e Christian system that
condemns man to everlasting destruction, but throws away the very and the
only part of it that takes off the burden and the curse.

It is not, then, a correct idea of Christ that we have, when we look upon
Him as unmixed complacency and unbalanced compassion. In all aspects,
He was a complex personage. He was God, and He was man. As God, He could
pronounce a blessing; and He could pronounce a curse, as none but God
can, or dare. As man, He was perfect; and into His perfection of feeling
and of character there entered those elements that fill a good being with
peace, and an evil one with woe. The Son of God exhibits goodness and
severity mingled and blended in perfect and majestic harmony; and that
man lacks sympathy with Jesus Christ who cannot, while feeling the purest
and most unselfish indignation towards the sinner's sin, at the same time
give up his own individual life, if need be, for the sinner's soul. The
two feelings are not only compatible in the same person, but necessarily
belong to a perfect being. Our Lord breathed out a prayer for His
murderers so fervent, and so full of pathos, that it will continue to
soften and melt the flinty human heart, to the end of time; and He also
poured out a denunciation of woes upon the Pharisees (Matt, xxiii.),
every syllable of which is dense enough with the wrath of God, to sink
the deserving objects of it "plumb down, ten thousand fathoms deep, to
bottomless perdition in adamantine chains and penal fire." The
utterances, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do: Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers! how can ye escape the damnation of
hell?" both fell from the same pure and gracious lips.

It is not surprising, therefore, that our Lord often appeals to the
principle of fear. He makes use of it in all its various forms,--from
that servile terror which is produced by the truth when the soul is
just waked up from its drowze in sin, to that filial fear which Solomon
affirms to be the beginning of wisdom.

The subject thus brought before our minds, by the inspired Word, has a
wide application to all ages and conditions of human life, and all
varieties of human character. We desire to direct attention to _the use
and value of religious fear, in the opening periods of human life_. There
are some special reasons why youth and early manhood should come
under the influence of this powerful feeling. "I write unto you young
men,"--says St. John,--