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 growth in familiarity and intimacy.  God becomes known more and more in the tenderness and considerateness of His love.  He unfolds Himself to the soul of His friend in such love-compelling charm as that the believer is constrained to ever-growing reverence, gratitude, and devotion.  The man is transfigured.  His thoughts, motives, desires, actions, are all inspired by the Divine Mind and framed after a Divine Pattern.  The limitations of human nature are relaxed, and the man expands into newness of life; he soars into heavenly places; he is charged with holy influences.  “The trivial round, the common task,” become media to him, by which he can interpret and make known to all, the beauty of holiness as revealed to him by communion with God.