We all like comfort. But what kind of comfort do we not merely like, but need? Merely to be comfortable? To be free from fear, anxiety, sorrow? The comfort which poor human beings want in such a world as this is not the comfort of ease, but the comfort of strength. The comforter whom we need is not one who will merely say kind things, but give help—help to the weary, lonely, heavy-laden heart which has no time to rest. We need not the sunny and smiling face, but the strong helping arm. For we may be in that state that smiles are shocking to us, and mere kindness—though we may be grateful for it—of no more comfort to us than sweet music to a drowning man. We may be miserable, and unable to help being miserable, and unwilling to help it too. We
do not wish to flee from our sorrow: we do not wish to forget it. We dare not. It is so awful, so heart-rending, so plain-spoken, that God, the master and tutor of our hearts, must wish us to face it and endure it. Our Father has given us the cup—shall we not drink it? Oh! for a comforter who will help us to drink the bitter cup—who will give us faith to say, with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”—who will give us the firm reason to look steadily at our grief, and learn the lesson it is meant to teach—who will give us the temperate will to keep sober and calm amid the shocks and changes of mortal life! If we had such a comforter as that, we should not care if he seemed at times stern, as well as kind; we could endure rebuke from him if we could only
get from him wisdom to understand the rebuke, and courage to bear the chastisement. Where is that comforter? God answers: That Comforter am I, the God of Heaven and Earth. There are comforters on earth who can help thee with wise words and noble counsels, can be strong as man and tender as woman. But God can be more strong than man, more tender than woman likewise; and when the strong arm of man supports thee no longer, yet under thee are the Everlasting Arms.
All Saints-Day Sermons.
. . . You are disappointed. Do remember if you lose heart about your work, that none of it is lost. That the good of every good deed remains, and breeds, and works on for ever; and that all
that fails and is lost is the outside shell of the thing, which perhaps might have been better done, but better or worse has nothing to do with the real spiritual good which you have done to men’s hearts, for which God will surely repay you in His own way and time.
Letters and Memories.
Don’t be downhearted if outward humiliation, disappointment, failure, come at first. If God be indeed our Father in any real sense, then whom He loveth He chasteneth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. And “till thou art emptied of thyself, God cannot fill thee,” though it be a law of the old Mystics, is true and practical common sense. Go thy way, though the way to true light is a long ladder.
Letters and Memories.
As for any schemes of mine, it is a slight matter whether they have failed or not. But the failure of a hundred schemes would not alter my conviction that they are attempts in a right direction; and I will die in hope, not having received the promises, but beholding them afar off, and confessing myself a stranger and a pilgrim.