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 before his eyes?  There are moments in the experience of the young, when all power of resistance seems to be taken away, by the very witchery and blandishment of the object.  He has no heart, and no nerve, to resist the beautiful siren.  And it is precisely in these emergencies in his experience,—­in these moments when this world comes up before him clothed in pomp and gold, and the other world is so entirely lost sight of, that it throws in upon him none of its solemn shadows and warnings,—­it is precisely now, when he is just upon the point of yielding to the mighty yet fascinating pressure, that he needs to feel an impression, bold and startling, from the wrath of God.  Nothing but the most active remedies will have any effect, in this tumult and uproar of the soul.  When the whole system is at fever-heat, and the voice of reason and conscience is drowned in the clamors of sense and earth, nothing can startle and stop but the trumpet of Sinai.[5]

It is in these severe experiences, which are more common to youth than they are to manhood, that we see the great value of the feeling and principle of fear.  It is, comparatively, in vain for a youth under the influence of strong temptations,—­and particularly when the surprise is sprung upon him,—­to ply himself with arguments drawn from the beauty of virtue, and the excellence of piety.  They are too ethereal for him, in his present mood.  Such arguments are for a calmer moment, and a more dispassionate hour.  His blood is now boiling, and those higher motives which would influence the saint, and would have some influence with him, if he were not in this critical condition, have little power to deter him from sin.  Let him therefore pass by the love of God, and betake himself to the anger of God, for safety.  Let him say to himself, in this moment when the forces of Satan, in alliance with the propensities of his own nature, are making an onset,—­when all other considerations are being swept away in the rush and whirlwind of his passions,—­let him coolly bethink himself and say:  “If I do this abominable thing which the soul of God hates, then God, the Holy and Immaculate, will burn my spotted soul in His pure eternal flame.”  For, there is great power, in what the Scriptures term “the terror of the Lord,” to destroy the edge of temptation.  “A wise man feareth and departeth from evil.”  Fear kills out the delight in sin.  Damocles cannot eat the banquet with any pleasure, so long 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