8. Who are they that experience this pity of God ? What does the text say ? " Like as a father pitieth his children, so the » T. G. Selby, The Qod of the Frail, 14,
PSALM cm. 13, 14 315
Lord pitieth them that fear him." The same expression occurs in the eleventh verse: "As the heaven is high above the eartli, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him." And again in the seventeenth verse : " The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him." Now, let us not imagine for a moment that God does not yearn with compassion over men who are utterly reckless, men who are breaking through God's law, and treading the path that leadeth to destruction. God pities them ; but, then, observe, they are indifferent to Him ; and if we are indifferent to any one, we do not care for that one's pity, we have no wish for his compassion. God's compassion goes forth upon all men, but all men cannot receive it, and do not receive it. It is not the idea of terror that is conveyed by this word " fear." We do not crave mercy from a tyrant; we demand justice from him. If one might translate this word " fear " one should do so by two words — "reverential love." "We can receive real sympathy only from those we love with reverence. When we are bearing a great trial, when we are going through our testing time, when we are bowing under a heavy sorrow, who are the men and women from whom we seek sympathy or pity ? It may be we seek for the companionship of but one — only one — for whom our love is deep and reverent.
^ Bunyan in his long treatise On the Fear of God deals with the matter of " right fear " very fully. " Take heed," he says in that treatise, " of hardening thy heart at any time against convictions of judgments. I bid you before to beware of a hard heart, now I bid you beware of hardening your soft heart. The fear of the Lord is the pulse of the soul. Pulses that beat are the best signs of life ; but the worst show that life is present. Intermitting pulses are dangerous. David and Peter had an intermitting pulse in reference to this fear." Christian is no coward, and the adjective right is emphatic when he speaks of right fear. The word fear has two senses, according as it relates to dangerous or to sublime things. In the one connexion it is a sense of danger ; in the other it is the faculty of reverence, the habit of wonder, the continued power of aw^e and admiration. Christian's analysis of it includes both these senses. (1) It rises in the conviction of sin — not (it will be observed) in the approach of punishment, but in the horror of sin itself, as a thing to be abhorred apart from its consequences. (2) It leads to a laying
3i6 THE FATHER'S PITY
hold on Christ for salvation — in which the sense of danger and the faculty of reverence are combined. (3) It begets in the soul a great reverence for God.^
^ Among the children of God, while there is always that fearful and bowed apprehension of His majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence to Him, which is called the Fear of God, yet of real and essential fear there is not any, but clinging of con- fidence to Him as their Kock, Fortress, and Deliverer; and perfect love, and casting out of fear ; so that it is not possible that, while the mind is rightly bent on Him, there should be dread of anything either earthly or supernatural ; and the more dreadful seems the height of His majesty, the less fear they feel that dwell in the shadow of it (" Of whom shall I be afraid "), so that they are as David was, " devoted to His fear " ; whereas, on the other hand, those who, if they may help it, never conceive of God, but thrust away all thought and memory of Him, and in His real terribleness and omnipresence fear Him not nor know Him, yet are by real, acute, piercing, and ignoble fear, haunted for evermore.^
^ John Kelman, The Road, ii. 162.
' Ruskin, Modern Painters, ii. ch. xiv. [Works, iv. 199).
The Day's Work.
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Literature.
Bain (J. A. K.), For Heart and Life, 357.
Boyd (A. K. H.), Tlie Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, ii. 144.
Brooks (P.), Seeking Life, 331.
Brown (J. B.), The Christian Policy of Life, 108.
Clarke (J. E.), Common-Life Sermons, 94.
Dewhurst (F. E.), The Investment of Truth, 157.
Dix (M.), Christ at the Door of tlie Heart, 65.
Hood (P.), Dark Sayings on a Harp, 69.
Hunter (J.), De Frofundis Clamavi, 227.
Lambert (J. C), The Christian Workman, 1.
Newman (J. H.), Sermons on Subjects of the Day^ 395.
Prothero (R. E.), The Psalms in Human Life, 315.
Smith (G. A.), The Forgiveness of Sins, 89.
Christian World Pulpit, xli. 56 (G. A. Smith) ; xlii. 8 (T. Young); Ixx.
139 (H. M'Gahie) ; Ixxvii. 309 (H. S. Holland). Church of England Pulpit, xlix. 309 (J. White); lix. 197 (B. S.