Even fear, though fastidious nerves are apt to discredit it as a lower sentiment, has its office in disciplining thoughtless and stubborn wills, breaking down pride and prompting insensibility, till it is ready to hand us over to motives of a nobler order. There is a meaning in a tradition of an ancient German prince, who, in early life, was bidden by an oracle to search out an inscription on a ruined wall which should prefigure his mortal fate. He found the Latin words, signifying _after six_. Supposing they revealed the number of days he was to live, he gave himself for the six days following to his hitherto neglected soul, preparing himself to die. But finding death did not come, he was still held to his sober resolutions by supposing six weeks were the interpretation; and then he prolonged his holy life to six months, and six years. On the first day of the seventh year, by reason of the excellent manhood into which he had thus formed his character, he had gained the confidence of the people, and he found the fulfillment of the ambiguous prophecy, by being chosen Emperor of Germany. Here is a figure of common experience. We may conceive it to have been a mere “spiritual” process, that the prince should have been drawn to piety, by loving goodness for its own sake. But it was the timid dread of dying that drew him, and the royal benefactions of a truly Christian monarch justified the agent. Have you never known a fever, or an accident, or the incipient symptoms of a consumption to be the determining cause that bent the whole current of a life from earthward to heavenward? Have you never known that a mere dread of punishment or pain, of hell or disgrace, has stopped the erring feet of lust, silenced profanity, driven back the Sabbath-breaker? God is not ashamed to take into the sublime economy of his purposes these stimulants to virtue; and let not us, in our puerile conceit, venture to pronounce them unworthy. Outgrow them if you will, and can; but take care that you are not found, after all, _below_, instead of _above_ the plane of their influence.