Fear is a shrinking apprehension of evil as befalling us, from the
person or thing which we dread. My text brings us face to face with that
solemn thought that there are conditions of human nature, in which the
God who ought to be our dearest joy and most ardent desire becomes our
ghastliest dread. The root of such an unnatural perversion of all that a
creature ought to feel towards its loving Creator lies in the simple
consciousness of discordance between God and man, which is the shadow
cast over the heart by the fact of sin. God is righteous; God
righteously administers His universe. God enters into relations of
approval or disapproval with His responsible creature. Therefore there
lies, dormant for the most part, but present in every heart, and active
in the measure in which that heart is informed as to itself, the
slumbering, cold dread that between it and God things are _not_ as they
ought to be.
I believe, for my part, that such a dumb, dim consciousness of discord
attaches to all men, though it is often smothered, often ignored, and
often denied. But there it is; the snake hibernates, but it is coiled in
the heart all the same; and warmth will awake it. Then it lifts its
crested head, and shoots out its forked tongue, and venom passes into
the veins. A dread of God is the ghastliest thing in the world, the most
unnatural, but universal, unless expelled by perfect love.
Arising from that discomforting consciousness of discord there come,
likewise, other forms and objects of dread. For if I am out of harmony
with Him, what will be my fate in the midst of a universe administered
by Him, and in which all are His servants? Oh! I sometimes wonder how it
is that godless men front the facts of human life and do not go mad. For
here are we, naked, feeble, alone, plunged into a whirlpool, from the
awful vortices of which we cannot extricate ourselves. There foam and
swirl all manner of evils, some of them certain, some of them probable,
any of them possible, since we are at discord with Him who wields all
the forces of the universe, and wields them all with a righteous hand.
'The stars in their courses fight against' the man that does not fight
for God. Whilst all things serve the soul that serve Him, all are
embattled against the man that is against, or not for, God and His will.
Then there arises up another object of dread, which, in like manner,
derives all its power to terrify and to hurt from the fact of our
discordance with God; and that is 'the shadow feared of man,' that
stands shrouded by the path, and waits for each of us.
God; God's universe; God's messenger, Death--these are facts with which
we stand in relation, and if our relations with Him are out of gear,
then He and all of these are legitimate objects of dread to us.
But now there is something else that casts out fear than perfect love,
and that is--perfect levity. For it is the explanation of the fact that
so many of us know nothing of this fear of which I speak, and fancy that
I am exaggerating, or putting forward false views. There is a type of
man, and I have no doubt there are some of its representatives among my
hearers, who are below both fear and love as directed towards God; for
they never think about Him, or trouble their heads concerning either Him
or their relations to Him or anything that flows therefrom. It is a
strange faculty that we all have, of forgetting unwelcome thoughts and
shutting our eyes to the things that we do not want to see, like Nelson
when he puts the telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen, because he
would not obey the signal of recall. But surely it is an ignoble thing
that men should ignore or shuffle out of sight with inconsiderateness
the real facts of their condition, like boys whistling in a churchyard
to keep their spirits up, and saying, 'Who's afraid?' just because they
are so very much afraid. Ah, dear friends, do not rest until you face
the facts, and having faced them, have found the way to reverse them!
Surely, surely it is not worthy of men to turn away from anything so
certain as that between a sin-loving man and God there must exist such a
relation as will bring evil and sorrow to that man, as surely as God is
and he is. I beseech you, take to heart these things, and do not turn
away from them with a shake of your shoulders, and say, 'He is preaching
the narrow, old-fashioned doctrine of a religion of fear.' No! I am not.
But I am preaching this plain fact, that a man who is in discord with
God has reason to be afraid, and I come to you with the old exhortation
of the prophet, 'Be troubled, ye careless ones.' For there is nothing
more ignoble or irrational than security which is only made possible by
covering over unwelcome facts. 'Be troubled'; and let the trouble lead
you to the Refuge.