an all others,
and like Aaron's serpent swallows up the rest. If we must be liable to
fears,--and the transgressor always must be,--it is best that they should
all be concentrated in one single overmastering sentiment. Unity is ever
desirable; and even if the human soul were to be visited by none but the
servile forms of fear, it would be better that this should be the "terror
of the Lord." If, by having the fear of God before our eyes, we could
thereby be delivered from the fear of man, and all those apprehensions
which are connected with time and sense, would it not be wisdom to choose
it? We should then know that there was but one quarter from which our
peace could be assailed. This would lead us to look in that direction;
and, here upon earth, sinful man cannot look at God long, without coming
to terms and becoming reconciled with Him.

V. The fifth and last reason which we assign for cherishing the feeling
and principle of fear applies to youth, to manhood, and to old age,
alike: _The fear of God conducts to the love of God_. Our Lord does not
command us to fear "Him, who after he hath killed hath power to cast into
hell," because such a feeling as this is intrinsically desirable, and is
an ultimate end in itself. It is, in itself, undesirable, and it is only
a means to an end. By it, our torpid souls are to be awakened from their
torpor; our numbness and hardness of mind, in respect to spiritual
objects, is to be removed. We are never for a moment, to suppose that the
fear of perdition is set before us as a model and permanent form of
experience to be toiled after,--a positive virtue and grace intended to
be perpetuated through the whole future history of the soul. It is
employed only as an antecedent to a higher and a happier emotion; and
when the purpose for which it has been elicited has been answered, it
then disappears. "Perfect love casteth out fear; for fear hath torment,"
(1 John iv. 18.[7])

But, at the same time, we desire to direct attention to the fact that he
who has been exercised with this emotion, thoroughly and deeply, is
conducted by it into the higher and happier form of religious experience.
Religious fear and anxiety are the prelude to religious peace and joy.
These are the discords that prepare for the concords. He, who in the
Psalmist's phrase has known the power of the Divine anger, is visited
with the manifestation of the Divine love. The method in the
thirty-second psalm is the method of