II.  Now, a word, in the next place, as to the sadly incomplete reality, in much Christian experience, which contrasts with this possibility.

I am afraid that very, very few so-called Christian people habitually feel, as they might do, the depth and blessedness of this communion.  And sure I am that only a very small percentage of us have anything like the continuity of companionship which my text suggests as possible.  There may be, and therefore there should be, running unbroken through a Christian life one long, bright line of communion with God and happy inspiration from the sense of His presence with us.  Is it a line in my life, or is there but a dot here, and a dot there, and long breaks between?  The long, embarrassed pauses in a conversation between two who do not know much of, or care much for, each other are only too like what occurs in many professing Christians’ intercourse with God.  Their communion is like those time-worn inscriptions that archaeologists dig up, with a word clearly cut and then a great gap, and then a letter or two, and then another gap, and then a little bit more legible, and then the stone broken, and all the rest gone.  Did you ever read the meteorological reports in the newspapers and observe a record like this, ‘Twenty minutes’ sunshine out of a possible eight hours’?  Do you not think that such a state of affairs is a little like the experience of a great many Christian people in regard to their communion with God?  It is broken at the best, and imperfect at the completest, and shallow at the deepest.  O, dear brethren! rise to the height of your possibilities, and live as close to God as He lets you live, and nothing will much trouble you.

III.  And now, lastly, a word about the simple explanation of the failure to realise this continual presence.

‘Can two walk together except they be agreed?’ Certainly not.  Our fathers, in a sterner and more religious age than ours, used to be greatly troubled how to account for a state of Christian experience which they supposed to be due to God’s withdrawing of the sense of His presence from His children.  Whether there is any such withdrawal or not, I am quite certain that that is not the cause of the interrupted communion between God and the average Christian man.

I make all allowance for the ups and downs and changing moods which necessarily affect us in this present life, and I make all allowance, too, for the pressure of imperative duties and distracting cares which interfere with our communion, though, if we were as strong as we might be, they would not wile us away from, but drive us to, our Father in heaven.  But when all such allowances have been made, I come back to my text as the explanation of interrupted communion.  The two are not agreed; and that is why they are not walking together.  The consciousness of God’s presence with us is a very delicate thing.  It is like a very sensitive thermometer, which will