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: — A holy fear of God must be a check upon our hope, to keep that from swelling into presumption; and a pious hope in God must be a check upon our fear, to keep that from sinking into despondency.

I. AS TO THE CONCERNS OF OUR SOULS, AND OUR SPIRITUAL AND ETERNAL STATE.

1. We must keep up both a holy dread of God and a humble delight in Him; both a reverence of His majesty, with a fear of incurring His displeasure, and at the same time a joy in His love and grace, and an entire complacency in His beauty and bounty, and that benignity of His which is better than life.

2. We must keep up both a trembling for sin, and a triumphing in Christ, as the propitiation for sin.

3. We must keep up both a jealousy of ourselves, and of our own sincerity; and a grateful thankful sense of God's grace in us, and the workings of that grace.

4. We must keep up both a constant caution over our goings, and a constant confidence in the grace of God.

5. We must keep up both a holy fear lest we come short, and a good hope that through grace we shall persevere.

II. AS TO OUR OUTWARD CONCERNS RELATING TO THE BODY, AND THE LIFE THAT NOW IS.

1. When the world smiles upon us, and our affairs in it prosper, yet then we must keep up a holy fear, and not be too confident in our pleasing prospects; not flatter ourselves with hopes of the great advancement and long continuance of our peace and prosperity; but balance the hopes which sense suggests with the fears which reason and religion will suggest.

2. When the world frowns upon us, and we are crossed, and disappointed, and perplexed in our affairs, then we must keep up a good hope, and not be inordinately cast down, no, not in our melancholy prospects, about our health, our safety, our name, our relations, and our effects in the world.

(1) Hope in God's power: be fully assured of this, that how imminent soever the danger is, He can prevent it; how great soever the straits are, He can extricate us out of them, can find out a way for us in an untracked wilderness, and open springs of water to us in a dry and barren land: for with Him nothing is impossible, nor is His arm ever shortened, nor His wisdom nonplussed.

(2) Hope in His providence; and believe not only that He can do anything, but that He does do everything, and whatever the event is, God does therein perform the thing flirt is appointed for us, and takes cognizance of us and our affairs, how mean and despicable soever we are.

(3) Hope in His pity and tender compassions; which, in the day of your grief and fear, you are to look upon yourselves as the proper objects of.

(4) Hope in His promise; that word of His upon which He hath caused us to hope, and which we have all the reason in the world to build upon, for not one iota or tittle of it shall fall to the ground. Though he has not promised to deliver us from that particular evil we have a dread of, or to give us that particular comfort and success we are desirous of, yet He has promised that nothing shall harm them who are followers of Him; nay, that all things shall "work together for good," etc.

III. AS TO THE PUBLIC CONCERNS OF THE CHURCH OF GOD, AND OUR OWN LAND AND NATION.

1. We have always reason to keep up a holy fear as to public affairs, and to be apprehensive of trouble before us, even when things look most promising.

(1) We are a provoking people. Atheism, vice, etc.

(2) We are a divided people; and what can be expected, but that a kingdom divided against itself should be brought to desolation?

(3) God has told us that in the world we shall have tribulation; all the disciples of Christ must count upon it, and not flatter ourselves with hopes of an uninterrupted tranquillity anywhere on this side heaven.

2. There are three things which may encourage our hope, and keep the balance even against all our fears, as to the concerns both of the Protestant Churches abroad and our own nation.

(1) The word which God has spoken to us; which (whatever other props our hopes may be supported with) is the great foundation on which they must be built, and then they are fixed.

(2) The work which God has begun among us.

(3) The wonders which He has wrought for us.

( Matthew Henry.)

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KJV: The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.

WEB: Yahweh takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his loving kindness.