Can we not understand what the ordinary man means when he rails against cant?
In conclusion, let us take this final list of the Seven Gifts, which sums up the faith of Christendom, and consider it again for psychological reasons beginning with the last:
WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING, KNOWLEDGE
COUNSEL AND MIGHT
REVERENCE
(Godliness)
The Fear of God is better expressed by Christians as Reverence. Ancient faiths were, and primitive idolatries still are, largely religions of fear; but there is no fear in love, and perfect love casteth out fear, as S. John says.[1] Nothing is v more striking than to study a Concordance, and see with what enormous frequency the fear of God occurs in the Old Testament, and how it has dropped out in the New.[2] The phrase remains with us, when we think of the wicked who do horrible things and have no fear of God before their eyes: 'You may have no compassion, but are you not afraid to do such
- ↑ 1 John 4 18.
- ↑ In the Gospels, it occurs in Luke 18 2 in the story of the Judge who feared not God neither regarded man: the penitent thief, in Luke 23 40, asks, 'Dost thou not fear God?' In the Acts and Epistles it is echoed but rarely, and the 'spirit of bondage again unto fear' is especially repudiated by S. Paul on the ground of our sonship to God, in Rom. 8 15.
