most elementary thought which, like a great many other elementary
thoughts, is impotent because we believe it so utterly, that
wherever we are, we may have Him with us. It is the secret of
blessedness, of tranquillity, of power, of everything good and
noble.

'I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers
were,' said the Psalmist of old. If he had left out these two little
words, 'with Thee,' he would have been uttering a tragic complaint;
but when they come in, all that is painful, all that is solitary,
all that is transient, bitterly transient, in the long succession of
the generations that have passed across earth's scene, and have not
been kindred to it, is cleared away and changed into gladness. Never
mind, though you are a stranger, if you have that companion. Never
mind, though you are only a sojourner; if you have Him with you,
whatever passes He will not pass; and though we dwell here in a
system to which we do not belong, and its transiency and our
transiency bring with them many sorrows, when we can say, 'Lord!
Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations,' we are at
home, and that eternal home will never pass.

Enoch 'walked with God,' and, of course, 'God took him,' There was
nothing else for it, and there could be no other end, for a life of
communion with God here has in it the prophecy and the pledge of a
life of eternal union hereafter. So, then, 'practise the presence of
God.' An old mystic says: 'If I can tell how many times to-day I
have thought about God, I have not thought about Him often enough.'
Walk with Him by faith, by effort, by purity.

2. And now take the other aspect suggested by the other word God