feel in our
deepest hearts that loneliness on earth before we walk with God.

If we are so walking, it is no piece of fanaticism to say that there
will be mutual communications. Do you not believe that God knows His way
into the spirits that He has endowed with conscious life? Do you not
believe that He speaks now to people as truly as He did to prophets and
Apostles of old? as truly; though the results of His speech to us of
to-day be not of the same authority for others as the words that He
spoke to a Paul or a John. The belief in God's communications as for
ever sounding in the depths of the Christian spirit does not at all
obliterate the distinction between the kind of inspiration which
produced the New Testament and that which is realised by all believing
and obedient souls. High above all our experience of hearing the words
of God in our hearts stands that of those holy men of old who heard
God's message whispered in their ears, that they might proclaim it on
the housetops to all the world through all generations. But though they
and we are on a different level, and God spoke to them for a different
purpose, He speaks in our spirits, if we will comply with the
conditions, as truly as He did in theirs. As really as it was ever true
that the Lord spoke to Abraham, or Isaiah, or Paul, it is true that He
now speaks to the man who walks with Him. Frank speech on both sides
beguiles many a weary mile, when lovers or friends foot it side by side;
and this pair of friends of whom our text speaks have mutual
intercourse. God speaks with His servant now, as of old, 'as a man
speaketh with his friend'; and we on our parts, if we are truly walking
with Him, shall feel it natural to speak frankly to God. As two friends
on the road will interchange remarks about trifles, and if they love
each other, the remarks about the trifles will be weighted with love, so
we can tell our smallest affairs to God; and if we have Him for our
Pilgrim-Companion, we do not need to lock up any troubles or concerns of
any sort, big or little, in our hearts, but may speak them all to our
Friend who goes with us.

The two _may_ walk together. That is the end of all religion. What are
creeds for? What are services and sacraments for? What is theology for?
What is Christ's redeeming act for? All culminate in this true, constant
fellowship between men and God. And unless, in some measure, that result
is arrived at in our cases, our religion, let it be