These people would never have thought about God if it had not been for
the lions. When they did think of Him it was only to tremble before
Him. The reason for their trembling was that they did not know the
etiquette of His worship; that they thought of Him as having rights
over them because they had come into His territory, which He would
exact, or punish them for omitting. In a word, their notion of God was
that of a jealous, capricious tyrant, whose ways were inscrutable to
them, in whose territory they found themselves without their will, and
who needed to be propitiated if they would live in peace.
And this is the thought which is most operative in many minds, though
it is veiled in more seemly phrases, and which darkens and injures all
those on whom it lays hold. Need I spend time in showing you how,
point by point, this picture is a picture of many among us? How many
of you think of God when you are ill, and forget Him when you are
well? How many of you pour out a prayer when you are in trouble, and
forget all about Him and it when you are prosperous? How many of you
see God in your calamities and not in your joys? Why do people call
sudden deaths and the like the 'visitation of God'? How many of us are
like Italian sailors who burn candles and shriek out to the Madonna
when the storm catches them, and get drunk in the first wine-shop
which they come to when they land! Is not many a man's thought of God,
'I knew Thee that Thou wert an austere Man, and I was afraid'?
The popular religion is largely a religion of fear.
There is a fear which is right and noble. That is reverend, humble
adoration at the sight or thought of God's great perfections. Angels
veil their faces with their wings. Such awe has no thought of personal
consequences--is inseparable from all true knowledge of God; for all
greatness of character is perfected by love. Of such fear we are not
now speaking.
Terror of God is deep in men's hearts.
Fear is the apprehension of personal evil from some person or thing.
Now I believe that terror has its place in the human economy, and in
religion, as the sense of pain has. There is something in man's
relations to God to cause it.
The Bible sets forth 'the terror of the Lord,' that men may tremble
before Him. Moses said, 'I exceedingly fear and quake.' But that
terror is only right when it proceeds from a sense of God's holiness
and a consciousness of my own sinfulness. It is not right when it is a
mere dread of a hard tyrant. That terror is only right when it leads
to a joyful acceptance of God's revelation of His love in Christ.
Fear was never meant to be permanent, it is only the alarum-bell which
rings to wake up the soul that sleeps on when in mortal peril. And it
should pass into penitence, faith, joy in Jesus. 'We have access with
confidence by the faith of Him.' The brightness is great and awful,
but go nearer, as you can in Jesus, and lo! there is love in the
brightness. You see it all tender and sweet. A heart and a hand are
there, and from the midst of it the Father's voice speaks, and says,
'My son, give Me thine heart.'
The religion of fear is worthless. It produces no holiness, it does
nothing for a man, it does not bind him to God. He is none the
stronger for it. It paralyses so far as it does anything.
It is spasmodic and intermittent. It is impossible to keep it up, so
it comes in fits and starts. When the morning comes men laugh at their
terrors. It leads to wild endeavours to forget God--atheism--to
insensibility. He who begins by fearing when there was no need, ends
by not fearing when he ought.