WHAT IS FEAR?
THERE was once a little boy who went on a visit to his grandma when he was not much more than five years old.
His grandma was very kind to him, and very fond of him. He was a bold, venturesome lad, and would often run out by himself for hours together, climbing the hillsides after flowers, or seeking nuts and berries in the woods, till the good old lady sometimes felt quite nervous for fear the gipsies would entice the child away, or he should fall into the brook, or get lost.
One day, when he had gone out quite early in this manner, he did not come back at noon to dinner, nor as the afternoon wore on; and then a thunderstorm broke over the hills, and the lightning flashed, and rain fell in torrents. You may imagine how uneasy she felt about him, and how she sent the gardener and the stable-boy in different directions to seek for him, and how glad she felt when, in the twilight, he was brought back to her safe and sound.
They had found him on the far hillside in an old hut, where he had crept for shelter from the rain, and was sitting quite contentedly, watching the noisy brook splashing down over the stones. His grandma scolded him a little, which was no wonder, for he had made her sadly uneasy. "I wonder fear did not drive you home, child," said she.
"Fear, grandma?" said he. "I never saw fear. I do not know what it is."
That little boy was Horatio Nelson, afterward that famous Lord Nelson who won for England those great sea fights of which you have read and heard, and who fell at last at the battle of Trafalgar, en board
"The Victory."
It is good to be brave and strong, and a bold and fearless nature is a fine thing to possess; but there is one kind of fear, which we all ought to have within us, the fear of doing wrong, the fear of offending God, and "grieving his Holy Spirit." That is the one sort of fear which it is both good and safe to have; and the bravest and the boldest and the most noble of men have always felt this fear the most.
"The fear of the Lord, which is "the beginning of wisdom," the Bible calls it, and rightly; and the more we learn to love God, the more of this "fear" we shall have, because we shall fear to do the least evil thing to displease our dear Lord, and then we need have no other fear of any kind.
Selected.