ove casteth out fear." There is no dread at the
coming of the parent or friend whom we truly love, unless, perchance, we
have offended him, and lack full faith that we have been forgiven and
reinstated in his favor and friendship.

So it is with God. If we are unwilling to meet Him, or filled with fear at
the approach of His coming, it seems of a certainty that our faith is at
fault. Why should we not wish to meet Him who has made us, who loves us,
who has washed away our sins with His own blood, who alone can comfort our
trembling souls and fill us with every good? Perhaps we have sinned and
betrayed our Maker many times and grievously in our lives, and the voices
of those sins are haunting us, and bidding us beware of the hour of death
and of the judgment that follows. Perhaps there is a lurking suspicion
that we have not been forgiven, a temptation that we are not sincere, a
feeling that our sins are too grave to be pardoned, a conviction that we
do not belong to the company of the elect. We may have notions, moreover,
altogether severe, of the nature of God and of His justice; we feel His
immensity and sanctity, we have heard so much of His ineffable beauty,
that, weighed down with a sense of our nothingness, of our poverty and
misery and sinfulness, we cannot but shudder at the thought of appearing
in His presence. These and similar terrors may take hold of us and fill us
with a dread of death; but is it not clear that, whatever their cause,
these fears are born of a lack of faith? We do not trust, as we ought, the
Shepherd that loves us, we are not convinced of His mercy and kindness, if
we do not believe with child-like confidence that He stands ready ever to
forgive and bless the least of His children that humbly and sincerely seek
Him, asking for the help they need. The severity of God toward sinners
endures only so long as they refuse to acknowledge their guilt. His
harshness with them, like that of Joseph with his brethren, is but love in
disguise; and as soon as they are brought to own their guilt, that which
before was the anger of God is swiftly turned into His love and mercy.
Christ did not come to destroy, but to save. He will not crush the broken
reed, nor extinguish the smoking flax.(77) "As a father hath compassion on
his children, so hath the Lord compassion on them that fear him; for he
knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust."(78)

But there is also the love of the world, which enslaves s