[Footnote 1:  See, upon this whole subject of conscience as distinguished from will, and of amiable instincts as distinguished from holiness, the profound and discriminating views of EDWARDS:  The Nature of Virtue, Chapters v. vi. vii.]

[Footnote 2:  Compare, on this distinction, the AUTHOR’S’ Discourses and Essays, p. 284 sq.]

[Footnote 3:  The reader will recall the celebrated panegyric upon Christ by Rousseau.]

THE USE OF FEAR IN RELIGION.

PROVERBS ix. 10.—­“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  Luke xii. 4, 5.—­“And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.  But 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.”

The place which the feeling of fear ought to hold in the religious experience of mankind is variously assigned.  Theories of religion are continually passing from one extreme to another, according as they magnify or disparage this emotion.  Some theological schools are distinguished for their severity, and others for their sentimentalism.  Some doctrinal systems fail to grasp the mercy of God with as much vigor and energy as they do the Divine justice, while others melt down everything that is scriptural and self-consistent, and flow along vaguely in an inundation of unprincipled emotions and sensibilities.

The same fact meets us in the experience of the individual.  We either fear too much, or too little.  Having obtained glimpses of the Divine compassion, how prone is the human heart to become indolent and self-indulgent, and to relax something of that earnest effort with which it had begun to pluck out the offending right eye.  Or, having felt the power of the Divine anger; having obtained clear conceptions of the intense aversion of God towards moral evil; even the child of God sometimes lives under a cloud, because he does not dare to make a right use of this needed and salutary impression, and pass back to that confiding trust in the Divine pity which is his privilege and his birth-right, as one who has been sprinkled with atoning blood.

It is plain, from the texts of Scripture placed at the head of this discourse, that the feeling and principle of fear is a legitimate one.[1] In these words of God himself, we are taught that it is the font and origin of true wisdom, and are commanded to be inspired by it.  The Old Testament enjoins it, and the New Testament repeats and emphasizes the injunction; so that the total and united testimony of Revelation forbids a religion that is destitute of fear.