NOT very long ago two schoolboys entered a shop where Bibles and text cards were sold. They came in together, while a third, perhaps not quite so daring, stood just outside the door.
"You should take that notice down, it's wrong!” cried one of the boys.
The lady behind the counter was so astonished and the boys were so excited, that she could not find out all at once what "notice" they meant, but at last she understood.
Right at the back of the shop, facing the door, high up on the very top shell of all, was a large board, and on it was painted in big capital letters—
FEAR GOD, HONOR THE KING.
And this was the "notice" that the schoolboys thought so wrong that it ought to be taken down.
It was no want of loyalty to the king of England that made them so much in earnest; it was all right to honor the king, no doubt; but they really thought it was a wrong thing to FEAR GOD. They did not know that the words were taken from the Bible, and that Peter wrote them in the letter we call the First Epistle of Peter, chapter 2, verse 17.
This letter of Peter's was written to those who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and knew God as their loving Father; why, then, does he tell them, and with them all who know and love God, to FEAR GOD? It is that we may never forget the majesty and holiness of God, that the love which we have toward God may be a love that fears to grieve Him, fears to sin against One who so loved us that He gave His only-begotten Son to die for us.
E. E. S.