THE FEAR OF GOD. 
 
 ) 
 
 A. SERMON: 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 UNI T Y C II U II C H, 
 
 C Xi I C A. G- O, 
 
 ON SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 9, 1862. 
 
 BY ROBERT COLLYER, 
 
 I J S X O R TO THE CHURCH, 
 
 PUBLISHED JIT SOME WIIO HEARD IT. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 TRIBUNE BOOK AND JOB STEAM PRINTING OFFICE, NO. 51 CLARK STREET. 
 
 1862. 
 

'-4C, ry\c.YyujSXj 
 
 FEAR GOD.” 
 
 . 1st Peter, 2nd chapter, 17th verse. 
 
 I want to say, as an introduction to tliis sermon, 
 that no writer or speaker in the Bible begins his 
 revelation by trying, first of all, to prove that there 
 is a God. In no part of the Bible is such proof 
 ever attempted. These men appear to believe 
 that the question is settled in some other way than 
 by reasoning; or they feel that trying to prove 
 the being of God is a lower thing than that which 
 they are sent to do; or they are so filled with a 
 great sense of his presence, that they do not believe 
 it possible for a sensible man to doubt about his 
 being, any more than to doubt about the sunlight on 
 a summer’s day—living in a focus of belief, like 
 that man who, brought before the parliament of 
 Tolouse, on the charge of atheism, lifted a straw 
 from the ground and holding it up before his 
 accusers, said: u this straw compels me to believe 
 that there is a God.” But while these men all 
 -3 believe that there is a God, they disagree very 
 d widely about his nature and character, and how he 
 is related to man. To one he is a terror and 
 perplexity—to another a supreme love; to one a 
 ^ power beyond all power—to another a limited, 
 J struggling principle ; to one a grim Eastern despot, 
 to another a forgiving father—his face beaming 
 
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 with love to this man, but to that man, black with 
 vindictive vengeance. A great deal of the 
 trouble that men come to m trying to reconcile 
 these things as they are found in the Bible, lies 
 in their utter antagonism, and they can never be 
 reconciled for that reason: therefore, we can only 
 take them as we find them, and test them by the 
 truth itself. I intend to do this as far 
 as I am able, in the discussion of that character 
 
 of God, by which we are bidden to fear him. 
 
 I think there are some thoughts of the fear of 
 God, that we may well ponder. I propose to 
 name some hurtful and some useful fears of God 
 common among men to-day, and to point out 
 their value in the human life. 
 
 I. There is, first of all, a fear of God which to 
 me appears to be a reproduction, measure, or color 
 of the national life; different as the nations differ. I 
 believe it is impossible to bring a Frenchman 
 and a German, or a Scotchman and an Irishman, 
 or any two men that reach back into a radical 
 
 difference of race, to regard God in the same way. 
 
 Indeed we see this difference in two children of 
 the same family. One child will rebel and take 
 the penalty, snap his fingers and do it again; while 
 another will tremble and shrink and fear. One will say 
 prayers and brood over those mysterious promptings 
 of the soul that seem like the audible whispers 
 of angels to some children; while another will appear 
 to be shut altogether out of this heaven, reveling in 
 the fresh new life of the present with a wealth of 
 enjoyment past all telling—“of the earth, earthy.” 
 So there are nations that are lightsome, careless, 
 earthy, objective; and nations that are deep, stern, 
 
5 
 
 solemn, subjective ; and the national nature colors 
 the great central idea of God. 
 
 Where the father in the home is a fear, the 
 God above is a fear. Where the father is careless, 
 light-hearted, easily bought off, blending laughter 
 and tears, smiles and frowns, a kiss and a blow ? 
 there the Holy Mother can turn the tides of fate, 
 and the Friar make a good thing, out of what to 
 a deeper-hearted people is the dreadful, steady, 
 immaculate justice. The Frenchman who could not 
 stay to morning mass, but left his card upon the 
 altar, flashed a light across the world that revealed 
 the real texture of the French soul, as vividly as 
 you shall see it, if you watch for a year in the 
 church of the Madeline, in Paris. And when the 
 Scotchman went away from the kirk for the first 
 time in his life, to hear an Episcopal service, in 
 which a fine organ played a prominent part, and 
 said, as he came away, “ O, it’s verra bonnie, but 
 it’s an awfu’ way of spending the Sabbath,” he 
 touched the deep, stern Scottish character, that, as 
 some one has said, “ delights to praise the 
 Lord by singing infinitely out of tune better than 
 it could be touched in a volume of disquisition. 
 
 So, friends, in a broad national way we take the 
 thing that is nearest us to touch the infinite. 
 
 The glass through which we see God is darkened 
 by our own breath. Some shadow of the dark or 
 bright we cast of our own free will. But more than 
 all that—is this primitive, mysterious shadow of 
 the race, the shadow cast by blood, and climate, 
 and circumstance, determining for all men, save, it 
 may be, one in a thousand, whether their Supreme 
 shall be revealed in the thunders of Sinai, or the 
 
G 
 
 sorrows of Olivet, or the glories of Zion—a power 
 that waits on our birth to take us up and mould us, 
 and which smiles to hear us say, “ what I will be I 
 will.” For as you may find the Soldanella Alpina 
 piercing through the snows upon the lower Alps, 
 leaning its frail purple blossom over the fearful icy 
 clefts, and the Victoria Regia in the hot lagoons of 
 the South, opening her vast shining petals to glisten 
 in the sun, but never the great Lily on the mountain 
 or the Blue Bell in the Lake; so the idea of God is 
 moulded more or less by the great ranges of the 
 race—the intimate life blood of the country and the 
 providence. 
 
 “ The Ethiop’s God has Ethiop’s lips, 
 
 Black cheek and woolly hair, 
 
 And the Grecian God a Grecian face, 
 
 As keen-eyed, cold and fair.” 
 
 II. But in our own nation wdiere so many 
 nativities centre, the idea of God and the consequent 
 fear of God differ very greatly. And I have thought 
 that it might be of use to you, that I should 
 note some forms of that fear as it exists all about 
 us, and tell you w r hat I think is a false and 
 degrading, then what is a true and elevating 
 fear of God, for us here, and to-day. 
 
 The first and lowest form is a fear of God as 
 a jailor and executioner, who stands and waits 
 until that sure detective, Death, shall hunt the 
 criminal down and bring him into court; (where, 
 by the way, there is no jury—a thing that certainly 
 would not be omitted if these Western nations had 
 written the Bible), and where really without 
 trial—for his condemnation is a foregone conclu¬ 
 sion—he is turned into the despair and torment 
 of the lost. This is the low, coarse, hell-fire fear. 
 
7 
 
 Tlie fear described, in a quotation that every 
 preacher of this school can repeat to you more 
 readily than he can repeat the beatitudes, and that 
 is sure to find a place in the revival season, which 
 indeed would be incomplete without it. The writer 
 is describing a death bed, and tells you— 
 
 “ In that dread moment, how the frantic soul 
 Raves round the walls of her clay tenement, 
 
 Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help, 
 
 But shrieks in vain !—how wishfully she looks 
 On all she’s leaving, now no longer her’s ! 
 
 A little longer, yet a little longer, 
 
 0 might she stay to wash away her stains, 
 
 And fit her for her passage ! 
 
 Her very eyes weep blood, and every groan 
 She heaves is big with horror! but the foe, 
 
 Like a staunch murderer steady to his purpose, 
 
 Pursues her close through every lane of life, 
 
 Nor misses once the track, but presses on ; 
 
 Till, forced at last to the tremendous verge, 
 
 At once she sinks to everlasting ruin.” 
 
 Now if you can bring a man to believe this, 
 and to believe that God is to this dreadful penalty, 
 what the soul is to the body, what the burning 
 is to the fire, the very life of the eternal torture; 
 replying, never, never, never, to every cry out of 
 the pit of, “ O, when will this agony be over,” 
 then you have a fear of God in that man, beside 
 which the fear of a slave toward a cruel driver is a 
 pleasant, frisky thing, and such a fear when it strikes 
 root in a man can have but one of two results- 
 It places him in a bitter, hopeless, blasphemous 
 atheism, such as you often find in isolated com¬ 
 munities that have heard only these dreadful teachers, 
 or it forces him into a slavish, crouching, abject 
 submission, where every free and noble aspiration 
 
8 
 
 is lost in the one great hunger to be on good 
 terms with such a dreadful master. The Pagan on 
 this plane of belief is wiser than the Christian. 
 He says boldly that the doer of this is the evil 
 spirit, and so he tries to be on good terms with 
 him. But wherever such a fear has a real place 
 in the soul of man or woman, African, Indian or 
 Saxon, in that soul the love of God, or even a 
 true fear of God, is utterly out of the question. 
 It destroys every fair blossom of the soul, it leaves 
 nothing to ripen—nothing beautiful even to live. 
 
 III. Then to the eye of the resolute Christian 
 hinker, who dare not, as Coleridge has said, u love 
 even Christianity better than the truth, lest he 
 shall come to love his own sect better than 
 Christianity, and at last himself better than all,” 
 there is another form of the fear of God, not the 
 best by far, but far better than this utterly slavish 
 fear. I mean that in which God becomes the embodi¬ 
 ment of pure bargain, exacting from us to the uttermost 
 penny, or the uttermost quivering nerve, whatever 
 is due—no more, no less. Here God appears 
 w r ith the guards and sanctities of the law about 
 him, self-imposed and self-respected. The man need 
 not contract the debt if it does not please him, but if 
 he does contract it, he must pay, or another must 
 pay for him. Then the son of the great creditor 
 gives his own body to the knife, and bears the 
 intolerable agony instead of the debtor. Now there 
 is a touch of sublimity in this conception. I do not 
 wonder that Paul, standing where he did, should 
 be so filled with enthusiasm by it, and should run alf 
 over the world to tell it with strong crying and tears. 
 To Paul, educated in the belief that a sacrifice was 
 
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 imperative, this was a wonderful revelation. The awful 
 debt paid—paid by the Son in the gift of his life! And 
 to-day this form of the fear of God, even where it 
 makes the man into a wretched, shiftless debtor 
 and God into a stern creditor, yet with such infinite 
 deeps of tenderness in his heart that be will give his own 
 Son for us all, creates a far nobler issue than that 
 in which Antonio must quiver in agony forever, if 
 for no sin of his own, then for a sin contracted by his 
 remotest ancestor. There is that in this better idea, 
 which has carried a wonderful weight with it,—such 
 a fear has its own touch of tender reverence. Con 
 vince a man that this is true, and he will be awe¬ 
 stricken and inspired to some fearful love. The life 
 and death that hangs on such conditions must be 
 of vast importance, and a God at once so relentless 
 and so merciful cannot be slighted. 
 
 Yet when we come to question the system, it 
 will not stand. The moment you open the idea 
 with the master key of the Fatherhood of God, 
 you begin to see that it cannot be true. It is the 
 father punishing the brother who is innocent, for the 
 brother who is guilty. And you cannot help seeing 
 that however willing the brother may be to bear, it 
 is against the nature of true greatness in the father 
 to inflict the penalty. It is no more right to do so, 
 than it was right to punish the French page for the 
 fault of the French prince. If you admit the princi. 
 pie, you do so at the expense of the clearest ideas of 
 justice that are found in your own soul, and that 
 guide you in every other decision. Either the doctrine 
 must be wrong in some radical way, or the ideas 
 that are right in everything beside, are wrong in this. 
 If it was right that Christ should bear your sins in 
 
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 Ms own body on the tree, according to the common 
 interpretation of that doctrine, it will he right for you 
 to punish the elder child in your home the next 
 time the younger breaks into some mad freak of 
 temper. Besides, this doing wrong with the sure 
 conviction that some one must suffer for it, and then 
 crouching down behind another while he bears the 
 blow—this running into a debt that you are sure 
 another will have to pay—this lying on the shady 
 side of the barn all through the summer, because 
 you know you can beg enough corn to put you 
 through the winter, from the man who toils all day 
 in the hot sun, and who loves you so well, good 
 merciful man that he is, that you are sure he will 
 not let you starve—does not appear to me to be 
 the best way to promote a stout, deep, steady, 
 personal manliness. If you take the principle out 
 of the realm of religious ideas, and bring it into 
 common life; as a rule, it makes a man small, 
 tricky, and vicious. Then this unlimited promise 
 to pay, creates all sorts of unfair and un¬ 
 
 sound debts. When the common run of men believe 
 that they can have all they ask for, they are not 
 likely to be particular about pennies. Our govern¬ 
 ment is cheated every day in the exact ratio of the 
 confidence of depraved rogues that they can get 
 their claims pulled through, and the better tjie man 
 to indorse the claim, the more they will put down. 
 If a good man will say this is all right when it is 
 all wrong, they will slide in another cypher 
 with perfect assurance. Now meet this doctrine 
 of vicarious payment fairly, consider it as if you 
 heard it for the first time. If you will not be afraid 
 of polarized words and ideas, you will see that this 
 
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 must be the result to most men of even the ad¬ 
 vanced doctrine—that God is an embodiment of justice 
 or bargain, demanding strict payment, but willing to 
 accept any gold if it be gold. It breaks up the inner 
 fastnesses of the man’s soul, by pushing his ultimate 
 responsibility upon another. It makes God fearful not 
 because I owe him, but because he will be sure to 
 make his claim good somewhere. It makes a man 
 false in the precise measure of his own essential mean¬ 
 ness. So that it was perfectly natural for that 
 wretched man in Philadelphia to plot all the week 
 how to cheat his bank out of unlimited thousands, 
 and then on the Sunday go to Girard College and 
 snuffle to the boys, “now, my young friends, I have 
 come here to-day to try if I can save one soul,” 
 because saving a soul and standing square in absolute 
 personal righteousness is by such doctrine not essentially 
 the same thing. In a word, it uncentres a man. It 
 lowers lofty standards so that you need not climb 
 up painfully to reach them, but just slide along on 
 the dead level and you are there. It fills the 
 world with churches, but the church with worldli¬ 
 ness—the result is 
 
 “ God and the world we worship both together, 
 
 Draw not our laws to him, but his to ours, 
 
 Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither, 
 
 A chilling summer bringing barren flowers.” 
 
 “ So then we must 
 
 Unwise in our distracted interests be; 
 
 Strangers to God and true humanity.” 
 
 “ Too good for great things, and too great for good, 
 
 Letting I dare not wait upon I would.” 
 
 IV. But a far higher fear of God is to fear him 
 as we fear the surgeon, who must cut out some 
 dreadful gaugrene in order to save the life. Such a 
 
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 fear as this really touches the outskirts of love—it is 
 love and fear blended. When I went to Fort 
 Donelson to nurse our wounded men, it was my 
 good fortune to be the personal attendant of a 
 gentleman whose skill as a surgeon was only ecpialled 
 by the wonderfully deep loving tenderness of his heart, 
 as it thrilled in every tone of his voice and every touch 
 of his hand.* And it all comes up before me now, 
 how he would come to the men, fearfully mangled 
 as they were, and how the nerve would shrink and 
 creep, and how with a wise, hard, steady skill he 
 would cut to save life ; forcing back tears of pity only 
 that he might keep his eye clear for the delicate 
 duty; speaking low words of cheer in tones 
 heavy with tenderness; then when all was over, 
 and the poor fellows, fainting with pain, knew 
 that all was done that could be done, and done 
 only with a severity whose touch was love, how they 
 would look after the man as he went away, sending 
 unspoken benedictions to attend him. Now a fear like 
 this is almost the loftiest fear of God that has come 
 to the human soul. Here we find ourselves among 
 all sorts of depravities. Sins that are as certainly 
 shattering even to the body as the splint of a shell or 
 a rifie-bullet, hit thousands of our fellows on every 
 side. They hit us. We can all count some friend or 
 kinsman, who has been killed by sin as surely as if 
 he had been shot down, and it may be not one of us, 
 can look back from the stand point of forty years, 
 and say, I am willing to take the unalterable and 
 
 * Mv position as nurse for this gentleman, Dr. R. L. Rea, of this city } 
 gave me such insight as inspired this poor tribute to his w< rth and goodness, 
 He was one of a noble band, all full of the same spirit. I am glad to say such 
 words of them, and all the more that I am sure they never expected to hear them. 
 
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 eternal consequence of all my deeds done to man and 
 woman, ever since I was a man. And this conscious¬ 
 ness of something wrong in us, this sight of something 
 wrong about us, makes havoc of the peace of the 
 soul; we feel in our own life a thread of the com¬ 
 mon cancer. 
 
 Again, not sin only, but death is fearful to 
 many of us; we shrink from the touch of God, as 
 the man shrinks from the surgeon’s knife. It is 
 doubtless some pain to enter into any life, and that 
 is why we shrink from it. It must be some pain to 
 the worm in the water, to strip away the dear old 
 shell in which it has lived for seventy years, (the 
 seventy years of a worm,) to pierce out into the air 
 and spread its wings, though the next moment it 
 shall exult and sing as it floats in the wonderful new 
 world, with the rich color, and the sunshine, and the 
 unbounded gladness. Now there is this intuition of 
 our intimate dependence on God in every soul. Are 
 we in sin—God must help us out of it finally, in 
 some quick painful way, as the surgeon helps the 
 sufferer. Our suffering appeals at once to his pity, his 
 mercy and his love. Are we in life, through him, we 
 must brave the great change of our being, and 
 begin to live again in some wonderful new way. So 
 comes this fear of God—at once a shrinking and a 
 clinging, inevitable and fearful. And this is about 
 as far as most liberal Christians go ; they accept this 
 life as a mystery of trouble, and expect that God who 
 has certainly brought them into it, will certainly help 
 them through it; so with a touch of terror, as a 
 woman would trust herself in a frail boat on our 
 lake because she believed in the captain, though 
 the waters were turbulent and the sky dark, we 
 
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 trust ourselves to God, and bear the peril as bravely 
 as we can—not always quite sure that we shall win 
 through, yet as the life deepens, watching with ever 
 fresh trust the pilot at the helm, sure, as the days 
 wear on, that the master knows best what to do, 
 and that we have only to bear the burden, meet the 
 inevitable lot, and trust to the end. 
 
 V. Then, finally, there is a fear of God which is 
 more of love than fear, a fear that has no torment. There 
 is an inspiration by which our duties rise up before us 
 vested in a nobleness like that which touches the 
 landscape for a great painter. The true artist works 
 ever with a touch of fear. He stands at his task, his 
 heart trembling with the great pulses of his conception. 
 Carefully, fearfully, as if his soul were to be saved by 
 it, (as indeed in some measure it will be,) he tries to 
 bring out the mystery of truth and beauty. There is 
 a deep gladness and a deep fear as, line by line, touch¬ 
 ing and retouching with infinite care, he perfects at 
 last to the visible sight the vision of beauty that was in 
 him. And he is fearful exactly as he sees the perfection 
 of the thing he is trying to embody. A dauber has 
 far less fear than Church, when he paints Niagara. 
 Now believe me, God hides some ideal in everv human 
 soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, 
 fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its 
 noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to 
 do our best. There is a time when we are not content 
 to be such merchants, or doctors, or lawyers as we 
 see on the dead level or below it. The woman 
 longs to glorify her womanhood as sister, wife or 
 mother. I say, in the heart of us all, there is this higher 
 thought of life struggling for a realization. All 
 at some time cry , 61 not that I have already attained or 
 
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 am already perfect,” and then tlie fierce conflict of 
 life begins. The tempter tells me that if I try 
 to be an ideal merchant, or lawyer, or doctor, I shall 
 go under ; if it is a rule to mix inferior wheat and call 
 it No. 1—to pull a rogue through in spite of justice, 
 when all the world knows he is a rogue—to keep 
 a patient lingering a little for an extra fee—then I 
 must do it, or I am not fit for this world. I must 
 go where the wheat is all pure and plump, and the 
 judge has a clean calendar, and the inhabitants 
 never say I am sick. If the woman will not dress, 
 and dance over ground enough to kill her if she had 
 to walk it doing good, in order to secure some darling 
 match for herself or daughter, then she must go where 
 there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. The 
 young man must see life, or be a spoon. Friends, that 
 is the devil—the temptation in the wilderness, that 
 every soul must meet and faint and stagger under, in 
 some form or other. But here, on the other side, is 
 God—God standing silently at the door all day long— 
 God whispering to the soul, that to be pure and true is 
 to succeed in life, and whatever we get short of that will 
 burn up like stubble, though the wdiole world try to 
 save it. Now here is the fear of God that is loftiest 
 of all. It comes to youth and maiden at the portals 
 of life, to make them beautiful in all sweet sunny 
 humanities, yet to keep them pure as the angels. 
 It comes to the wedded man and wife whose 
 little children are beginning to trouble the home, just 
 as the angel troubled the waters in the ancient pool, 
 that the home may be a fountain of healing for the 
 hurts and bruises of the world, and it helps them to 
 look into that future when those little pattering feet 
 shall tramp strong and steady in the ranks of life, 
 
16 
 
 those voices breathe out comfort and inspiration for 
 fainting souls, and those hands, now so restless with 
 electric mischief, grow skillful in the achievements of 
 the age. It whispers how it will lead you and help 
 you if you will but keep your soul open to it; how 
 you shall be able to bring those children into the great 
 ranks of God’s holiest and best, as you take heed to that 
 monitor. It comes to the aged, and brings sounds 
 from over that golden sea beyond which abides their 
 home. It tells them to listen to no tempter that would 
 make the grave the end of all, but to keep an open 
 tremulous ear for the whispers that ever come from 
 the upper 'world when the turmoil of life is over and 
 the pilgrim rests for a season. O, friends, it is to every 
 man and woman the still small voice, whispering what¬ 
 ever at that moment we must hear if we will live. Not 
 
 shouting, but whispering , so that we must listen with a 
 loving fear lest we miss the accent; not repeating louder 
 for our heedlessness, but whispering, so that we must 
 fear lest we miss the word. God with us, not as an 
 Eastern despot, or a stern bargainer, or a painful 
 helper, but a pleading love. Not the thunder, beating 
 in terrific reverberations down the peaks of Sinai, but 
 that gentle voice on the mount of the beatitudes, cry¬ 
 ing, u Blessed are the poor—blessed are the meek— 
 blessed are the merciful—blessed are the mourners— 
 blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’