2 lines
1.8 KiB
HTML
2 lines
1.8 KiB
HTML
<p>In these two verses we are invited and encouraged to live in the fear of God by the advantages which attend a religious life. The <i>fear of the Lord</i> is here put for all gracious principles, producing gracious practices. 1. Where this reigns it produces a holy security and serenity of mind. There is in it a <i>strong confidence</i>; it enables a man still to hold fast both his purity and his peace, whatever happens, and gives him boldness before God and the world. <i>I know that I shall be justified—None of these things move me</i>; such is the language of this confidence. 2. It entails a blessing upon posterity. The children of those that by faith make God their confidence shall be encouraged by the promise that God will be a God to believers and to their seed to flee to him as their refuge, and they shall find shelter in him. The children of religious parents often do the better for their parents’ instructions and example and fare the better for their faith and prayers. “<i>Our fathers trusted in thee</i>, therefore we will.” 3. It is an over-flowing ever-flowing spring of comfort and joy; it is <i>a fountain of life</i>, yielding constant pleasure and satisfaction to the soul, joys that are pure and fresh, are life to the soul, and quench its thirst, and can never be drawn dry; it is a <i>well of living water</i>, that is springing up to, and is the earnest of, eternal life. 4. It is a sovereign antidote against sin and temptation. Those that have a true relish of the pleasures of serious godliness will not be allured by the baits of sin to swallow its hook; they know where to obtain better things than any it can pretend to offer, and therefore it is easy to them <i>to depart from the snares of death</i> and to keep their foot from being taken in them.</p>
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