in heaven. Let the Saviour put our supplications into one censer; and be assured, my brethren, that after the dear and the much-loved scenery of this peaceful vale has disappeared from my eye, the people who live in it shall retain a warm and an ever-during place in my memory ;and this mortal body must be stretched on the bed of death, ere the heart which now animates it can resign its exercise of longing after you, and praying for you, that you may so receive Christ Jesus, and so walk in Him, and so hold fast the things you have gotten, and so prove that the labor I have had amongst you has not been in vain; that when the sound of the last trumpet awakens us, these eyes which are now bathed in tears may open upon a scene of eternal blessedness, and we, my brethren, whom the providence of God has withdrawn for a little while from one another, may on that day be found side by side at the right hand of the everlasting throne.

SERMON XVII.

[IN September, 1815, a series of sermons was preached in the Tron Church, Glasgow, on the text, Luke i. 74. One of them, devoted to the drawing out of the distinction between the fear of terror and the fear of reverence, was molded afterwards into the form in which it is presented in Dr. Chalmers' Works, vol. x. p. 195. The substance of the succeeding sermon is given in the discourse which follows.]

LUKE I. 74.

"That he would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear."

We have already spoken of that fear which has God for its direct and personal object, and regarding which the Bible appears to exhibit a set of contradictory passages that we have endeavored to reconcile. But there is another fear distinct from that which we entertain towards God as a person, though it stands connected with one of the fixed and irreversible ordinations of His government-even that by which the holiness of man in time is made indispensable to his happiness in eternity. This must be admitted by a Christian disciple, even after he, by the faith of the gospel, has entered into reconciliation with God, and so exchangedthe fear of terror for the fear of reverence. There is a host

of scriptural testimonies to the necessity of holiness, which no fair inquirer into the truth as it is in Jesus can possibly withstand; and indeed the very same faith in the general veracity of the Bible which leads to the assurance of an efficacy in the blood of Jesus to deliver from the punishment of sin, leads co-ordinately to the assurance that without deliverance also from the power of sin there is no meetness for heaven, and can be no entrance into the delight or the glory of its everlasting habitations. Now the fear is lest we should fall short of this heaven just by falling short

of this holiness-a fear which remains, and ought to remain with you, even after having accepted of Christ as your Saviour. "Let us therefore fear," says the apostle, "lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest any of you should seem to come short of it." He states before what the grounds were of such an apprehension. One of them is an evil heart-"Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God." Another of them is the insidious power of sin"Lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." And in support of this very lesson of heedfulness and fear he quotes in another place the instances of those who, after having performed to all appearance their great and initiatory act of reconciliation with God, fell away, and were destroyed of Him. They, he tells us, who were baptized unto Moses, and ate and drank of that spiritual Rock, that was Christ-even with those of them who suffered themselves to be overcome by temptation, God was not well-pleased, and overthrew them in the wilderness. And these things are written for our admonition-for in like manner still may we be overthrown; "wherefore," he concludes, "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."

Now the things which move us, and which should move us to fear, are the likelihoods of such a fall whereby we are surrounded. All nature and experience might well minister to our apprehensions upon this subject. Did we but think of our hearts, and of their constant and cleaving ungodliness-did we look back upon our history, and reflect how little it has been guided by the principle, or adorned by the fruits of new obedience-did we take account of our affections, and of their still abiding earthliness, so like unto that carnality wherewith the Bible has associated deathdid we even take account of our doings, according to which we shall either be received or rejected at the judgmentseat of Christ-did we but estimate aright our constitutional facilities to what is evil, our leaden, our lethargic apathy to what is good-did we make sound and true computation

of the strength of our enemies, the sinful tempers and passions and sensualities which are within, meeting at every turn their appropriate objects from without, and plied, most closely and urgently plied on all hands by the importunities of a besetting world-did we only take a just cognizance of these things, then by the very prevalence of sight and of sense over faith, we, if at all in earnest about the matter, must feel alarmed by the fearful chances of an arrest and an overthrow on that course of progressive holiness which is the alone way whereby we can make good our escape from the horrors of an undone eternity. Were we, in the language of Zacharias, wholly delivered from the hands of those enemies, then might we serve God without fear in righteousness and holiness before him all the days of our life; but just because all our life long we are encompassed by those enemies, the apostle Paul tells us to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling ;" and just because while we sojourn in the flesh they do continue to solicit and to annoy us, the apostle Peter tells us to "pass the time of our sojourning here in fear."

Now, it may help us to resolve this apparent contrariety if we compare two passages in the life of the last mentioned apostle, and from which we shall determine, I think, what the fear is which we ought to cast away, and what the fear which we ought to cherish and retain. Peter was, upon one occasion, asked by our Saviour to come to Him as He walked upon the sea. He obeyed; but no sooner did he venture himself upon the water than his heart gave way. He knew that he could not walk there in his own strength, and that unless buoyed up by a miraculous power he would sink to the bottom and perish. Now faith in the miraculous power of Him whom he had every reason to trust was the very thing which should have supported his intrepidity; but this faith he wanted, and so he was afraid, and drew this rebuke upon himself "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" Here Peter sinned in that he feared, because his was at this time a fear opposed to faith in the power and kindness of the Saviour.

VOL. VI.-M

Go now to another passage of his life-when he strongly asserted, in the hearing of his Master, that he never would deny Him-confident that though all the rest of the disciples should be baffled and give way, he would meet the coming temptation like a man, and that like a man he would conquer it. Now, on what ground did he feel a confidence so fearless? Did he calculate on strength from his Master to support him? No! had he rested his confidence on this he would not have disgraced himself; but he evidently spoke in the tone of a man who counted on his own strength-of a man conscious that within him there was a firmness of principle altogether competent of itself for the struggle that was approaching. It had been well if, looking to the power and promise of the Saviour, he had felt fearless; but all the fearlessness that he felt was on looking to himself and to the energy of his own purposes-and therefore it was that as in the former instance he sinned in having feared, so in the present instance he sinned in having not feared. Had he been more distrustful of himself, more aware of the inadequacy of his own strength to meet the coming trial and to conquer it, he would have feared, and feared on the right ground. Had this fear clothed him with humility, and caused him to transfer his dependence from himself unto the Saviour, he would have been courageous, and courageous on the right ground-and it were a confidence that would not have been put to shame, for then would he have been in the way of the promise-that the God who resisteth the proud giveth grace unto the humble.

The history of this apostle after the resurrection illustrates the matter still more. It is quite palpable that he then underwent a great moral transformation, and conducted himself with a decision and an energy before unknown to him-preaching the word with all boldness, and, with only one recorded exception, doing the whole work of an apostle in a way the most firm and unfaltering-insomuch that faithful to his dangerous commission, he kept by it in the face of imprisonments and persecutions, and at length closed an honorable life by the agonies of a painful martyrdom.