^ The little pilgrim of the dawn has now the freedom of what Professor Sully calls " the realm of fancy." In his active brain he has a magic wand which makes him master of creation. He fills the blank spaces between the zenith and the nadir with his imaginings ; makes the woods fearful with wolves, discovers the haunts of fairies and tree-folk in holes under the tree roots, and associates the church, the barn, the lane, the brook, the gate, with the people and places of his story-books.
This realm is not only the land of fancy, but that of fetish. To one little fellow, born in Siberia, the great god Pan was a reality. At night he would say, " Bye-bye, Poo-ah ! " — " Good- night, Out-of-doors ! " Another went in mortal dread of a feather from the eider-down or a fluff of the wool in which a banana had been packed, and he would flee with a yell when it moved towards him on a breath of air. Boy Beloved had an unpseakable horror of an indiarubber hot-water bottle, but if he had to pass near it, he would propitiate it with " Nice water-bottle ! " and, watching it carefully, sidle out of danger.^
^ 4. Fear is stirred by our wrong-doing. When we sin we cower before offended justice and regard God as a foe more terrible than Odin with his trenchant sword. Our thoughts of God grow darker as we grow in sin ; and the awful aspect He seems to present to conscience darkens us like a shadow or deadens us like a pall. Human life is often like one of those great tragedies where, in the earliest scenes, a suspicion is infused of the darkness that is to deepen round the close. Unless the principles of Divine light and the powers of Divine love have wrought their influence upon the sinful heart, men carry about with them, everywhere and always, the consciousness of those dark secrets which linger from the earliest age of responsibility in the inmost recesses of the heart. Such a fear, always changing, always undermining, the joys and hopes of Hfe, plants upon conscience its own growth, until some- times it becomes an inquisitor with a whip of scorpions. To such men the very name of the God who governs the world is fear.
^ Of the state of his mind and heart in regard to religion at Harrow Cardinal Manning has left the following record: — "It
^ W. Canton, Children's Sayings, 20. JAS.-JUDE— 23
354 LOVE CASTING OUT FEAR
was not a good time with me. I do not think I ever ceased to pray all through my time at Harrow. I said my prayers, such as I had learned, I suppose, from my mother, I had always a fear of judgment and of the pool burning with fire. The verse in Apocalypse xxi. 8 was fixed in my whole mind from the time I was eight or nine years old, confixit carnem meam timore, and kept me as boy and youth and man in the midst of all evil, and in all occasions remote and proximate; and in great temptations; and in a perilous and unchecked liberty. God held me by my will against my will. If I had fallen I might have run the whole career of evil. In the midst of everything I had a veneration for religion. The thought of it was sweet to me, and I lived in the hope and temptation of being religious one day before I died. I never went to church unwillingly ; and I always liked hearing sermons, which was my state when I went to Oxford.^
In darkest days and nights of storm. Men knew Thee but to fear Thy form; And in the reddest lightning saw Thine arm avenge insulted law.
In brighter days, we read Thy love In fiowers beneath, in stars above; And in the track of every storm Behold Thy beauty's rainbow form.
And in the reddest lightning's path We see no vestiges of wrath, But always wisdom, — perfect love, From flowers beneath to stars above.
See, from on high sweet influence rains On palace, cottage, mountains, plains; No hour of wrath shall mortals fear, For their Almighty Love is here.^
V 5. Fear has an ^educative function. Fear of punishment, either as imminent or as distant, is not a false or bad principle of action in its own place, and for its own time. It is appro- priate for the earlier stage of spiritual training. It is commonly called "servile"; but until a soul can realize its sonship, the servant's position is the one it must occupy, and has at any rate the assurance of " bread enough " for present needs. A Psalmist
^ E. S. Purcell, The Life of Cardinct,l Manning, i. 27, ' Theodore Parker,
I JOHN IV. i8 355
could draw an illustration from the wistful looking up of slaves under chastisement, and the fear which "has punishment," although in this sense " servile " is disciplinary ; it marks a stage in the moral progress through which the supreme Educator, divinely equitable and patient, conducts His children by slow steps, in consideration of hearts not fully softened, and con- sciences not thoroughly enlightened, which, as yet, are unfit for a high religious standard.