Love Casting Out Fear

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment.”

“The fear of the Lord is clean,” says David, “enduring forever;’ yet here we learn that fear is cast out. Again it is said, “The fear of the Lord is strong confidence;” “be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long;” and “Happy is the man that feareth alway.” Surely, we may conclude, this is not the kind of fear which is to be cast out; but some other, which is neither profitable to us nor pleasing to God. And such a fear there undoubtedly is, as we shall presently see, when we turn our attention to the point more closely. All these commendatory expressions bestowed on Pear, relate to godly fear, which is only another name for

* New York, June. 1848.

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true religion. In the Old Testament, particularly, as you must have observed, piety is frequently named the Pear of the Lord; perhaps as frequently as in the New Testament it is named Love. Not that either is peculiar to these parts of Scripture respectively; but beyond a question, good men are oftenest spoken of in the Old Testament as fearing, and in the New Testament as loving. Indeed our blessed Creator chose to reveal himself in that earher day amidst more clouds, more through the smoke of altars, more in judgments, more from Sinai, more as the God of holiness and wrath; and to delay that more inviting radiance of his compassion, in which we are privileged to rejoice. Good men loved him then, and good men fear him now; but Old Testament love was much like fear, and New Testament fear is much like love. Abraham and Moses tremble while they draw near in fiHal belief; but John, while he reverences, rests upon the very bosom of his God. We may be assured, however, I repeat it, that the aweful reverence which was felt by patriarchs and prophets, and even by the seraphim who veil their faces, shall never be cast out, even by the perfect love of heaven. In this sense we cannot fear too much, and perfect fear of this kind does not cast out love, nor in the sHghtest degree impair it. We have therefore still to inquire what this fear is, which is mentioned in the text.

Looking attentively at the passage, in its connexion, the best key to sound exposition, you will perceive that this fear stands opposed to terror in the last day: v. 16, “herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.” Pear in the day of judgment, my unpardoned friend and brother, is a dreadful fear; a fear which you ought to consider; a fear which you ought to cast out; a fear which you are beginning to experience at times, and which may come upon you amidst your dying agonies. God deliver you and me from the fear of the Day of Judgment! You will further perceive that this fear stands opposed to peace of mind and all pleasure: “because fear hath torment.” The original word is used in only one other place of the New Testament, and means punishment. There maybe some allusion to future woe, or retributive pain; but we need not alter our text: the fear we are inquiring about hath torment. It is not a sluggish or a trifling, but a tormenting fear, which is to be cast out. This great and distressing apprehension therefore, which true love expels, is what we must for a little while submit to a thoughtful examination.

I. Fear, my brethren, even about minor things, is not a pleasing emotion. In all its forms and in every degree, it belongs to those states of soul which we would gladly avoid. Yet to be altogether without it is to be either far more, or far less than man. In our present condition it is necessary to fear. The passion would indeed be unreasonable, useless and absurd, if we were in no danger. But the truth is, we are in perpetual danger. Prom the moment that the babe asserts its vitahty by a first exclamation, till the closing gasp, we

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are in peril. The apprehension of evils is an instinct or constitutional propensity which we have in common with the lower tribes. By this we are enabled to shun a thousand evils into which we should otherwise fall to our destruction. It is temerity or foolhardiness not to fear. It is neither unreasonable nor unmanly to fear real danger. The child, the drunkard, the madman or the idiot, is exempt from apprehension, in circumstances where an Achilles or a WelHngton would feel the wholesome alarm. The pilot who should laugh at the dangers of a passage and go on rocks; the householder who should He still in a conflagration; or the traveller who should descend into an active volcano, might purchase the fame of fearlessness, but would die as the fool dieth. The unmanly dread is that which unfits for action, and which increases the danger. Still, the fears to which man is perpetually subject show that he is no longer in a perfect state. Fear, look at it as we may, is a shadow cast over the human path by sin. It tells of danger; and danger whispers of penalty. “Fear hath torment.”

Other emotions or passions carry some degree of pleasm-e: fear carries none. No man elects it. Every man would gladly be rid of it. To escape it is to avoid an enemy. Whatever may be the object dreaded, the emotion, even when salutary, is distressing. So far however from being salutary, in most instances, it is enfeebhng and disastrous. We fear a thousand enemies that never come in sight, and ten thousand that never had a being. We are ingeniously inventive in our fears; conjuring up phantoms, and adding to the apprehensions of to-day the wilder apprehensions of to-morrow; alarmed for ourselves, and alarmed for others; trembling while it is well with us, lest it should not abide so; and while it is ill with us, lest it should grow worse. Single instances of fear, constantly repeated, produce a fearing habit, till sometimes the wretched soul can do little else than fear. Such is the case of many, whose natural disposition this way is in* creased by misfortune, by disease, by age, by melancholy, by superstition, and by a sore and evil conscience. For this is the true ghost, that haunts the chamber and draws the curtain of the timorous.

Thus far we have viewed fear, as respecting the ordinary evils and threatenings of common life; its pains, losses, and disgraces. You, my hearers, best know, whether you have ever feared; what it was that you were afraid of; and what it was that gave pungency to the trial.

II. But there is one object which is more particularly formidable, and the very naming of which causes a chiQ of dread to run down your body; it also never fails to bring up some thought of sin and penalty. It is so terrible, that I seem to behold the entire human race, for six thousand years, at their utmost stretch of exertion flying from it; yet so certain, that of all these unnumbered tremblers only two are known to have escaped. Death is the king of terrors. Hence when

Jesus, death’s conqueror, subjects himself to the great enemy, this is one of the reasons given for that unparalleled submission, “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who, through fear of deaths were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” This is deliverance indeed; and from bondage. All other fears, short of eternity, are nothing to this. It has prompted men, in instances innumerable, to exertions which had been otherwise impossible. It is true of natural men, whoever said it, that “skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” Hence the power of religion shines resplendent, when men “hate their own lives;” “love not their lives unto the death;” and choose martyrdom for Christ’s sake. Even for worldly objects, however, men have been found willing to sacrifice life; but no motives have so remarkably taken away this dread of death, as Christian faith. The dread may be detected by you, in your own hearts, on a Kttle inspection.

III. All this, however, Christian brethren, fails to conduct us to the fuQ meaning of our text. This is not all the fear that is to be cast out; even including death, as we have just done; unless — O mark the words — we farther include that for which death is feared. Could we die as infants die: with no forebodings; with no accompanying tempter down the valley to the irrevocable gate; with no subsequent anguish; death would be reduced to the bare endurance of a bodily pang; often

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greater in appearance than reality, and not more than you or I perhaps have suffered ah-eady. You do not need me to inform you what “makes cowards of us all.” There is a reckoning after death. Were you ensured, in regard to that, your chief terrors would be quieted; and though for many lesser reasons you might indeed desire to live, yet, heaven being certain, you would feel instantly relieved from that mountain fear under which you are now crushed. Witness, O conscience, that our master-dread is of eternal retribution! What else is the meaning of our apostle, when he says, “Herein is. our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment!” Do not our fears run on before as if hastening to that day? and will they not in that day, from such as know not this boldness, extort cries, vain cries, for the protection of rocks and mountains? How vain a covert “from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb!”

It is remarkable how extensive has been the prevalence of such terrors among mankind. Account for it as we may, a large part of the human race have had them. Christianity does not cause them. They prevail where the name of Christ was never heard. They are cries from the deep, dark recesses of human nature, shuddering before the divine retributions. They come to us from the shades of ancient mythology, echoing the names of Rhadamanthus, Tartarus, and Phlegethon. They are repeated in the burnings, mutilations, selftortures, and human sacrifices of all generations. Pear of the wrath to come has reared its myriads of altars. Explain it as we may, the fact is undeniable. There is a profound sensibility on this subject, natural to mankind. We doubt not it is a principle left standing, even among heathen, as a stock on which to engraft the true religion. Could we know the whole reality, we should be amazed to learn how universal such apprehensions have been, even among the most barbarous nations.

Under the fuller light of revelation, we find great fears among men, in regard to their condition in the other world. So widely are these anxieties scattered, that a principal employment of false teachers is to do them away. Once convince a man that you possess a secret means of removing his fear of eternity, and you make him your friend. You have touched the point of exquisite sensibihty. Only reheve him there, and you have destroyed his chief enemy. Hence, just as men are daily the prey of empirics and charlatans in physic, from their thirst for dainty methods of cure, so they fall readily into the snares of deceivers in religion, jfrom their anxiety to be secure in conscience. Otherwise, how could we account for the large reception, by whole nations, of that stupendous imposture of sacerdotal absolution, the unction and the viaticum? as though any ceremonial whatever could reach the spirit or prepare it for judgment. Or how account for that other delusion, whereby people, with the very words of Christ in

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their hands, set up so-called churches, to persuade men that God means to break his word, and that the wicked shall escape all punishment. These and the like errors invite the souls of men, eager to escape from a dreadftd horror of judgment. You may readily convince yourself how much this has to do with your anxieties, if you will only imagine your hour of dying to have come; if you will only present to your view the bar of Christ; and if you will only calculate the amount of rehef, which would be afforded by the certainty of acceptance at his hands.

IV. These are indeed the chief manifestations of that which alarms us; but Fear has a wider domain and a more magnificent object. Even Death and Judgment, awful as they are, derive all their terrors from a greater fear: they are only expressions of the Wrath OF God. This wrath it is which is enkindled by our sin, and which like an infinite fire inflames the rage of Tophet. When we trace up our fears to their principle, we find them fixing on one august but dread object, — the Lord God Almighty, considered as a God of infinite holiness and infinite justice. “God is angry with the wicked, every day.” It is not more clearly revealed that there is a God, or that there is a Christ, than that the Justice of Jehovah goes forth toward the destruction of the guilty. Is it not so? Does not the voice within you, my hearers, testify to the justice of such fears? “If all in this assembly were to rise, one after another, in answer to the question. Art thou prepared to die? it is not likely that the majority would reply with that firmness which marks a thorough assurance. Vague hopes; inconsiderate confidence; at best unfounded reasons; these are what we should find in most. Over us all there hangs, from time to time, a heavy cloud, betokening the anger of God, and his infinite opposition to sin. We may not always have the object precisely before our thoughts, as a definite point in theology; but we are not at ease; we lack something to constitute peace; we feel that God is offended; we dare not meet him. And what is this, dear brethren, but the inward witness of conscience? Por what purpose has God placed this detective spy within us, but to give warning of this very thing? These apprehensions may vary, but they are in kind the same. What is all this but fear of God’s justice? Not, I beseech you to observe, that holy fear of God, with which we began, and which will abide in heaven; but the distress of a consciously sinful soul in God’s presence. Ah! it is the rankhng of this arrow, barbed and poisoned, deep and inextricable. Many a one there is, in Christian assembhes, who goes and comes for years, carrying this hidden wound in the bosom. More suffer thus than the world suspects. On this trouble, neighbour does not talk with neighbour. Often it is hidden from wife and children. Yet there it is, a wounded spirit; a conscience unreconciled with God. Under this head therefore we must include, in their infinite diversity, all the painful apprehensions which men have, through all their lives, in regard to their failures to please God, and their sense of his displeasure. These fears he in ambush to come upon us in chosen moments. They “bide their time.” Just as a malignant and perfidious enemy will sometimes wait tiU his victim is feeble, or sohtary, or in darkness, and then waylay him, dart upon him, and inflict the fatal blow; so these fears (which are in abeyance, and let a man alone in times of health and wealth, of youth and prosperity) gather around him when he is in illness, in despondency, in bereavement, in poverty, and in declining years. When you shall be in your chief worldly troubles, then I forewarn you, expect your chief spiritual troubles. If you have neglected God in your summer-days, look for assaults of your adversary when trials begin to thicken. Would to God, I could duly impress on men of business and of health, the ruinous game they are playing with their immortal souls, by procrastinating this grand settlement to days of debihty, pain and despondence; to days, alas! that may bring no opportunity of thought.

V. A clearer view of this fear would be obtained, if we could see it in one of its great critical moments, such as the time of conviction of sin. This is a crisis in the disease of fear. It is not different from all the rest; but now the apprehension has risen high, and receives that last drop which makes it run over the brim. God is the same; the danger is the same; it is the soul that is different. Its gaze is fixed inward on itself.

David’s word comes true, My sin is ever before me. All other thoughts are absorbed. Instead of this or that blemish, like a single drop of blood, behold! all has become one gory vision of crimson and scarlet! There is neither sleep nor nourishment. No sorrow is like this sorrow, where deep. You know not what you are preparing for yourself, by neglecting repentance. This is a condensation of many fears into one, before which the stoutest minds have been appalled. Now, the apprehension of God’s judgment rises to an acme, and the soul is in a paroxysm which it cannot long endure. If it continued, it might unsettle reason. But no authentic case is on record, or known to us, of any instance in which simple sorrow for sin, however poignant, has resulted in alienation of mind.

VI. By which we may be led to turn aside for a few moments to consider an injurious objection. We often hear it said that persons are driven to madness by thinking of their sins; or that religion has crazed them; and even in some instances that they have been urged to suicide. Now I dare not undertake to say how far a man who has obstinately rejected the offer of salvation may be left of God, even in this world: but after many opportunities of intimate acquaintance with cases of what is called religious melancholy, I can solemnly declare my absolute conviction, that the phrase, in its common acceptation, is used in misapprehension. Such melancholy is not religious, in any such sense as that it is caused by religion. It is undoubtedly true, that persons are found in a state of deep melancholy and even insanity, whose thoughts run perpetually on religion. It would be wonderful if it were otherwise. AU unsound minds seize on topics of high interest. Religion affords such topics. Just as the disturbed mind fixes on property, family connexions or ambition, so on religion. And this without its being true that religion, or even its abuses, caused the alienation. We have therefore known the same individual agonized to-day about the salvation of his soul, and to-morrow about remedies for his body; insanely in both cases. Yet neither religion nor medicine was chargeable with his aberration. The case of Cowper, the poet, has often been cited against us; but truly stated, it is wholly and powerfully on our side. There never was, indeed, a case more striking of what is called religious melancholy. The gloom was black; the fear was desperate. Yet, to charge this to religion, is grossly unphilosophical as well as unjust. Long before Cowper’s religious experience began, he evinced so marked a tendency to madness, that, as is well known, he made an attempt on his own life. When afterwards he attained to evangelical views of truth, he received from them his first balm and consolation. Prom religion he received nothing but good. If, afterwards, he relapsed into a sullen, impenetrable gloom, it is no more than is usual in such cases. To all sympathizing friends, instances of this kind are most trying; but they belong more to the physician than the pastor. Reasoning and instruction are for the most part thrown away on them. We must commit them to God, in the use of those physical and moral means which experience has shown to minister to a mind diseased. My apology for this digression must be the importance of right ideas on this grav6 subject, and the fact that its distresses usually take the form of exaggerated fear.*

VII. Let it never be forgotten, that much as we may boast of our reason, our mental discipline, and our self-control, there is nothing at times more beyond our command, than our own thoughts and passions. How much are we at the mercy of God, herein! Who has not known the time when he would have given half his worldly goods to be exempt from one importunate suggestion or harrowing image? Dreadful apprehensions of God’s anger, whether well or ill founded, are among the most intolerable of all our states of mind. The citadel itself is assaulted. The supporting power itself cries for support. “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear!” It affords a powerful argument against a life of sin, that the habits of mind engendered and fostered by such a life, are opposed to self-control, and promotive of self-afflicting cares and misgivings.

VIII. Taking the highest and most general view of our subject, the person supposed lives in slavish fear

* Upon tLis greatly abused topic, and on kindred distresses, I recommend a small but valuable treatise of my esteemed friend, the Rev. Joseph H. Jones, D. D.

OF God. Now what condition of a human soul can be thought of, more unnatural or more destructive than to live perpetually in panic with respect to its Creator, its Portion, its Savioiu”, than to hate the thought of the Greatest, Best, and Loveliest! What more hopeless, than to shrink with horror from the countenance that is always turned on us, and be impatient of the searching eye which we can never escape! This is what impenitent men are preparing for themselves in greater measure than they have yet experienced. Even now they sometimes shake with terror, or avoid it only by a violent force put upon the thoughts; but the great mystery of fear is yet to be revealed to them.

IX. Even children of grace, in their less favoured hours, in times of temptation, and sometimes at intervals, all their lives long, are troubled with doubts and terrors. They fear to die. They still more fear the Judgment. If on certain rare occasions, the darkness is broken, and the believer, trembling, says, “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee!” this twinkhng star, just above the horizon, soon sets, and all is obscurity. Ear be it from us to measure grace by sensible joys, or to say that doubting Christians have no faith. Much more true is it, that presumptuous, undoubting vaunters of their own cloudless skies and Pharisaic assurance are in danger of surprise and overthrow. We believe holy souls may be in fear; but we also believe that their fears have no part in their holiness. “There is no fear in love;” as our text declares. There is no happiness in fear, “because fear hath torment.” We should all endeavour to rise as speedily as possible out of this region of mists and clouds. A life which has to be largely spent in discussions of the question whether we are in the path or not, is every way inferior to a life of going forward in the way. The degrees of fear vary; but all “fear hath torment.” The head cannot be erect, as should be that of a king’s son. There cannot be the higher attainments in piety. The mpre generous and stimulating motives are absent. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Perpetual fearfulness is as bad in religion as in the world. It writes a signature of gloom on the countenance, which discredits religion and deters companions. Heroic Christianity, noble daring, championship for truth and humanity, call for liveher hopes and unwavering confidence. Hence all who profess to follow Christ, should listen with a wistful expectation to every proposal of means for casting out this fear.

X. Before leaving this branch of the subject, let your minds dwell a little on the condition of those who are justly exposed to the perpetuity of these fears. Their conscience, if not seared, is a daily suggester of evil forebodings. They are wrong, and they know it. The thought of guilt is the thought of punishment. This servile dread, though weU-founded, has no virtue in it. Were it increased ever so much, it would only be more like the state of evil angels, who “beHeve and tremble.” Their anguish at God’s justice is mingled with no evangelical sorrow for sin: it does not make them love God any more. Nay, it is generally mixed with some repining and rebellion. It prompts the question, “Why hast thou made me thus?” It drives away from God, and thoughts of God. Let this continue, and it frequently issues in the most vehement opposition to divine things.

If, my dear hearer, you are conscious of no fihal attachment to God; if the thought of God gives you trouble, or exasperates the pang of conscience; if the law is terrible, and the Gospel a dead letter; if you still labour for the meat that perisheth, and still forsake your own mercies; then, of a truth, you need no preacher to tell you that “fear hath torment.” But this is a state which admits of degrees. You suffer more, it may be, than you once did. Who knows but you may go on to greater suffering? It will, indeed, be your own choosing of death rather than life; but the thing is possible. I have no promise from this book, to assure you that you shall not reap as you have sowed. There is nothing in philosophy or scripture to demonstrate that the fear of to-day may not ripen into the greater fear of to-morrow; or that the passions and torment of an evil nature here may not be carried forward and developed in another state. If death were the certain antidote of pain and fear, why then, my brethren, the suicide would be the wise man, and the Iscariot who went to his own place, only leaped more boldly and rapidly to that heaven, for which his brother apostles toiled through sorrows and blood. But no! you will be the same persons beyond death. What solemn object is that, which yonder rises out of the ocean, among mists, on the further side of dissolution! What throne and tribunal emerges from that expanse of indistinct futurity! “It is appointed unto men once to die... but after this ... the Judgment.” Are you athirst for salvation? Behold, it is ready for you, and you may drink “of the fountain of the water of life freely.” But take care how you flatter yourself, that as a matter of course all fear shall be left behind you when you die. “The fearful,” I say, “the fearful,” are specially noted. Rev. xxi. 8, with the unbelieving and the abominable, as having “their part in the lake of fire.” Pear is an ingredient in their cup. “Pear hath torment.”

AU which is presented to you, not to sink you in despair, but, on the contrary, to show you the gulf from which true religion stands ready to deliver you. K “fear hath torment,” which cannot be denied, yet “perfect love casteth out fear;” which is the second topic awaiting your consideration.

XI. That the Love here spoken of is love towards God, admits of no reasonable doubt. The whole context shows it. Immediately before, he has been mentioning fear — fear of God. Immediately after, he gives this ground of the love intended: “We love him, because he first loved us.” It is true, v. 20, in a following verse he speaks of love toward brethren; but he

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speaks of this as a consequence and evidence of love to God.

The Love of God in a large sense, is the whole of religion and the fulfilling of the law. All the second table results from the first. “Every one that loveth him that begat, loveth him that is begotten of him.” Love is a familiar passion. It is no part of our plan to treat of its varieties. No agent is more mighty. Among all nations, in all ages, it is an element of incalculable moment in the problems of history. It is the moral cement of the universe. Just so much order, harmony, and union are there in the world, as there is love. It is a self-manifesting principle. We Imow when we love. It is a Kvely, operative principle, breaking forth into acts, services, and sacrifices. This is true even of that common terrestrial love which exists between parents and children, friend and friend. It is the same affection in kind, when we rise towards God. The subject is the same; it is the same human spirit which loves. The object is varied; for it is God who is loved; and the degree admits of indefinite enlargement.

Yet, when we come to consider this holy passion of the soul, we must not fail to take into view one important trait of it, which is, that it ls,love toward a perfect and infinite Being. I fear this is not enough considered. There are peculiarities of all love towards a superior. The mother loves her babe; the good master his servant; the teacher his scholar; the guardian his ward; the commander his soldier. Brother and sister, husband and wife, companion and companion, between these there are strong affections; but they flow towards inferiors or equals. The regard for a superior is something different. Consider the love of one whose life has been saved by his Sovereign. Ascend a little towards the love of a disciple for his master; you are here only beginning, at an infinite remove, to tread the path upward to the love of God. Love toward one far above us is a love tempered with veneration and awe; and, as was said before, this kind of fear is not to be cast out. The soul bows and sinks, as wondering how it dares to love. The supreme excellence, which fixes the eve and fills the circuit of vision, and is known to fill the universal sphere of all vision of all united intel-Kgences, the Lord Almighty, fountain and sum of all glories and all beauties, is a sun too dazzhng to be gazed on with careless eye. Of all human affections, there is none more solemn. Words fail; often external acts of worship fail. When the prayer of God’s house is most lifted up, and the spirit of worshippers most attuned; when the chorus of the great congregation is fullest, and the swell of a multitude of voices most emulates the choir of heaven; even these expressions fail, and the loving heart is conscious of an emotion which rises and soars beyond them all, till it despairs of utterance, and sits down to say, “Come then, expressive silence, muse his praise! “The fearfulness of a soul flying to God in praise, is the trembling of a dove that closes its pinions to sink into the nest.” Return unto thy rest O my soul.’’ It is an awful sweetness; the cloud of jfrankincense amidst which the worshipper lifts the vail and enters into the holy-of-hohes. There is a perfect consistency between the reverence and the love. The greater the awe, the greater the happiness. Beyond a doubt, the hallowed stillness and adoring fear of heaven is more deep and awful than even the Joy of death.

What on earth is more solemn than a behever’s death? Yet what is naore joyful? The love, then, of a soul toward God, is a love of what is superior, yea, supreme. It finds its object at the utmost reach of its ascending faculties; it descries that object as infinite, and beholds it evermore transcendiag all limits of comprehension, and evermore flying from the approach of finite powers. The soul despairs of perfectly embracing; and yet it loves! Not one pang of this exquisite delight, this dread enjoyment, would it give away; though it knows that if God should withhold his sustaining hand, or open more fully the tide of influence into the frail vessel, the soul would fain die under it. It may be that some of those deep sleeps, mentioned in the Scriptures, were compassionately afforded as refuges for sinking nature, under the excess of divine manifestations. Such was the slumber on the mount of transfiguration. The love of God, as our infinite superior, has therefore a sacredness and a subHmity which fully redeem it from all the trivial belongings of natural affection. It is a love to all God’s perfections, so far as revealed; for, doubtless, God has mirevealed perfections, and fields of glory in the immensity of his nature, which no faculties of ours can comprehend; hues of beauty to which our sense is blind, and harmonies of wisdom and holiness to which our ear is deaf. But what is revealed is all the object of our love, and this love is the principal thing in religion. He that truly loves God is a redeemed soul and true Christian; he who loves him not, is yet in his sins.

XII. Some sincere persons have been much troubled because the text speaks of perfect love. They know that if they have any love whatever, it is far from being perfect; and that they have never seen evidence of sinless perfection in any; least of all, in those who claim it for themselves. How then can our fears, say they, ever be cast out? If we wait for sinless love, we must wait for heaven. Our love is so faint, so far from what it ought to be and from what our God deserves; so blemished by selfishness, pride, and passion; so interrupted by rival affections; so pulled down earthward by sloth and camahty; so overhung by unbelief; that never, never, even for a single hour, could we pretend to plead such affection as perfect love. Let me reply, for this is a hinderance which must be removed out of the way. The apostle does not say that every measure of sincere Christian love casts out every measure of fear. This were to condemn and strike from the list all doubting disciples; a proposal sometimes made by zealots and fanatics, but wMcli we have repudiated under a former head. There is not a man that liveth and sinneth not; there is not a loving soul that does not sometimes fear. And “he that feareth is not made perfect in love.’’ It is perfect love that casteth out all fear; every the least degree of it. Even then on the extreme supposition that the apostle means by this word a love that is iminterrupted and sinless, he asserts this, and this only, to wit, that love and fear are so opposed, that the perfect and absolute prevalence of one excludes the other; and further, that where the reign of love is complete, as we know, for example, it is in heaven, there is no fear; and still further, that in proportion to the increase of love will be the decrease of fear. The nearer you approach to perfect love, the nearer to perfect fearlessness, that is to heaven. This, I say, is the apostle’s meaning, even on the supposition, that by the word “perfect” he intends uninterrupted and absolute sinlessness.

But there is no need of understanding him to mean this. The word “perfect,” as none are so fuQy convinced as the most dihgent and learned students of the original, has several significations. It is appHed to Job, who sinned egregiously; and to any thorough Christian, as, 1 Cor. ii. 6; Phik iii. 15; Col. iv. 12. It is applied to that which is symmetrical, not wanting its essential parts, sincere and genuine, even though not sinless, and though not consummate in its degree. It unquestionably here points to a high attainment in religion; no common reach of experience; one of the summits in om* pilgrimage. And it is no ordinary fruit which is here propounded, the casting out of fear — of that fear which occupied our painful attention just now. If, brethren, you would be delivered from such an enemy, know ye, that it is by no every-day attainment in grace. It is a measure of attainable love which is held out to us as a sweet resting-place in the journey up these mountains; but we are not to be deterred from seeking it, by the assurance that angelic, heavenly, sinless perfection, is impracticable on earth. So much it seemed necessary to say, concerning this love as perfect. It is then the holy, sincere affection of a renewed soul towards God, so exalted by divine grace enlarging the experience, as to remove servile and tormenting dread.

XIII. Having now considered what this love is (the subject of the apostle’s proposition), let us consider its operation, i. e. how it casts out fear. 1. Perfect love casts out fear, because it is founded on just views of God. No unconverted person has just views of God. If he knew God, he would be saved. “This is eternal life, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” No person, under the anguish of an alienated mindji under pangs of conscience and dead works, under legal horrors, under self-condemning lashes of remorse, has just views of God. All slavish fear regards God in a distorted manner. It may not overrate his Justice or his Wrath, but it

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amazingly underrates his Mercy and his grace. “God is love;” and the sight of this is connected with all true believing. To see God, is to see his love. To see the Gospel, is to see its grace. It is believing. Faith is a reception of God’s character, as a God of infinite grace and mercy. Even true Christians, in those hours when they have servile fears and are tormented about their future destiny, are guilty of lapses in their faith; they cease to believe in some respects; they lose their hold in part on some divine truth; they look at their Redeemer under false lights; in a word, they have not just views of God.

Do not misunderstand me, as if I made love the source of faith. Some have so taught; but in so doing, have made a preposterous derangement of cause and effect. We freely own, that between the affections and the understanding, as also between love and faith, there is a reciprocity of action. He who loves most, will be most able and ready to believe. If any man do Christ’s will, he shall know of the doctrine. Right affections tend to clear vision. “The pure in heart shall see God.” This is undeniable; but this is not what we mean at present. Faith precedes love. We must perceive the amiable qualities of divinity before we love them. It is the order of nature and the order of grace. But when that regenerating word is spoken, whereby the dead soul awakes, and the blind soul is enHghtened, the same fiat that results in just views of God, results in love for those august glories which begin to expand before the enraptured vision.

Now, the very views of God’s character which produce eminent love, do at the same time remove fear. You once thought of God as a hard master, an austere judge, if not a tyrant. You trembled as the slave at the lash. You dared not come to God with any intimacy of approach, not even with fihal beseeching. You regarded religion as a hard service, however necessary for escaping from hell; and conversion as a repulsive humbhng process, which you would gladly put oiff as far as possible. You often tried to disabuse yourself of your early impressions respecting God, and to make him out such a one as yourself: as tolerant of sin and as regardless of his word. And, failing of this, you earnestly sought to flee from his presence. If sudden danger, or violent illness and possible death, came on you, how terrific and black were all your thoughts of God 1 You beheld in him every thing rather than the Friend and Father; and you were ready to quarrel with the system of doctrine which exalts his immaculate purity and inflexible justice; as if by your prejudices you could undo the reality of God’s attributes. Was not this the view you habitually took of God? It was totally false, grossly unjust to your Maker and Redeemer, perverse, absurd, and ungrateful. O, the blessed change, when grace opened your eyes! How you looked on God, as on a new discovery. How the familiar words, which tell of him in hymns and catechisms, seemed a fresh revelation. Now you wondered how you could ever have had doubts and misgivings about him who is the most Blessed and the most Loving. You charged your souls with the sin of having lived with your chief friend so long, as though he had been your chief enemy. New light has broken in on your ceU. You contemplate Jehovah as the infinitude of moral perfection; you are absorbed in the contemplation; and own that you were made capable of love in order that you might love such a being.

Now, my brethren, these are just views of God; though infinitely below the truth. And so beholding Jehovah, as containing in himself all that is entrancingly excellent, and all that is boundlessly benevolent, inefiably pure and great, and immeasurably communicative of happiness to his creatures, you found your love on a view, which at the very same time forbids you to fear. What place is left for servile fear? If any, it must be in some disbehef of such a character in God. Admitting this, you cannot but draw nigh. These aspects of the divine nature are attractive. They draw the soul in confidence. They command the affections in fihal repose. Nothing conceivable can so expel doubts and terrors as the true beholding of God as he is; and love and confidence are twin streams which perpetually mingle their waters.

2. Perfect love casts out fear, because it is founded on a belief of God’s love to us. Consider what is the reason of all our religious fears. Is it not that we apprehend that God does not love us? For if he really loves us, and intends our salvation, fear on this point is shut out; it were insane to fear. Only acquire the unwavering conviction that God regards you with compassionate kindness, and your dread of all consequences vanishes. Just in proportion as you credit this conceniing God, just in proportion as you know him to be on your side, will you be raised above fear. Now, my brethren, I pray you to perceive, for it is the main discovery of the New Testament, that the revelation which you need to banish your fear, is the very revelation which the Gospel was sent to make. The Gospel is none other than a declaration of God’s stupendous method of saving sinners. The belief of the Gospel is belief of this; it is belief that God is your friend. It is a looking out of the soul upon God as a God of love, giving himself to us as a Saviour. And it is this view of God and this belief of the Gospel which is the cause of that love which casteth out fear. Do you doubt this? Just call to mind those portions of your experience which coincide with the matter in hand. Recollect what change of views made a change of affections; what it was that melted you into love. Was it not your sudden apprehension of the truth that, notwithstanding all your sins, God loved you? Was it not your coming all at once to recognise the neglected truth, that even your greatest transgressions could not keep you from the enjoyment of God’s compassion, if you would but accept it in the Gospel? And is not this just what the apostle says? v. 14: “And we have seen and do testify, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” v. 16: “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us!^ Mark, my brethren, what it is that we have known and believed. “God is Love: and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” There is no fear in love. “We love him because he first loved us.” Here we have arrived at the sacred fount of love to God. It flows from a belief of God’s love to us. “We love him because he first loved us.” Some interpreters, I know, in order to hold up a metaphysical scheme of disinterested benevolence as the sole essence of virtue, would explain this verse to mean only that unless God had loved us first, we never should have loved him: they deny that our view of his love to us is a source of our love to him; they exclude all love of gratitude, as selfish. They might as well exclude all human nature, or all the gush of blood from these hearts. Every true convert, unspoiled by inventions of sophistry, feels the warm current of his soul going forth in love to God, for this very reason, and undert his very motive, that God has loved him. It is true, we love God for what he is in himself. But the greatest, most intelligible, and most afiecting view of what God is in himself, is the view of tohat he is to us, of his unspeakable love in redemption. And no man ever so loves as when he beholds this love of God to himself most clearly. Brethren, it would be unpardonable in me not to

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say, that the highest demonstration of this divine pity is in the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ. “The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” It is therefore at the foot of the cross that our love is most awakened, and that our hearts are melted by the blood of Jesus. For the same reason, it is at this cross that our fears are most removed. Faith, hope and love mingle their tribute just here. Terror cannot abide where the Son of the Highest is seen dying for our sins. All the unworthy fears of awakened sinners arise from their keeping away from the Cross. Bring your hearts hither, and your apprehensions will depart, like birds of night at the dawning.

3. Perfect love casts out fear, because it is of the very nature of love to promote confidence. The principle is familiar. Select your instances where you please, and you shall find this gentle, generous passion always trustful. I have heard of jealousy as the ofispring of love; I never beHeved it. This foul spirit comes of pride, selfishness and envy. True love rests on the object beloved, with all the repose of certainty; even in human attachments. But when the soul flows forth towards infinite perfection and eternal love, it can no more suspect than it can hate. The same state of mind which looks to God with admiration and gratitude, looks to him with hope. Those fears, which we must entertain towards an enemy, or an untried friend, would be treacherous towards one who commands our supreme attachment. The more childlike your affection, the fuller your confidence. The child in the mother’s arms has its little heart poisoned by no misgivings as to the power or will of that mother to do it good. As little can the renewed soul, while in the exercise of love to God, harbour any slavish terrors. Let it ascend higher in its contemplations of divine excellence, and in the flight of its adventurous admiration; let it expatiate upon this ocean of magnificent beauty and awful grace; let it become so lost in the abundance of these attributes as to forget self altogether; let it surrender itself a captive, smitten by the celestial fascinations of immutable and endless Wisdom, Might, Piuity, Rectitude, Truth and Grace; let it enter into the bleeding chamber where these are all blended in the dying Immanuel; and here, where love is reigning, it will feel that Pear is cast out. Hope meanwhile spreads the untiring wing, and sets forth upon the eternal flight.

In these three ways, then, we observe love casting out fear; as founded on just views of God; as caused by belief of God’s love to us; and as, of its very nature, leading to confidence.

XIV. Now let us hasten towards our close by pressing this, as the grand import of the text: that the more love the less fear. If there is no love, then fear is dominant. If there is little love, there is great fear. If love is flickering and inconstant, there is perpetual iaterruption from doubt and terror. If love to God is gaining the upper hand, and even by many blows and hard conflicts coming to abide in love, then the habit of mis-

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giving and apprehension is broken, and, as we often observe, even in chambers of illness and old age, the expectation of heaven becomes in a measure constant. Does not all this reveal a certain line of direction, a tendency, a rising towards perfection? If the love could at any moment become sinless, and drop its last weight, how joyfully would the soul rise from the realm of doubt, and leave all fears forever behind it! Brethren,- it shall so rise! Presently this mortal shall put on immortality, and death be swallowed up in victory. Our imperfect views of God, even here, are the chief corrective of fears; but “when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” Then will be brought to pass the saying, that “perfect love casteth out fear.”

There is a practical direction of great importance to be derived from the doctrine which has occupied so unusual a portion of our thoughts this day. If you desire to be rid of those fears which vex and disturb you, seek to abound in the love of God. Give over those fruitless endeavom’s to calm your mind by perpetual probing of its wounds, and brooding over its corruptions. You knock at the wrong door, if you seek the cure of fears from law. The Law has no such office. The Law threatens wrath. The Law condemns and slays. The shortest and surest way to be bold even “in the day of judgment,” is to “dwell in love.” And where did the beloved disciple learn this love, but on the bosom of Jesus Christ? One irradiation of love.

like the roseate tints of evening sky, suffuses this whole epistle. These swan-lite notes befit the serene old age of such an apostle. His great argument even against the world is love. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.” “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his Only-Begotten Son into the world, that we might five through him.” iv. 9. The lesson is learnt of Christ; and Christ is apprehended by faith. All your doubtings will give way before just apprehensions of gospel grace. If you are still harassed, still in occasional darkness and tremor, it shows that you still entertain some erroneous views of Christ and his work. Ptirge out this leaven of the Pharisees. Come to the Redeemer for a whole salvation. Add no jot or tittle of your own. See the things that are freely given you of God. Love him that first loved you, and while you sink into his arms, and surrender all to him, with a joyful, absolute self-renunciation, let this confiding love swell and abound, till every figment of distrust shall be swept away. ‘For, against every challenge, in time or eternity, this may be your rejoinder: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; how shall he not, with him, also freely give us all things!”