischief if he could only do so without the risk of exposure. With such a man I could not live, or walk, or have communion or converse of any sort. It is not otherwise in our relation to God. If I have suspicion of God, latent convictions that he is always waiting to catch me slipping, and then to destroy me; if I have a feeling that he really hates me, but is driven by a sort of constraining necessity to love me; if I have an idea that I must propitiate him by sufferings, and trials, and tears, and that by pleading what Christ has done I must make him thus love me, though he would otherwise hate me,- then I cannot walk with him.

Such ideas of God are so melancholy, and so unjust, and untrue, that I am not surprised that those who give them hospitality should say, Let there be no God. Such suspicions must be so dreadful, and so depressing, that the presence of Deity must be felt as an unspeakable calamity. Yet there is no sin of which real Christians are more commonly and more flagrantly guilty than that of having a constant suspicion of God, as if he were a hard-hearted taskmaster, ever waiting to destroy, and never waiting to make happy. It is all the reverse: God loved us, 'and Christ died as the consequence, not the cause, of that love. God asks that we would not walk with him as a maniac walks with his keeper, or as a slave walks with his master; but as a confiding child with a confiding and ever affectionate father, or approach as an unsuspecting babe nestles in the bosom of its dear and unsuspected mother. We are to walk with God, with perfect confidence in him, feeling that he sees us, that he knows us, and loves and studies our well-being, and is ever ever waiting and watching to make us happy; for if we are not happy, it is not because God is straitened, but because we are. But, you say, our sins- these are the causes of our suspicion of God. They ought not to be so our sins are our shame, and are just grounds for our suspecting ourselves, but, in the light of Christianity, no grounds for our wanting confidence in God. We are to go to him, not because we are sinners, but in spite of our being so; believing that the heaviest sin that weighs on our conscience is nevertheless not beyond the efficacy of what is revealed in the Bible, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." And it is most remarkable that this very apostle, and in this very epistle, though in other words, tells us that we can never walk with God in perfect fellowship unless we have a perfect realization of this great truth, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." John states,

ever

"These things write we unto you that your joy may be full. This, then, is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him,” that is, if we say that we walk with him, "and walk in darkness,"

we lie, and do not the truth; but, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." A happy walk is realized in proportion as this text is felt to be actual, "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." Let us, then, walk in perfect confidence with God. When the road seems dark, and the cloud hangs lowering, and thorns and thistles and sharp flints are in the way, with enemies before us, and traitors on every side, yet let us have perfect confidence in God, that he will lead us through all, and make us more than conquerors in the midst of all; that a mother may forget the infant that she bore, but "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." "Behold I have graven thee on the palms of my hands;" "nothing shall separate us from the love of God, that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." I cannot enunciate this too freely, that the great demand of the Gospel is confidence in God—that the great feature of a Christian is confidence in God. Let us lay aside that suspicion which shrinks from him as a foe, and manifest more and more the confidence, the unsuspecting and joyous confidence, that glories in his presence, and never doubts his love, as that of a friend. What is faith? Simply trust. And what is trust? Real confidence or fides, confidence in God; taking his word just as it is. Believe his word; cleave to that blessed word; rejoice in that word as a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path; have confidence in all that its Author speaks there of himself, and concerning us.

Having thus confidence in God, let us walk and live under a perpetual sense of his presence. Thus it will be delightful

to us.

Thou, God, seest me," is a conviction that, if lodged in the heart of a man that hates God, must kindle an incipient hell within him; but "Thou, God, seest me," lodged in the heart of a believer, is the rich germ of heaven within: because the one's idea of God is that of a dread and terrible tyrant; and the other's idea of him is that of a loving, affectionate, promise-keeping father. The believer, therefore, walks under a constant sense of his presence, and enjoys it, not dreads it. He sees him in the counting-house as well as in the church, on the railway as well as on the hill of Zion. He sees and feels his presence in his going out and in his coming in. Every hill-top becomes to his purged eye a transfigured Tabor. Every day dawns on the Christian soft and solemn even as a Sabbath-day; every house looks sacred as a sanctuary; every thought becomes worship; and even his very business is part and parcel of his daily religion. When a Christian thus realizes God, and walks in confidence with him, he will taste the bitterest cup as preternaturally sweetened, and the roughest path will become smooth. He will eat the grapes of Canaan in the midst of his forty years' march through the desert, and he will see the sunlight of his Father's face, he once thought gone, how smiling through the darkest clouds. "Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound: they walk in the light of his countenance.”

The believer walks like Enoch with God, not only in the exercise of confidence in him, but also in obedience to all that he says. When a Christian wishes to know whether a thing be right, he does not ask, Will it be profitable? as we are often apt to do; or, will it be very popular? or, will it be very unpopular? or, will it please that great man, or propitiate this influential man? We have nothing to do with such inquiries at all; we have simply to pursue the path of principle, and we shall see its end peace. In speculating in matters of business, we may say, I will do this, because