He heard the call nor stayed : " My Master, here am I ! " His work was there, and he went to do his work and die. Hope to the hopeless he bore, and the comfort that comforteth To the hearts of men who lay in the vale of the Shade of Death.
He has loved and worked for the lepers, it's now the four- teenth year, And the stroke has fallen at last, and the end it draweth
near ; He will love and work to the end, as surely the martyrs can Who follow the bleeding feet of the martyr Son of Man, The feet that fathom'd and scaled, or ever their rest was won, The awful abyss of love, and its heights that know the sun.
IIL
"Walk humbly with thy God."
Here we have a word which occurs nowhere else in the Bible. Translators have struggled with it. The earliest of them, the Greek translators of the Septuagint, render it " Prepare yourselves to walk with God." It seems to point, in the original, to that devotion of one's self to the purpose of knowing God which leads one to put everything else aside, to examine his own heart and life, to humble himself into a sense of his own ill desert which shall, as it were, empty his heart of all else, that God may come and dwell in it. It points to a private and personal discipline, and recalls the many other instances in the Bible where a man is spoken of as " dwelling in the secret place of the Most High," or entering into secret intercourse with his Maker.
1. Walking with God implies a personal faith in God. This is something more than a mere acknowledgment of God's exist- ence, for " the devils believe and tremble " ; it is something more
MICAH vi. 8 369
than a belief in an infinite power — it implies a faith in a personal God. A man cannot " walk with " the God of Pantheism or with the God of Deism. He may recognize the greatness of the latter, and have spiritual communion with the former, but he can only " walk with " the God of Theism — a personal, present God, who is the God of Christianity.
It is the peculiarity of the Bible that it makes God a person- ality, brings Him down into communion with men. Philosophy demonstrates and proves that there is a God by a slow logical process, and finally lifts us up on a great platform where we can take a telescopic view of the Almighty. Oriental mystic- ism meditates about God ; it stands afar off and gazes upon the effluence of His glory. The Bible gives us a sense of a personal relation to Him. It is full of it. The Psalms over- run with it, and that is the reason why they live for ever, and are read more than any other part of the Old Testament. They are all glowing with a sense of the personal presence of God. They make us feel that affection, wisdom, goodness are not abstractions, but qualities of a kindred personality. That is the peculiarity of the Bible. It makes God a kindred personality; He hears our prayers and consorts with our weakness. There is a personal God revealed in the Bible, with whom we may commune and walk. As we do, we become like Him, and we obtain, therefore, in our- selves the real springs and powers of all good feeling and all good action. The essence of religion is in walking humbly with God ; while we do this and when we do this we shall love mercy, we shall do justly.
T[ Personal Christianity is a communion of the soul with the living God through the mediation of Jesus Christ. Herein is really included all that belongs to the characteristic life of Christendom — revelation and faith, conversion and the comfort of forgiveness, the joy of faith and the service of love, lonely communion with God, and life in Christian fellowship. All this is only truly Christian when it is experienced as communion with the living God through the mediation of Christ. When we be- lieve in a man's personal Christianity we are convinced that he stands in that relation towards God in which all this takes place.1
2. Walking humbly with God implies not only a personal
1 W. Herrmann, The Communion of the Christian with God, 9. JER.-MAL. — 24
370 LIFE FOR GOD
faith in a personal God, but a personal faith in a personal God of infinite greatness, in the presence of whom humility must be shown. "We must " bow low " and become as little children in order to enter His Kingdom. Such a faith in God means obedience and love of God. We are to love and hate what He loves and hates, for only as they are agreed can two walk together. The nations that have this faith in God most fully will survive longest. "The people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits."
The Jew believed himself to be walking with God, and to be walking alone ; he claimed a light which the surrounding nations had not. His attitude towards the God with whom he walked was deeply humble — rather too humble ; he was afraid to commune with Him. But though he was too tremulous to enjoy his walk with God, he had great pride in the reputation of it. He wanted the surrounding nations to look at him as he passed by. He desired men to see that he had a peculiar privilege, that he was a marked man, a distinguished man. He wished those on the world's road to be aware that he was one out of the common — chosen, precious. His walk with God was not a state of pride, but it was a source of pride. He boasted of it; he displayed it. On the ground of it he separated himself from his kind. He dwelt apart from the nations. He recognized haughtily and at a distance the brotherhood of common men. He flourished in his hand that torch which gave him superior illumination, and he bade the outside multitude attend and admire. Such is the pride which Micah says pure religion must conquer.