as a present factor in all our lives, and an influencing motive in
everything that we do. If once we could bring before the eye of our
minds that great, blazing, white throne, and Him that sits upon it, we
should want nothing else to burn up the commonplaces of life, and to
flash its insignificance into splendour and awfulness. We should want
nothing else to lift us to a 'solemn scorn of ills,' and to deliver us
from the false sweetnesses and fading delights that grow on the low
levels of a sense-bound life! Brethren! our whole life would be
transformed and glorified, and we should be different men and women if
we ordered our ways as '_before the Lord our God_.' What meanness
could live when we knew that it was seen by those pure Eyes? How we
should be ashamed of ourselves, of our complaints, of our murmurings,
of our reluctance to do our duty, of our puerile regrets for vanished
blessings, and of all the low cares and desires that beset and spoil
our lives, if once this thought, 'before God,' were habitual with us,
and we walked in it as in an atmosphere!

Why is it not? and might it not be? and if it might not, ought it not
to be? And what are we to say to Him whom we profess to love as our
Supreme Good, if all the day long the thought of Him seldom comes into
our minds, and if any triviality, held near the eye, is large enough
and bright enough to shut Him out from our sight? With deep ethical
significance and accuracy was the command given to Abraham as the
sole, all-sufficient direction for both inward and outward life: 'Walk
before Me and (so) be thou perfect.' For indeed the full
realisation--adequate and constant and solid enough to be a motive--of
'Thou God seest me,' would be found to contain practical directions in
regard to all moral difficulties, and would unfailingly detect the
evil, howsoever wrapped up, and would carry in itself not only motive
but impulse, not only law but power to fulfil it. The Master's eye