e skeptical Lucretius tells us that the divinities are the
creatures of man's fears, and would make us believe that all religion has
its ground in fright.[3] And do we not hear this theory repeated by the
modern unbeliever? What means this appeal to a universal, and an
unprincipled good-nature in the Supreme Being, and this rejection of
everything in Christianity that awakens misgivings and forebodings within
the sinful human soul? Why this opposition to the doctrine of an
absolute, and therefore endless punishment, unless it be that it awakens
a deep and permanent dread in the heart of guilty man?

Now, we are not of that number who believe that thoughtless and lethargic
man has been greatly damaged by his moral fears. It is the lack of a
bold and distinct impression from the solemn objects of another world,
and the utter absence of fear, that is ruining man from generation to
generation. If we were at liberty, and had the power, to induce into the
thousands and millions of our race who are running the rounds of sin and
vice, some one particular emotion that should be medicinal and salutary
to the soul, we would select that very one which our Lord had in view
when He said: "I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which
after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you,
Fear him." If we were at liberty, and had the power, we would
instantaneously stop these human souls that are crowding our avenues,
intent only upon pleasure and earth, and would fill them with the
emotions of the day of doom; we would deluge them with the fear of God,
that they might flee from their sins and the wrath to come.

But while we say this, we also concede that it is possible for the human
soul to be injured, by the undue exercise of this emotion. The bruised
reed may be broken, and the smoking flax may be quenched; and hence it is
the very function and office-work of the Blessed Comforter, to prevent
this. God's own children sometimes pass through a horror of great
darkness, like that which enveloped Abraham; and the unregenerate mind is
sometimes so overborne by its fears of death, judgment, and eternity,
that the entire experience becomes for a time morbid and confused. Yet,
even in this instance, the excess is better than the lack. We had better
travel this road to heaven, than none at all. It is better to enter into
the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into
hell-fire. When the sai