Chapter 8. The Gift of Holy Fear

And He shall be filled with the Spirit of the fear of the Low.

These words were spoken of our Lord Jesus Christ, They are a prophecy of the unction of the Holy Ghost, which should rest in all its fullness upon the head of the Incarnate Son, the Messias — that is, the Anointed. And, therefore, the fear of the Lord spoken of in this place is not a fear which arises from sin, for in Him was no sin. It is a fear which is one of the perfections of the human soul, and is also a gift of the Holy Ghost.

Now the gifts of the rloly Ghost are certain habitual dispositions, or certain supernatural faculties of the soul, by which it has a tendency and a power to attain to special perfections. Fire has a tendency to ascend; water has a tendency to descend. The nature of fire and of water contains in itself these two tendencies. The eye has a tendency, if it be trained, to continual development of more perfect sight. The ear, if it be cultivated, has a tendency to acquire a more perfect perception of harmony. Just so the feai which arises from the consciousness of sin, if it be purified by grace, ripens at last into the fear which is a gift of the Holy Ghost, and is called the gift of holy fear.

We have already seen that, of these seven gifts, three perfect the will and four perfect the intellect.

The three that perfect the will are holy fear, piety, and fortitude. The four that perfect the intellect, or reason, are understanding, wisdom, science, and counsel. Of these four I will speak hereafter. We will take now the gift of holy fear. Remember that these seven gifts are given to every baptized soul. You have every one of you received them; but they lie dormant in the soul until they are cultivated and brought out into activity As I said before, the eye and the ear have dormant perfections which are never known until they are cultivated; so these seven gifts of the Holy Ghost need cultivation that they may be brought to their perfection. They were all given to you in your Baptism, and they all exist simultaneously in every soul so long as it is in a state of grace. They are at once and all together forfeited if any one falls into n rtal sin. But so long as the soul is in union with God, these seven gifts are all present. Some, perhaps, lie dormant altogether, all of them, indeed, at least in some degree, but they are all simultaneously present in the soul. I say this because we should form a false conception if we supposed them only to act successively and in order of time. They do not act one before the other, nor does one spring in succession out of the other; but they act all together, like as the faculties of the intellect, which are all simultaneously at woik in the mind. All are present, all are in activity, though some are more fully developed than others.

To make the gift of holy fear more intelligible, let us examine what are the different kinds of fear.

*58 THE GIFT OP HOLY PEAR.

There are four distinct kinds. The first is called a worldly fear; that is to say, the fear which exists in the eoul of every man who is living without God in the world. This is a fear of losing the things that he loves. And what are the things that a worldly man loves? Simply the things of this life. He loves the world, its wealth, its honors, its pleasure, its friendship, BO far, that is, as it ministers to his enjoyment or his profit. This is a sordid fear. All men of the world are sordid, and the more worldly the more sordid. They are haunted by the dread of losing the things on which they have set their heart. Now this worldly fear is like the sorrow of the world, which the Apostle says " worketh death. >J* Godly sorrow works the conversion of the soul unto penance and salvation. The sorrow of the world you see in such people when they are afflicted. Not knowing God, they do not turn to Him for consolation. They devour themselves with grief; they gnaw their own hearts. Such a sorrow, unrelieved by supernatural light or solace, works death. People lose their reason, break their health, and often die from disappointed ambition, ruin of fortune, wreck of hopes. The fear of the world is like its sorrow. Ambitious or covetous men, who have set their whole hearts upon something of this world, are always in fear that they shall fail; and nine times out of ten they do fail, and, worn out in brain and heart, break down and die. This is a fear which belongs not to Heaven but to Hell. It is no gift of the Holy Ghost, but a perpetual grieving of His eternal love.

Secondly, there is a fear which is called servile fear, * 3 Cor. vtt. 10.

because it is the fear of slaves. Now the fear of slaves is the fear of punishment, the fear of the lash, the fear of chains, and the fear of bondage. A servile fear in the service of God means this: that a man forsakes sin only because he fears hell; and, as Saint Augustine says, the man that does not sin only because he fears hell shows that he hates hell, and not sin. There is no hatred of sin as sin in him. He has no purity, no piety, no generosity. There is no aspiration for better things. He seems to say: " If there were no hell and no eternal punishment, I would sin; and I only wish that there were no eternal punishment attached to these sins, because I could then commit them with impunity. I would commit many sins, if I did not know that by committing them I shall incur the eternal punishment of God." This is a servile fear, base and slavish.

Thirdly, there is what is called the initial fear, or the fear of the Lord in its beginning. And that is in every one of us. I do not say, dear brethren, that there is not also a mixture of servile fear in every one of us, because no doubt there is. In proportion as flesh and blood prevail over the Spirit and grace of God in ua there is this servile fear; for, as Saint John says, " perfect charity casteth out fear;"* so, just in proportion as we grow in the love of God this servile fear is cast out, that is, it is purified of its love or will to sin. This initial fear means a fear which springs, at least in some degree, from the love of God, perhaps not as yet in any high degree —but there is this higher motive, namely, a desire to possess God in eternity — a desire to save our »oul, a desire to enter into eternal life. These are thingg * 1 St. John ir. 18.

that we hope for by the light of faith, and these s that we have at least the beginning of the love of God in us. This initial fear, therefore, is a higher kind of fear springing from the Holy Spirit; but it is not the gift of which we are speaking.

Fourthly — and this is the gift of the fear of the Lord — there is what is called filial fear, the fear, not of slaves, but of sons. It is a fear like that of a dutiful and loving son, who desires in all things to do the will of his father j not merely to escape punishment, no, nor to obtain a reward — it is neither servile, nor is it mercenary — but because of the love of his father, because of his father's goodness, and because he knows that his own bliss is inseparable from his father's love. Therefore he stands in a filial fear of offending him. It is not the terror with which we regard a taskmaster. It is the fear with which we regard a great love, a great tenderness, a great majesty; towards which we bear ourselves with reverence, submission, and obedience. In proportion as we love the person we fear to offend him. As love grows this filial fear becomes more perfect. The more tenderly a child loves its parent, the more sensitive and delicate it is to do not only its father's commands, but what it knows to be its father's desire. A mere look or glance of the eye is enough to check, or to reprove, or to guide, a sensitive child. This, then, is the filial fear which is described as the gift of the Holy Ghost¹

Let us take an example which will put this subject fully before us, and then I will go on to describe what are the fruits, or workings, of this filial fear. The ex ample I will take is that of our Divine Lord Himself. As I have said, this prophecy of Isaias is of our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom was no sin; in Whom there could be nothing servile, nothing mercenary, nothing of self; and yet in Him this holy fear was perfect. It was, first, a profound worship and veneration of God. It was, secondly, a perfect dependence upon God; for, as man, His human soul was capable of all the same perfections that we are. Thirdly, it was a profound submission to the will of God. Now these three things constitute this filial fear — worship, dependence, and submission. You see these things in their perfection throughout the whole life of our Lord, in the whole of His obedience, and in the whole of His Passion, which was His obedience made perfect by suffering. And in His Passion we see these three perfections of holy fear in their fullness. We will go on to examine what are the workings, or, I may say, what are the fruits and the effects of this filial fear in us.

1. The first is a profound consciousness that in the sight of God we are but sin and nothing. Just in proportion as we have a sense of the perfection of God and of the eternity of God, this consciousness will be deeper. A Council of the Church in early days said that of ourselves we have nothing but falsehood and sin. Now what did the Council mean by those two words? It meant that God made us after His own likeness, and therefore made us good; but that we have superadded to our natrAe no perie tion of our own, for we had none to give. Yet there are two things we could add to it— < we could deface His image, and so falsify it; we could falsify it, and so make it sinful. Therefore, when the Council said that we have nothing of our own except falsehood and sin, it meant this: that we have soiled our innocence arid have degraded our dignity. Such is the state of man after the Fall, and that state is our own work. What, then, is the meaning of saying that before God we are sin and nothing? It means simply this: first, that we are, every one of us, sinners before God. We are sinners by original sin, though our original sin is inherited, and no act of our own. Nevertheless, we are properly sinners before God, because we are born into this world of the fallen race of Adam • and our sin consists in this: that we are born deprived of the grace of the Holy Gho.-t, and with three wounds: one in the intellect, that is ignorance; one in the heart that is, passion; one in the will, that is, infirmity. Such is our original sin. But, secondly, we are actual sinners before God. There is not one of us that has not the consciousness within him of a whole world of thoughts, words, and deeds, from his childhood to this day, knowingly and wilfully committed against the eternal law of God; and therefore we are every one of us guilty before God. No human heart can conceive what is the multitude, what is the innumerable multitude, of the sins that we have perhaps committed even in act; and if we cannot count up the sins we have committed in act, who shall count up the sins that he has committed in words? And who but God alone can know the number of the sins we have committed in thought? Therefore before God we have been, or we are, each one a world of iniquity; a world of darkness; a world. f confusion; and therefore a world of spiritual death. But even more than this. God created everything that He made with a special law and for a special purpose. lie created the stars in the firmament to give light; lie created the trees of the earth to bear fruit; He created our souls to manifest the light of His image; and He implanted in us the faculties and powers of the soul that we might bear fruits of an intelligent and deliberate obedience. What, then, are we in His sight? Wandering stars whose light is dim or quenched; barren fig-trees whom He spares from year to year, from hour to hour; autumn trees, as the Apostle says, without fruit. The fruit that we ought to have borne — the fruit of innocence, the fruit of sanctity, the fruit of justice, the fruit of piety, the fruit of generosity, or, at least, the fruit of penance — where are they? What is our life? And therefore before God we are not only guilty of sin, but we are fruitless and unprofitable; we are unworthy; we have neglected the graces He has given us; we have used our intellect for all manner of untruth; we have used our heart for all manner of disorderly affections; we have used our wills for all manner of conscious variance to His holy will. So far we are but sin. And next, we are but nothing in His sight. We are mere creatures, and therefore we have only a borrowed and dependent existence. JFor what is a creature? There is but One Who exists, and it is He Whose name is " I am Who am." All other beings are but as rays that come forth from Him; they are mere acts of His will, emanations of His will, and they are sustained by Hia will, and they exist as long as He wills them to exist j and if for a moment He were to withdraw that will from them they would exist no more. And such are we. We are creatures who have come forth from His omnipotence, and are sustained by His almighty power, and we should pass away into nothing if that almighty power were withdrawn. And yet we use the power He has given us to sin against Him; and yet we squander the faculties which He has given us for His service. We stand before Him like the stars that give no light, like the trees that give no fruit. And therefore I exaggerated nothing in the beginning when I said that if we have the gift of holy fear in us, knowing God as He is and ourselves as we are, we shall have a present consciousness that in His sight we are but sin and nothing.

2. Now wherever there is this holy fear there is a profound horror of sin. Imagine to yourself for one moment what must have been the horror of the Son of God — the sinless Son of God — when He came into the world and found Himself encompassed by sinners, in contact with sin, tempted by the devil; when He sa^r sin and death ravaging the world, men dying everywhere because they were stricken with sin, and were therefore stricken with death. What must have been the horror of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in looking upon a sinful and dying world consumed by sin. In proportion, then, as this gift of holy fear is in the heart of any man, in that proportion he will have a horror of sin. When he looks upon sin he would shudder as if he were looking upon leprosy; for a sinner is a leper crusted with disease, which is eating away the very substance of his being. If a man were suddenly conscious of a §pot of leprosy upon his hand, he wo aid be horror stricken. How is it that we can see oui selves spotted all over, and yet be without fear? Nay, more: if we have this holy fear we shall see that sin paralyzes the powers of the soul. The human frame, so strong, so dignified, so self -controlled in its perfections, when it is struck by the palsy, can no longer maintain its own stability, its own government, its own powers of act or will. Such, in the sight of God, is a soul which is struck by sin. And, still further, when sin takes possession of the soul it extinguishes the senses. "What more helpless than the blind, or what more pitiable than the deaf and the dumb? But what is a sinner who has ceased to see God, who has ceased to hear His voice, who cannot speak a word of prayer or of praise? The blind and the deaf and the dumb are not objects of compassion so great as he. Therefore the sight of sin is a sight of horror, and any one who has holy fear in him, must hate sin, and shrink from it with horror. But more than this, it is not only a ruin of the creature, it is also a privation. A cloud and a darkness settle upon the reason and upon the heart, so as to hide from them the light of God's countenance. The union of the soul with God is strained by every venial sin that a man commits; and, in the end, the union of the soul with God is broken, But what is more terrible than to be separated from God? If a sinner could only see his state, he could hardly live. A body out of which the soul has departed strikes us with horror. If we were to turn a corner of the road and find a lifeless corpse, we should start back with a shock; and yet what in the sight of God is one who is in mortal sin, and is therefore separated both in soul and body from

God? There Is nothing in God's creation mure horrible

And those who have in them the holy fear of sin, see sin and death as God sees them, and have a horror in thft sight. But, still further than this, they have consciousness of what God made them in the beginning

No instrument of music, however perfect, is to be com pared in its perfection to the harmony of the human soul in the unity of all its faculties and of all its powers.

But if you take in hand a musical instrument that has been broken or jarred, all its notes jangle in discord.

What its beauty was we can still perceive; what its ruin is e\ery note declares. So it is with the soul.

How beautiful, how full of harmony, when God made it. How broken and harsh, how full of discord now in all its tones. Such is a human soul under the power of sin. It is the most pitiable sight that God and His holy angels can look upon. And those who have the holy fear of God in them will partake of that intuition, that gaze of sorrow and of dread. "We read in the life of Saint Catharine of Genoa that, out of a profound sense of humiliation, she prayed Almighty God to grant that she might see herself as she was seen in His sight.

Her prayer was heard. The light fell upon her, and she saw herself and her sins as God saw them; and having seen that sight of horror for a moment, she prayed the more earnestly that the light might be taker away, that she might see herself no longer, because tinder the vision of herself she could not exist. This, then, is the second effect of holy fear.

3. The third is this: that all those who have this fear of sin in them, if they detect in themselves the least spot of evil, will go at once to accuse themselves

They cannot rest while it is upon them. They cannot bear to be soiled in the sight of God, or to delay going to Him that they may be cleansed. Just as the leper who sees the first beginning of the leprosy will go ai once to the physician, so, when they detect in themselves the first rising of a spot of sin, they will at once go to be made clean. If our face were soiled, should we go into the presence of any one whom we reverence t If our hands were soiled, should we go into the midst of our friends? How, then, shall we dare to go into the presence of God with a heart that is stained? He sees the heart as we see the face. If there be a spot in the heart, those who have holy fear in them will at once accuse themselves that the Holy Ghost may cleanse them. They will accuse themselves, not only of deliberate venial sin, but also of the sinful infirmities which come from our want of holy fear. We are not -speaking, remember, of mortal sin, for holy fear only exists in those who are in a state of grace. It is holy fear, then, that prompts to the confession of venial sins. They are not, indeed, necessary matter of confession; but a pure heart, which fears the approach of evil, when it discovers venial sin, will not rest until it has humbled itself before God, and cast itself at the feet of our Lord.

We must also remember this. If you had ever been wounded, there would be a scar left behind; if you had evei been burnt, there would remain the sear of the burn as long as you live; and those who have in time past been guilty of any sin whatsoever have still remaining upon them what I may call the scar and tho sear of those sins. But they have more than this.

TIIS GIFT OF HOLT FEAR.

They have a proneness, and a weakness, and a facility to fall again. Let us take, for example, temper. We are all liable to anger. There is not one of us that is not more or less tempted to sudden sallies and impetuosities of temper. Well, now, there was a time when these temptations were comparatively slight. It was by the frequent giving way to them that they became impetuous and strong. Nevertheless, we are sorry after we have been carried away. We have tried to contnx our temptations, and in some part we have succeeded. We have confessed them, and have been absolved. But you well know that the habit of indulging temper increases the proneness to impetuosity. The effect of the past lingers as a habit. Though repented of, it still remains to be our trial and chastisement. Or let me take pride. Some people in the early days of their life indulge their pride. When they coine to know themselves, they are humbled. But the pride is there, and the pride is stronger and harder to control because of past indulgence. So, again, with the will. We know what is the fault of wilfulness, as we call it. Many a person who was wilful in childhood and in youth, but has striven for years to control his will, is afflicted with a headstrong mind for the rest of his life by reason of the wilfulness indulged in early days. Here, therefore, are faults which awaken, and even increase, the gift of Jioly fear. They keep us watching, and make us afraid. They show us our weakness and our liability to fall, md thereby they show us our need to watch over ourgelves and to mistrust ourselves, and to trust in God alone.

4:. Another effect of this holy fear is to make ^s iratch over our external conduct in the world, Ton remember the words of the Apostle: "Brethru., the time is short. It remaineth that they also whc have wires bo as if they had none; and they that weep, aa though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as if they used it not; for the fashion of this world passeth away."* It is lawful to use the world; " for every creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer."f But fe\v there are who use this world without abusing it. What is the meaning of abusing the world? We are put into the world by God Himself: it is our place of duty. The world is our place of trial; the world is, so to speak, the means whereby we are to attain our last end — thai is, the vision of God. And if we use this world with a view to this end — if we set God above all things, and use the world only in so far as is consistent with the service of God — then we do not abuse it. But if we use the world as the end for which we live — if we live in its pleasures, and its possessions, and its ambitions, for their own sake, as ends out of God and below God — then we abuse it. We know well what a worldly character means. It means not necessarily a person that deliberately rejects God, or forgets God, or puts the world before God. A man who is trying to serve two masters is a worldly man. When the world ceases to tempt him, he will turn to God. When it begins to draw him back, he will turn again to the service of the world. He

» 1 Cor. vii. 29-31. f 1 Tim. IT. 4, 5.

loves its honors, its popularity, its properity, its great friendships. Like a strong magnet, it draws the needle to itself. The gift of holy fear will make a man stand on his guard against the world. He will say: " I wiD not of my choice go into any place, or society, or business, or profession in which I know I shall be surrounded by the fascinations of the world. 1 know that I cannot trust myself. In the long-run they will probably be too strong for me. My safety is in keeping out of them. If God calls me into them, He will keep me, for then it will be His will and not mine." Moreover, Saint Paul says: " All things are to me lawf ul, but not all things expedient."* There are many lawful things which it is better for us altogether to refuse. One way of using things is not to use them. If we take the full pleasure of all that is lawful, it is almost certain that we shall pass over the limit of a lawful use, and go onward before long into that which is unlawful. The way to use lawful things safely is to keep far within the boundary, and the farther we keep within the boundary the safer we shall be. The most sparing use C lawful things is safest. Saint Jerome says: " A diet *ways scanty is better than three days of fasting." Vloreover, in all things we have to think of the example r-e shall be to others around about us. If they see us taking the full enjoyment of everything lawful, and sometimes, at least, seeming to go beyond the line, the effect upon others may be full of danger. We may, perhaDs, be able to keep ourselves from going further, but chose who are led by our example may not be able ** to do. It is therefore a high part of the law of « I Cor. vi 12.

jharity so to use even lawful things as not to be an occasion of falling to others.

Another part of this outward watchfulness is the custody of our senses. How much sin enters in by the eye. How much by the ear. What soils and stains reach the heart, which would never be there if the eye were closed against a great deal that meets it, and if the ear were turned away from a great deal that falls upon it. The prophet says, " Death climbs up by the windows."* The eyes and the ears are the windows of the soul; and through the eyes and the ears the stains and fascinations of sin, and the fiery darts of the evil one, are cast into the heart.

I need hardly give you particular instances; yet, to make my meaning clear, I will mention one or two. You will supply the rest. Books, that speak through the eye, may be the worst of tempters. If books be bad — and sometimes they are especially bad — no tempters can be worse. And they are especially bad when the badness is concealed; when that which is concealed, if expressed in explicit grossness, would shock and repel; but when thinly veiled it is read without a blush, and the heart is poisoned before it is aware. Such books are whispers with fair faces and foul hearts. I need not speak of the abuse of the tongue, nor of the listening to words and tales, and unseemly jokes on matters which ought never to be heard or spoken. I must however, add the abuse of our daily bread by fastidious or self-indulgent delicacy or immoderate use of meat and drink. How many secret sins are committed in eating and in drinking; how much real pampering of * Jeremiai iz. 21.

taste, how much excess, are concealed under the veil of social decency or custom. ISTo human eye detects them, but they are visible to God. And how many who have begun by some small immoderation in childhood, and in refined homes, have ended at last in a bondage of habitual excess, and in the degradation of name and fame — outcast and lost.

5. And, lastly, this gift of the Holy Spirit will keep a still more watchful guard over our heart within. The world takes cognizance only of the exterior actions of sin, and thinks itself innocent if it have done nothing which other men can see. Strange blindness; and that with the words of our Divine Redeemer before us, WTio tells us that the worst of sins may be committed in the heart without ever having been suspected by the world. For the essential malice of sin is not the external perpetration of the act It is the internal desire and intent to do wrong. This it is which makes manslaughter differ from murder. The man who commits manslaughter and the man who commits murder both take away life; but one did not intend to kill, the other did intend it. The intention makes the difference. So with every sin that man can commit; he has committed it in the heart before it is ever accomplished by the deed. The end is intended, and the will consenting makes the man guilty before God, though he may never execute it in act. How much sin there is in the heart which men pass by without so much as acknowledging to themselves; or, if they acknowledge it to themselves, they at once absolve themselves without so much an a true thought of its guilt. Therefore it is that they who have a holy and filial fear of offending our Heavenly Father will have a great watchfulness over the deliberate acts of the heart, over its thoughts, and its imaginations, and its memories, and its desires. They will close their eyes and their ears, that they may keep their inmost soul pure, and may inherit the blessing promised to the clean of heart. Not only will they watch over their deliberate acts, but over those half-deliberate acts, those internal adhesions of their thought and will to the rising of temptation, lest they should become internal sin. For when the will consents the sin is theirs.

Now Saint Augustine has left in his book of Confessions a vivid tracing of the internal conflict which I have been trying to describe. The sum of his words is this. He says: " What marvel is this? My mind commands my hand, and it obeys; my whole body is in obedience to my will, and what my will commands my whole body executes. But when my mind commands my will, my will does not obey; and my body, which is external to my mind, is obedient to my mind, and my will, which is a part of my mind, is disobedient to my mind. I command my body, and it obeys me. I command my will, and it will not obey me." And then he says, " Whence comes this marvel?" And he answers, " It is because my will is divided. Sin has wounded it in part, and in part God has healed it; and therefore I partly will what is right and I partly will what is wrong. I have but one will, but that will is divided; and therefore when my better will commands my worse, the worse will does not obey." And what is this, dear brethren, but what the Apostle says in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Koinans: " The good that I will, I do not; but the evil which I not, that T do. When I have a will to do good, evil ie present with me; for I delight in the law in the inward man. But I see another law in my members, fighting •gainst the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to sin and death. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?" This conflict is in every one of you. You are daily conscious of it. Pray God, then, to give you the gift of holy fear, that the better and higher will in you may be made strong, dominant, imperial, so as to subdue and put down the motions of the worse and lower will, which, like the sea, never rests, casting up its mire.*

Now let us make application of all this. We have every one of us had this worldly fear upon us in times past. I dare say there was a time in your life when you had a greater fear of losing the favor of the world than of losing the love of God. There was a time, I dare say, when the thought of being poor was more terrible to you than the thought of being stripped of the grace of God; when the thought of being hated by the world, or being looked down upon by men, was far more afflicting to you than the thought that God and His saints were turning their faces from you. I hope that fear of the world is not in any of you now. Then it may be you passed into the state of servile fear. You knew what was right, and you were tempted to do what was wrong; and you said, " If I only dared to do it, I would; but I know that if I do it I shall lose my soul; and I am afraid of judgment, and I am afraid of hell." And God, in His patience, bore vith your ungeneroiii * Isaias Ivii. 30.

heart. Then you passed out, it may be, through that region of servile fear, until at last the love of God became a little stronger and a little more constraining. You then began to serve God for the love of God, and for the desire of eternal happiness. You hoped to be saved, and you would not offend God because you desired to see His face in eternity.

Be of good heart, then, dear brethren. The less you have of this fear, the more cause to be afraid; the more you have of this fear, the less reason you have to be afraid. If you fear lest you should offend God, lest you should be cast out of His sight, lest you should lose the vision of His face in eternity, such a fear is the beginning of love. No man fears to lose that which he does not care for. That which we prize we fear to lose, and we fear to lose it in the measure in which we love it. Therefore a great fear of losing God is a sure sign of a great love to God. And that love will ripen and grow, for God will increase it, and will bestow upon you the gift of fear purified of all doubt and pain. For, as I said in the beginning, the fear of sons springs not from sin, but from the Holy Ghost. It was perfect in the sinless and Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is in the saints of God standing before the throne of God for all eternity. The saints in the heavenly court cast their crowns before the throne of God. They cast themselves down on their faces, and l< adore Him that sittetb upon the throne."² And in them is made perfect that profound veneration of the Divine Majesty, that profound sense of dependence upon their Maker and theii God, that profound submission of their will to Hi?

perfect *nd eternal will, which is the root and perfection of this holy fear, j Therefore, if we attain to eternal life, there will be in us for ever this great gift of the Holy Ghost, which has guided us step by step through this dark and dangerous world into the kingdom of eternal bliss.

Footnotes

1. "Timor eat habitus volimtatis per quern efficitui homo optime mobilis a supernatural! inspiratione Paracleti ad vitandum omne tnalignum secundum directionem seu opem Spiritus Sancti supernaturaliter in homine operands." Dionys. Carthusian. De Donii Sanct. tract iii. art. 44, Oper. Minw. torn. i. Cologne, 1532. ↩

2. Apocalypse iv. 10. ↩