I JOHN IV. i8 349
most part they will proceed together. Fear is allayed by the love of Him, aud our love is sobered by our fear of Him.^
3. The Apostle had just spoken of a day of judgment. To his mind there was something very real in that judgment, very decisive too. But the reality — the force of such reality — lay in this, that he did not project it into some distant future, else it would have lost much of its terribleness by such distance. He saw — and we, too, may see if we will — the judgment already set, and the books opened. There are days of our inner experience which are to us days of judgment, when we seem to stand at the bar of conscience, and meet face to face with God, who sits en- throned there. The secrets of our hearts are revealed to our- selves, and the searching eye of a Divine truth is set upon us. What strength or what boldness can we reach compared with that which comes from love ? This appears to be the innermost thought of our writer. ^Love on the throne and in the heart gives fearlessness in every day of judgment. The soul finds shelter, not simply in its own affection, but in the Divine affection. / It becomes a solace to us when most unfriended. Here is the v' perfection of Love, that it meets God with fearlessness. With all the dreadful things we may be able to trace in ourselves, and even at a time when most of all we feel we must be true to God, to be able to stand in the Eternal Light : this is the perfection of Love.
^ The most perfect example of love is our Lord Jesus Christ. And the most complete example of a being whose ruling disposi- tion and principle is fear and hate, is the devil. Here are the two models — and we are all growing more like to one or the other of them. We are all, as the years go on, growing morel loving, more trustful, more kindly in disposition, more liberal in 1 almsgiving ; or we are growing more fearful and suspicious, mor^ grudging and mechanical in our performance of duty, money- loving and miserly, ruling ourselves in our daily life, not by love, j but by fear.2
^ Mr. Kobert E. Speer stopped from a British India steamer at Muscat to visit the Eev. Peter Zwemer, who was working there alone. Mr, Zwemer took his visitor up to his house, where, he said, his family were staying. There, sitting on benches about
^ J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, i. 303. ' Literary Ghurchman, xxiv. 235.
350 LOVE CASTING OUT FEAR
the room, were eighteen little black boys. They had been rescued from a slave-ship that had been coming up the eastern coast of Arabia with those little fellows, to be sold on the date plantations along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The British consul had seized them from the traders, and Mr. Zwemer had undertaken to keep them until they were eighteen years old, when they would be given their manumission papers.
" When I got them," said Mr. Zwemer, " the whole eighteen huddled together in the middle of the floor, like jack-rabbits, and every time I came close, they huddled a little nearer. They mis- trusted every one. On each little cheek-bone was the brand of the slave's iron, and for months and months they had known nothing but hatred and beatings, and had been shut down in the hold of the slaveship, in order that they might make no noise and betray their presence."
When Mr. Speer saw them they looked happy and confident, and they sang for him, " Jesus loves me, this I know," looking as if the realization that all their blessings had come from that Divine Source had already sunk deep into their hearts.
I.
The Inevitableness of Fear.
V 1. There are ..different. meanings attached to this word fear, which we must take account of. i. Let us remember that in its highest sense it is reverence, and the love that does not reverence is a coarse earthly thing. Worship is one of the essential attri- butes of a true love. Heavenly love is always a reverence for the object loved. It lays its ample treasure at the feet of the beloved..' .But fear also suggests alarm, disquiet, suspicion. Per- fect love does not know, cannot reckon upon, these. How does Ihis description apply to the spiritual affection about which St. John writes ? Let the heart love God, and it cannot dread Him. Let the heart love, and it will cling where it loves. You cannot cling without sympathy.
Our love to God is full of clinging confidence in Him and sympathy with all His purposes. But love has to take some things upon trust. It cannot always read the meaning when it trusts the purpose of the beloved. Still less does it suspect. '^You cannot call that a perfect love in any of the human relationships
I JOHN IV. i8 351
which looks suspiciously, which is full of forebodings. '^ Love trusts — trusts always.
^ Augustine speaks of fear as the needle, sharp and painful, but bringing in the thread; the needle passes, and the pain is gone, and then comes the thread which forms the union and joins the soul to God. So fear may begin the blessing to the soul ; love perfects it, and then — fear all gone — it rises to filial confidence.^