half the battle. In order that we may be all for God, we must combine love with fear.
Is not the love of God sufficient, says the great St. Augustine, to make us avoid sin? Was it needful to employ fear and terrible threats? Timor in adjutorium amoris excitandus fuit
At least — if fear did what love should do, we should have less to complain of — what is so shocking is, that nowadays we have reached that pitch of indifference which is neither moved by fear nor by love, and that the most frightful things do not make any impression on our hearts.
[Father Faber. — This celebrated and justly appreciated Oratorian Father died on September 26, 1863. The reader is referred to Father John Bowden's interesting Life of this zealous servant of God.
Suffice it to say, that his hymns are sung throughout the length and breadth of the land, that his works have been translated in many an European language, and that his preaching entitled him to the name of the modern Chrysostom; for truly, like to that great saint and doctor, he was " honey-mouthed."]
The loss of holy fear is the mischief of all mischiefs. For this fear is a special gift of the Holy Ghost, to be sought for by prayer and penance, by tears and cries, by patience and impatience, and by the very yearnings of an earnest and familiar love. It has always seemed to me very and unexpectedly beautiful when in the special office of St. Philip Neri, knowing what manner of man he was, and what peculiar spirit he was of, it says in the antiphon of the Magnificat, " Come, my children, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord;" for how else shall the saint teach us divinest love?
