d knows
too well that--"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us."

But the Psalmist says likewise, "There is forgiveness with Thee,
therefore shall Thou be feared."

My friends, consider this; the key of the whole psalm; the gospel and
good news, for the sake of which the psalm has been preserved in Holy
Scripture, and handed down to us.

God is to be feared, because He is merciful. It is worth while to fear
Him, because He is merciful, and of great kindness, and hateth nothing
that He hath made; and willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that
he should turn from his wickedness and live.

Superstitious people, in all ages, heathens always, and sometimes, I am
sorry to say, Christians likewise, have had a very different reason, an
opposite reason, for fearing God.

They have said: Not--there is mercy: but there is anger with God:
therefore shall He be feared. They have said--We must fear God, because
He is wrathful, and terrible, and ready to punish; and is extreme to mark
what is done amiss, and willeth the death of a sinner: and therefore they
have not believed, when Holy Scripture told them, that God was love, and
that God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, and sent
Him to visit the world in great humility, that the world through Him
might be saved.

God has seemed to them only a proud, stern, and formidable being; a
condemning judge, and not a merciful Father; and therefore, when they
have found themselves in the deep of misery, they have cried out of it to
saints, angels, the Virgin Mary; or even to sun, moon, and stars, and all
the powers of nature; or even, again--what is more foolish still,--to
astrologers, wizards, mediums, and quacks of every shape and hue; to any
one and any thing, rather than to God.

But do not you do so, my friends. Fix it in your hearts and minds; and
fix it now, before you fall into the deep, as most are apt to do before
they die; lest, when the dark day comes, you have no time to learn in
adversity the lesson which you should have learnt in prosperity. Fix in
your hearts and minds the blessed Gospel and good news--"There is mercy
with Thee, O God; therefore shall Thou be feared." There is mercy with
Him, pity, tenderness, sympathy; a heart which can be touched with the
feeling of our infirmities; which knoweth what is in man; which despiseth
not the work of His own hands; which remembereth our weak frame, and
kn