ertain 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.

II. That brings me to the second point--viz., the mission of fear.

John uses a rare word in my text when he says 'fear hath torment.'
'Torment' does not convey the whole idea of the word. It means
suffering, but suffering for a purpose; suffering which is correction;
suffering which is disciplinary; suffering which is intended to lead to
something beyond itself. Fear, the apprehension of personal evil, has
the same function in the moral world as pain has in the physical. It is
a symptom of disease, and is intended to bid us look for the remedy and
the Physician. What is an alarm bell for but to rouse the sleepers, and
to hurry them to the refuge? And so this wholesome, manly dread of the
certain issue of discord with God is meant to do for us what the angels
did for Lot--to lay a mercifully violent hand on the shoulder of the
sleeper, and shake him into aroused wakefulness, and hasten him out of
Sodom, before the fire bursts through the ground, and is met by the fire
from above. The intention of fear is to lead to that which shall
annihilate it by taking away its cause.

There is nothing more ridiculous, nothing more likely to destroy a man,
than the indulgence in an idle fear which does nothing to prevent its
own fulfilment. Horses in a burning stable are so paralysed by dread
that they cannot stir, and get burnt to death. And for a man to be
afraid--as every one ought to be who is conscious of unforgiven sin--for
a man to be afraid and there an end, is absolute insanity. I fear; then
what do I do? Nothing. That is true about hosts of us.

What ought I to do? Let the dread direct me to its source, my own
sinfulness. Let the discovery of my own sinfulness direct me to its
remedy, the righteousne