Prov. xvi. 6.
By the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil.
All the authority of Solomon’s name and wisdom will, I doubt, be no more than sufficient to procure respect to this observation; which some may consider as a trite and vulgar truth, scarce deserving their regard; while others, perhaps, will not so much as allow it to be a truth at all, but indeed a vulgar mistake, arising out of the narrow views of ignorant or superficial declaimers. It may be slighted by one set of men, as conveying no information, and by another, as conveying a wrong one.
Let me attempt then to rescue the sacred text from both these imputations. Permit me to shew you, that the observation, it contains, is neither so generally received, as to make all further discourse about it frivolous and unnecessary; nor yet, on the other hand, of so questionable a nature, as to justify the scorn with which it is sometimes rejected.
I. To those, who are such fastidious hearers of the word, as to disregard an important truth, because repeatedly inforced upon them, I might reply that such truths can never be insisted upon too much, that our duty is to inculcate them, in season, and out of season.
But the fact is mistaken. We are so far from nauseating our hearers, with a too common and superfluous truth, when we remind them perpetually, that, by the fear of God, men depart from evil, that, on the contrary, very many want to be informed, or at least convinced, of it.
What the text affirms, is, that the fear of God, or the RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE, is the proper guide of life. But look now into the world, at large: there the acknowledged rule of life, is FASHION. Look into the civil or political world: there the boasted rule of life, is THE LAW OF THE MAGISTRATE. Look into the learned world: there too commonly the only rule of life is each man’s own reason, or what he proudly calls PHILOSOPHY.
And will it now be said that the fear of God, is a principle too stale and too unquestioned to be discoursed upon and recommended to you from this place, when we see so large and so considerable a part of the world actuated by one or other of these different and discordant principles? But neither
II. Is the truth, though far enough from being generally received, so slightly grounded as to justify any man in the contempt of it.
It is a truth, taught of God, and revered by all wise men. It has nature, and reason, and experience on its side; and is only combated by the folly, the short-sighted policy, or lastly, the pride, of half-thinking and presumptuous men.
For to give, now, the godless principles, I before mentioned, a short and separate examination.
1. Tell the man of the world, that the religious principle is that by which alone he ought to govern himself, and you are presently told of the power and prerogatives of FASHION.
“The fear of God, he will say, may be the proper rule of monks and hermits; but must be qualified, at least, in many respects, by such as live in the world and mix in the society of it. They who have to converse with mankind, are to accommodate themselves to their notions and practices: they are to think with the rest of the world, or at least they are to act with them: they are to found their moral systems on the liberal and enlarged basis of approved use or custom. Their observation of human life must inform them of the ways that men take to conciliate the good will of their fellows, to prosecute their own advantages in the world, and to acquire the confidence and esteem of that society, in which they are stationed. What they find to be the rule of others, must be a rule to themselves. To do otherwise is not weakness, only: It is, besides, arrogance, incivility, inhumanity.”
All this is thought plausible by some men; and taken together, it must be owned, forms a very easy and commodious system: but how consistent with conscience, with duty, and with common sense, they will do well to consider. For if fashion only be to regulate our conduct in all cases, I ask not what becomes of piety, but of humanity itself, I mean of those offices which we owe to others and to ourselves, and which reason dictates to us in every situation. Custom, you will say, is practical reason. But what! To be led blind-fold by the prevailing practice, whatever it be, what is it but to renounce our intelligent nature, and to live at hazard, and without reason? Further still: If it be sufficient to do as we see others creditably do, without examining any farther, we shall often find ourselves involved, I do not say in the most irrational, the most inconsistent, but the most horrid practices. Then, killing with malice and with forethought, if the point of honour prevail, will be no murder: And, adultery, if the law of politeness so ordain, shall hide its atrocious nature under the mask of gallantry: Then shall society at large become a scene of fraud and rapine; good faith, shall be termed simplicity, and fair dealing, folly.
Go now, and say that the fear of God is a needless restraint on free spirits; and count the advantages which ye have reason to promise to yourselves, from acknowledging no other guide of life, but imperious fashion!
2. A graver set of men come next, and tell us, “That fashion is indeed a very uncertain guide of life: But that LAW, the result of the public wisdom, armed with the public force, is an adequate rule of human action; that the legislator’s province is to enact such salutary laws, and the magistrate’s duty, to carry them into execution, as shall be sufficient to secure the peace and order of society; And that every other rule of life is at once unnecessary and ineffectual: unnecessary, because the interests of virtue are amply provided for by the wisdom of law; and ineffectual, because no other principle has force enough to exact obedience: That, in particular, the fear of God is too remote a consideration to restrain the tumultuous passions of men, which are held in subjection by nothing but the instant terrors of civil justice; in a word, that where the law of the state is duly enforced, there is no need of other restraints; and that, lastly, to lay a stress on the religious principle is to weaken the operation of law, as it opens a door to fanaticism and superstition.”
This plea of the politician receives an apparent force from this certain truth, That law is indeed of indispensable necessity, and that the general virtue and happiness of a people cannot be maintained without it. We join him therefore very cordially in this encomium on civil justice; but must remind him, withal, that neither is the religious principle superseded by it, nor can civil justice itself maintain its due course, without the support of the religious principle: That, when the authority of law has done its best, there will be much for religion to controul and regulate; much, that is not within the reach of law, and without its jurisdiction: That the fear of the Lord penetrates deeper and farther, than the sword of the magistrate; and that, even within his own province, all his policy and all his power will take a very imperfect effect, without the concurrence of a higher principle; as he himself is abundantly convinced from the necessity of fortifying his own most important constitutions, by the religion of an oath; which is nothing else but an appeal to the fear of God, under a sense of its being a needful supplement to the fear of the magistrate.
Yet society, they say, is entirely upheld by the authority of law; at least, the world may go on very well, by virtue of that only. Yes; It may go on, as we see it does, full of open violence, which all its terrors cannot restrain; and of secret frauds, for which it cannot so much as project a remedy: It may go on, indeed, but polluted by vices of all sorts, which are not the objects of law, and even by crimes, which are often too strong for it: It may go on indeed, till the religious principle be quite effaced from the minds of men (if we may have leave for a moment, to put so desperate, and, thank God, so impossible a case); but, when that dreadful time comes, society itself, with all its bulwark of laws, must inevitably be swept away with it.
Universal history bears testimony to this awful truth; there being no account of any state on the face of the earth, which could ever support itself in general virtue, or general happiness, by the mere force of its civil institutions. And how should it be otherwise, when the fear of God is requisite to enforce the law, as well as to observe it; to supply the state with faithful magistrates, as well as with obedient subjects?
If then this vital principle of religion, so necessary to the conservation of all states, cannot be kept free from some mixture of fanaticism or superstition, we are surely to endure the inconvenience, as we can, rather than put the interests of society to hazard by suspending them all on the weak and false supports of an irreligious policy.
3. Lastly, the PHILOSOPHER’s plea, though specious at first sight, is of all others the weakest. For fashion, if it chance to be on the side of virtue, will be punctually followed: And the sword of the magistrate can, in part, at least, enforce obedience. But what coercive power is there in philosophy? It may see and determine right: but who, or what shall compell this supreme directress of life to observe its own determinations? “The fitness, it may be said, of those determinations themselves; the very reason of the thing being the proper restraint of reasonable natures.” Still the question returns, What if I am disposed to throw off this restraint? I act against conviction, indeed, and am self-condemned, which to a liberal mind is no small punishment. But look into the world, and see if that punishment be sufficient to induce the bulk of mankind, nay the gross body of philosophers themselves, to depart from evil.
And what, after all, is this magnified reason? One man admits no other rule of life but abstract truth, or what he calls the differences of things: Another, will hear of none, but an instinctive moral sense: And a third, entrenches himself within the narrow circle of private happiness. These several systems have been laid down, each in its turn, as the only proper basis of moral action: But could the patrons of them be made to agree in any one; or could their several schemes be made, as perhaps they might, to consist together: still, they could only serve to acquaint us what the nature of virtue is; they do but slenderly provide for the practice of it.
Let the philosophers, then, debate this matter among themselves. It is enough for us to learn of Solomon, to fear God: To fear HIM, who is everywhere and essentially present; who is conscious to all our actions and all our thoughts; from whose knowledge there is no escape, from whose justice there is no appeal, and to whose power there is no hope, or possibility of resistance.
With this principle, an unquestioned principle of reason, if there be any, deeply rooted in the mind, we have indeed an adequate rule of life; or, what is better, a controuling motive to put in practice whatever rule of life we chuse to follow. Moral systems, taken by themselves, are poor ineffective things; even virtue’s self is but a name, till the religious principle be infused into her. Then it is, that she lives and acts, and by her powerful influence inclines the hearts of men to depart from evil.
Nor let any man apprehend that this religious fear will degrade, or servilize his virtue. To be free from sin, and only the servants of God, is the truest and noblest liberty.
Dismissing, then, all other rules of life, let us adhere to that, which Solomon prescribes to us. It had been venerable from any hands, but comes with an extraordinary grace and propriety from HIM, who delivers it. So that none of the parties, concerned in this discourse, can excuse themselves from paying a peculiar deference to his judgment.
1. The MEN OF THE WORLD can have no pretence for declining this determination. The author of it is no obscure sordid moralist, whose views of life are confined to a cloyster or a cottage. He addresses them from the throne of Israel, when it was the pride of the East; and from the center of a court, which he had made the envy of the surrounding nations. The followers of fashion will then act but agreeably to their own principles, if they respect the example of such a court, and the authority of its sovereign.
2. The POLITICIANS will reflect, that their instructor is himself a great magistrate, consummate in the arts of government; who yet could find no secret, but that of the fear of God, by which he could reign securely himself, or promote the real welfare and prosperity of his people. With what complacency do they sometimes urge a political aphorism, taken from Aristotle! But a greater than Aristotle is here.
3. Lastly, to you, the sages of the world, who are, or account yourselves PHILOSOPHERS, nothing can be so respectable to you, as the authority of ONE, whose name is the name itself of wisdom; of ONE, who, like you, had given his heart to know wisdom[245]; who had an understanding, at least, equal to yours, and an experience of life, far greater. Yet even HE delivers it, as the result of all his knowledge, That by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.
It is indeed this principle only, which gives its proper direction and integrity to every other. It controuls Fashion; supplies the defects of Law; and enforces the conclusions of Reason. It rectifies all our systems, and gives sense and solidity to all our speculations.
To conclude, Let us all be wise enough to reverence the plain doctrine of the text, and to act upon it: The rather, as that doctrine is not only just and reasonable in itself, but proceeds from one, whom the Spirit of God had been pleased to inform with celestial wisdom.