ich attend it in its forming period. And,
next to a deep and all-absorbing _love_ of God, there is nothing so well
adapted to protect against sudden surprisals, as a profound and definite
fear of God.

It is a great mistake, to suppose that apostate and corrupt beings like
ourselves can pass through all the temptations of this life unscathed,
while looking _solely_ at the pleasant aspects of the Divine Being, and
the winning forms of religious truth. We are not yet seraphs; and we
cannot always trust to our affectionateness, to carry us through a
violent attack of temptation. There are moments in the experience of the
Christian himself, when he is compelled to call in the _fear_ of God to
his aid, and to steady his infirm and wavering virtue by the recollection
that "the wages of sin is death." "By the fear of the Lord, men,"--and
Christian men too,--"depart from evil." It will not always be so. When
that which is perfect is come, perfect love shall cast out fear; but,
until the disciple of Christ reaches heaven, his religious experience
must be a somewhat complex one. A reasonable and well-defined
apprehensiveness must mix with his affectionateness, and deter him from
transgression, in those severe passages in his history when love is
languid and fails to draw him. Says an old English divine: "The fear of
God's judgments, or of the threatenings of God, is of much efficiency,
when some present temptation presseth upon us. When conscience and the
affections are divided; when conscience doth withdraw a man from sin,
and when his carnal affections draw him forth to it; then should the fear
of God come in. It is a holy design for a Christian, to counterbalance
the pleasures of sin with the terrors of it, and thus to cure the poison
of the viper by the flesh of the viper. Thus that admirable saint and
martyr, Bishop Hooper, when he came to die, one endeavored to dehort him
from death by this: O sir, consider that life is sweet and death is
bitter; presently he replied, Life to come is more sweet, and death to
come is more bitter, and so went to the stake and patiently endured the
fire. Thus, as a Christian may sometimes outweigh the pleasures of sin by
the consideration of the reward of God, so, sometimes, he may quench the
pleasures of sin by the consideration of the terrors of God."[4]

But much more is all this true, in the instance of the hot-blooded youth.
How shall he resist temptation, unless he has some _fear_ of God