spoke to Abraham: 'I am the Almighty God, walk _before_ Me and
be thou perfect.'

That suggests, as I suppose I do not need to point out, the idea not
only of communion, which the former phrase brought to our minds, but
that of the inspection of our conduct. 'As ever in the great
Taskmaster's eye,' says the stern Puritan poet, and although one may
object to that word 'Taskmaster,' yet the idea conveyed is the
correct expansion of the commandment given to Abraham. Observe how
'walk before Me' is dovetailed, as it were, between the revelation
'I am the Almighty God' and the injunction 'Be thou perfect.' The
realisation of that presence of the Almighty which is implied in the
expression 'Walk before Me,' the assurance that we are in His sight,
will lead straight to the fulfilment of the injunction that bears
upon the moral conduct. The same connection of thought underlies
Peter's injunction, 'Like as He ... is holy, so be ye holy in all
manner of conversation,' followed immediately as it is by, 'If ye
call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth'--as a
present estimate--'according to every mail's work, pass the time of
your sojourning here in fear'--that reverential awe which will lead
you to be 'holy even as I am holy.'

This thought that we are in that divine presence, and that there is
silently, but most really, a divine opinion being formed of us,
consolidated, as it were, moment by moment through our lives, is
only tolerable if we have been walking with God. If we are sure, by
the power of our communion with Him, of His loving heart as well as
of His righteous judgment, then we can spread ourselves out before
Him, as a woman will lay out her webs of cloth on the green grass
for the sun to blaze down upon them, and bleach the ingrained filth