inistered
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
c