's responsibilities and the demands of duty, is to
fulfil the will of God and serve our generation. This rule refers to
man's religious and spiritual life. To walk onward and upward in the
highest things is to grow in excellence and grace.

As man is a social being, he must walk with someone in life. Perpetual
solitude dries up the springs of existence, and true manhood is
shrivelled up. Solitary confinement is the saddest and cruellest
punishment that can be inflicted by man on his fellow. The prisoner in
the Bastille, when his reason reeled through prolonged silence and
loneliness, was saved from mental collapse by the friendship of a rat;
and a similar story is told of an English prisoner, who, under similar
circumstances, found solace in the company of a pigeon. Man craves for
fellowship and friendship. Happiest is he who has the noblest
companion. God alone fills the deep craving of the heart for a
congenial and helpful presence, and Enoch "_walked with God_." The
words imply regular, unbroken, well-sustained communion with Him. With
a sublime and lofty aspiration Enoch had risen above shadows, idols,
and pretences, and with simple, manly faith had grasped the unseen
substance and reality, the personal God, the Father of us all.

This "_walking with God_" may be fairly inferred to have been carried
out in all the affairs of life. The statement has no exceptions in it.
Other saints have their failings and sins recorded with an admirable
candour, but we are left to conclude that this was a saint of pure life
and character. In tending his flocks and herds, in carrying out the
barter of the markets in the early world, in commanding his children
and ordering his household, in preaching righteousness and foretelling
judgment, the great law of his life was here, "_walking with God_."

When such unbroken intercourse with God is maintained, all duty and
labour have a new meaning, and are suffused with a new glory. Every
occupation or profession becomes a transparency by which divine truth
and purity are translated to the world. No man is then a menial or a
slave, but a free man, living in love and by love. He becomes an
evangel, who, by words of holiness and deeds of sacrifice, adorns the
doctrine of God and Christ in all things. Nothing is common, nothing
is unclean; all life is sanctified and beautiful; the man is a temple
consecrated by and for God alone.

In such habitual fellowship there is constant