Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/141

Rh And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding." Thus we perceive that the revelation God made to man in the beginning, in which consists his highest wisdom, is, "the fear of the Lord." There is a servile dread of God, arising from a sense of guilt and the awful desert of sin, which sometimes so harasses the impenitent, as to cause them to agonize under awful forebodings of coming wrath. But the principle referred to in the text, is a holy, reverential fear of offending the Divine Majesty, and a tender concern to please him in all our walks and ways. It includes the whole of practical obedience to the commands of God. Good old "Noah moved with" this holy "fear," when in prompt obedience to the command of his Maker, he "prepared an ark to the saving of his house." This holy