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(With 1 John 4:16): — A sermon on these two texts was published by Mr. Charles Voysey, and entitled, "A challenge to the orthodox." The heading of the sermon puts the matter in an interrogative form: "Is God love? OR, IS it a fearful thing to fall into His hands?" The two ideas are regarded as incompatible, and evidently it is suggested that they are startling opposites. Now it will be for us to consider whether they are really opposites, and whether there is any contradiction of moral idea in them at all.

I. THIS SEEMING CONTRADICTION IS OFTEN HARMONISED IN HUMAN LIFE. Most of US have known the love of home, as amongst the dearest experiences of earthly life; and we shall not easily forget the dewy eyes that looked so carefully into the trunk that was being packed for us with sacrificial love. True! but yet we can remember times when it was "a fearful thing to fall into our earthly father's hands"! The fatherly spirit seemed turned into a consuming flame of righteous anger. Nay, in cases of guilty betrayal, the deeper the parental love, the more intense the indignation at the harm done to some dear child of the home. And who can measure the terrible influences of sin in God's fair universe? Is His voice the only voice that is to be silent? Is His hand the only one that is not to hold the sword of justice? Is He who is the author of the eternal moral law, and who is the inspirer and quickener of all moral intuition, to be assailed as wanting in love, if by the lips of one of His own inspired apostles He declares that " it is a fearful thing to fall into His hands"?

II. THIS SEEMING CONTRADICTION WAS HARMONISED IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST HIMSELF. All ages since the Redeemer's advent have at least agreed in the testimony that He was a Lord of love. And yet, while His whole life is a revelation that "God is love," He casts some clear light, upon the truth that "it is a fearful thing to fall into His hands." Wicked men trembled as He read their hearts. He saw where sin was taking the forms of hypocrisy and hardness. And would any universe be beautiful or desirable that had not a retribution for such as these hardened hypocrites? Would it not be a fearful thing, if it were not " a fearful thing for them to fall into the hands of God"? Were they to "devour widows' houses for nothing"? Were they to be "full of all uncleanness," and yet meet no condemnation from the immaculate God? Where is justice in the universe, if they escape from "the wrath to come"'?

III. THIS SEEMING CONTRADICTION IS NOT A CHRISTIAN ONE ALONE. It is "a fearful thing to fall into the hands" of Nature, if you disobey her laws. The tempest, will not let you play with the lightning; the precipice will not let you tempt her indulgence by plunging into the depths; the sea soon casts upturned and ghastly faces on to the shore if you tack amid the rocks, even though there be "beauty at the prow, and pleasure at the helm"! And what are we reminded of when Nature thus resents our negligence and ignorance? We are told that all these laws and powers could not be altered for one instant in the smallest degree without injuring man, and that to secure his welt-being and safety all these laws are established. What would be the good of saying, Now you must choose one horn of this dilemma — "You cannot say, Nature is love, and yet it is a fearful thing to fall into her hands"?

IV. THESE SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS HAVE BEEN HARMONISED WITHIN BY CONSCIENCE ITSELF. Instincts are often truer than arguments. We feel in relation to what is Called crime that a merely reformatory system is not enough. It would be wrong to pass over their crimes, wrong to make Nemesis impossible! What? with their miserable victims of yesterday tortured, pillaged, traduced, and murdered! Would it be right to say, as does Mr. Voysey, "Love makes no bargain, and imposes no conditions; can never so betray itself as to say, 'Believe and thou shalt be saved,' but, 'thou shalt be saved whether thou believest or not!'" A fearful enough universe such an one would be; an altogether unmitigated misery to live in it. "Love imposes no conditions"! Is it so? Is there to be no "Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow"? I venture to affirm that the righteous instincts of human nature say emphatically, "Amen," as of old, to all these condemnations.

(W. M. Statham, M. A.)

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KJV: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

WEB: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.