Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Fear

Religious fear, when produced by just apprehensions of a divine power, naturally overlooks all human greatness that stands in competition with it, and extinguishes every other terror.

What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?

It is no ways congruous that God should be frightening men into truth who were made to be wrought upon by calm evidence and gentle methods of persuasion.

Until this step is firmly taken, the House will continue under the impression of fear,—the most unwise, the most unjust, and the most cruel of all counsellors.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety; because in that state of things the mind is firm and collected, and the judgment unembarrassed. But when the fear and the evil feared come on together, and press at once upon us, deliberation itself is ruinous, which saves upon all other occasions; because, when perils are instant, it delays decision; the man is in a flutter, and in a hurry, and his judgment is gone.

There is a courageous wisdom: there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result, not of caution, but of fear. Under misfortunes, it often happens that the nerves of the understanding are so relaxed, the pressing peril of the hour so completely confounds all the faculties, that no future danger can be properly provided for, can be justly estimated, can be so much as fully seen. The eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. An abject distrust of ourselves, an extravagant admiration of the enemy, present us with no hope but in a compromise with his pride by a submission to his will. This short plan of policy is the only counsel which will obtain a hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf with all the rash precipitation of fear. The nature of courage is, without a question, to be conversant with danger; but in the palpable night of their terrors, men under consternation suppose, not that it is the danger which by a sure instinct calls out the courage to resist it, but that it is the courage which produces the danger. They therefore seek for a refuge in the fears themselves, and consider a temporizing meanness as the only source of safety.

As our fear excludeth not that boldness which becometh saints, so if our familiarity with God do not savour of fear, it draweth too near that irreverent confidence wherewith true humility can never stand.

Many never think on God but in extremity of fear, and then, perplexity not suffering them to be idle, they think and do as it were in a phrenzy.

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

The mind frights itself with anything reflected on in gross, and at a distance: things thus offered to the mind carry the show of nothing but difficulty.

The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, and with good reason; that passion alone in the trouble of it exceeding all other accidents.

There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find him.

Fear is far more painful to cowardice than death to true courage.

Fear relies upon a natural love of ourselves, and is complicated with a necessary desire of our own preservation.

Thus does he foolishly who, for fear of anything in this world, ventures to displease God; for in so doing he runs away from men and falls into the hands of the living God.

Fear is that passion which hath the greatest power over us, and by which God and his laws take the surest hold of us.