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 salvation.  Day and night God’s hand is heavy upon the soul; the fear and sense of the Divine displeasure is passing through the conscience, like electric currents.  The moisture, the sweet dew of health and happiness, is turned into the drought of summer, by this preparatory process.  Then the soul acknowledges its sin, and its iniquity it hides no longer.  It confesses its transgressions unto the Lord,—­it justifies and approves of this wrath which it has felt,—­and He forgives the iniquity of its sin.

It is not a vain thing, therefore, to fear the Lord.  The emotion of which we have been discoursing, painful though it be, is remunerative.  There is something in the very experience of moral pain which brings us nigh to God.  When, for instance, in the hour of temptation, I discern God’s calm and holy eye bent upon me, and I wither beneath it, and resist the enticement because I fear to disobey, I am brought by this chapter in my experience into very close contact with my Maker.  There has been a vivid and personal transaction between us.  I have heard him say:  “If thou doest that wicked thing thou shalt surely die; refrain from doing it, and I will love thee and bless thee.”  This is the secret of the great and swift reaction which often takes place, in the sinner’s soul.  He moodily and obstinately fights against the Divine displeasure.