as the naked sword hangs by a single hair over his head. No one can
find much enjoyment in transgression, if his conscience is feeling the
action of God's holiness within it. And well would it be, if, in every
instance in which a youth is tempted to fling himself into the current of
sin that is flowing all around him, his moral sense might at that very
moment be filled with some of that terror, and some of that horror, which
breaks upon the damned in eternity. Well would it be, if the youth in the
moment of violent temptation could lay upon the emotion or the lust that
entices him, a distinct and red coal of hell-fire.[6] No injury would
result from the most terrible fear of God, provided it could always fall
upon the human soul in those moments of strong temptation, and of
surprisals, when all other motives fail to influence, and the human will
is carried headlong by the human passions. There may be a fear and a
terror that does harm, but man need be under no concern lest he
experience too much of this feeling, in his hours of weakness and
irresolution, in his youthful days of temptation and of dalliance. Let
him rather bless God that there is such an intense light, and such a pure
fire, in the Divine Essence, and seek to have his whole vitiated and
poisoned nature penetrated and purified by it. Have you never looked with
a steadfast gaze into a grate of burning anthracite, and noticed the
quiet intense glow of the heat, and how silently the fire throbs and
pulsates through the fuel, burning up everything that is inflammable,
and, making the whole mass as pure, and clean, and clear, as the element
of fire itself? Such is the effect of a contact of God's wrath with man's
sin; of the penetration of man's corruption by the wrath of the Lord.

IV. In the fourth place, the feeling and principle of fear ought to enter
into the experience of both youth and manhood, _because it relieves from
all other fear_. He who stands in awe of God can look down, from a very
great height, upon all other perturbation. When we have seen Him from
whose sight the heavens and the earth flee away, there is nothing, in
either the heavens or the earth, that can produce a single ripple upon
the surface of our souls. This is true, even of the unregenerate mind.
The fear in this instance is a servile one,--it is not filial and
affectionate,--and yet it serves to protect the subject of it from all
other feelings of this species, because it is greater th