The Holy Spirit is called “the Comforter” over and over again in the Scriptures. For example in John xiv. 26, we read, “But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” And in John xv. 26, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me.” (See also John xvi. 27.) The word translated “Comforter” in these passages means that, but it means much more beside. It is a word difficult of adequate translation into any one word in English. The translators of the Revised Version found difficulty in deciding with what word to render the Greek word so translated. They have suggested in the margin of the Revised Version “advocate” “helper” and a simple transference of the Greek word into English, “Paraclete.” The word translated “Comforter” means literally, “one called to another's side,” the idea being, one right at hand to take another's part. It is the same word that is translated “advocate” in 1 John ii. 1, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” But “advocate,” as we now understand it, does not give the full force of the Greek word so rendered. Etymologically “advocate” means nearly the same thing. Advocate is Latin (“advocatus”) and it means “one called to another to [pg 068] take his part,” but in our modern usage, the word has acquired a restricted meaning. The Greek word translated “Comforter” (Parakleetos) means “one called alongside,” that is one called to stand constantly by one's side and who is ever ready to stand by us and take our part in everything in which his help is needed. It is a wonderfully tender and expressive name for the Holy One. Sometimes when we think of the Holy Spirit, He seems to be so far away, but when we think of the Parakleetos, or in plain English our “Stand-byer” or our “part-taker,” how near He is. Up to the time that Jesus made this promise to the disciples, He Himself had been their Parakleetos. When they were in any emergency or difficulty they turned to Him. On one occasion, for example, the disciples were in doubt as to how to pray and they turned to Jesus and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” And the Lord taught them the wonderful prayer that has come down through the ages (Luke xi. 1-4). On another occasion, Peter was sinking in the waves of Galilee and he cried, “Lord, save me,” and immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him and saved him (Matt. xiv. 30, 31). In every extremity they turned to Him. Just so now that Jesus is gone to the Father, we have another Person, just as Divine as He is, just as wise as He, just as strong as He, just as loving as He, just as tender as He, just as ready and just as able to help, who is always right by our side. Yes, better yet, who dwells in our heart, who will take hold and help if we only trust Him to do it.
If the truth of the Holy Spirit as set forth in the [pg 069] name “Parakleetos” once gets into our heart and abides there, it will banish all loneliness forever; for how can we ever be lonely when this best of all Friends is ever with us? In the last eight years, I have been called upon to endure what would naturally be a very lonely life. Most of the time I am separated from wife and children by the calls of duty. For eighteen months consecutively, I was separated from almost all my family by many thousands of miles. The loneliness would have been unendurable were it not for the one all-sufficient Friend, who was always with me. I recall one night walking up and down the deck of a storm-tossed steamer in the South Seas. Most of my family were 18,000 miles away; the remaining member of my family was not with me. The officers were busy on the bridge, and I was pacing the deck alone, and the thought came to me, “Here you are all alone.” Then another thought came, “I am not alone; by my side as I walk this deck in the loneliness and the storm walks the Holy Spirit” and He was enough. I said something like this once at a Bible conference in St. Paul. A doctor came to me at the close of the meeting and gently said, “I want to thank you for that thought about the Holy Spirit always being with us. I am a doctor. Oftentimes I have to drive far out in the country in the night and storm to attend a case, and I have often been so lonely, but I will never be lonely again. I will always know that by my side in my doctor's carriage, the Holy Spirit goes with me.”
If this thought of the Holy Spirit as the ever-present Paraclete once gets into your heart and abides there, it [pg 070] will banish all fear forever. How can we be afraid in the face of any peril, if this Divine One is by our side to counsel us and to take our part? There may be a howling mob about us, or a lowering storm, it matters not. He stands between us and both mob and storm. One night I had promised to walk four miles to a friend's house after an evening session of a conference. The path led along the side of a lake. As I started for my friend's house, a thunder-storm was coming up. I had not counted on this but as I had promised, I felt I ought to go. The path led along the edge of the lake, oftentimes very near to the edge, sometimes the lake was near the path and sometimes many feet below. The night was so dark with the clouds one could not see ahead. Now and then there would be a blinding flash of lightning in which you could see where the path was washed away, and then it would be blacker than ever. You could hear the lake booming below. It seemed a dangerous place to walk but that very week, I had been speaking upon the Personality of the Holy Spirit and about the Holy Spirit as an ever-present Friend, and the thought came to me, “What was it you were telling the people in the address about the Holy Spirit as an ever-present Friend?” And then I said to myself, “Between me and the boiling lake and the edge of the path walks the Holy Spirit,” and I pushed on fearless and glad. When we were in London, a young lady attended the meeting one afternoon in the Royal Albert Hall. She had an abnormal fear of the dark. It was absolutely impossible for her to go into a dark room alone, but the thought of the [pg 071] Holy Spirit as an ever-present Friend sank into her mind. She went home and told her mother what a wonderful thought she had heard that day, and how it had banished forever all fear from her. It was already growing very dark in the London winter afternoon and her mother looked up and said, “Very well, let us see if it is real. Go up to the top of the house and shut yourself alone in a dark room.” She instantly sprang to her feet, bounded up the stairs, went into a room that was totally dark and shut the door and sat down. All fear was gone, and as she wrote the next day, the whole room seemed to be filled with a wonderful glory, the glory of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
In the thought of the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete there is also a cure for insomnia. For two awful years, I suffered from insomnia. Night after night I would go to bed apparently almost dead for sleep; it seemed as though I must sleep, but I could not sleep; oh, the agony of those two years! It seemed as if I would lose my mind if I did not get relief. Relief came at last and for years I went on without the suggestion of trouble from insomnia. Then one night I retired to my room in the Institute, lay down expecting to fall asleep in a moment as I usually did, but scarcely had my head touched the pillow when I became aware that insomnia was back again. If one has ever had it, he never forgets it and never mistakes it. It seemed as if insomnia were sitting on the foot-board of my bed, grinning at me and saying, “I am back again for another two years.” “Oh,” I thought, “two more awful years of insomnia.” But that very [pg 072] morning, I had been lecturing to our students in the Institute about the Personality of the Holy Spirit and about the Holy Spirit as an ever-present Friend, and at once the thought came to me, “What were you talking to the students about this morning? What were you telling them?” and I looked up and said, “Thou blessed Spirit of God, Thou art here. I am not alone. If Thou hast anything to say to me, I will listen,” and He began to open to me some of the deep and precious things about my Lord and Saviour, things, that filled my soul with joy and rest, and the next thing I knew I was asleep and the next thing I knew it was to-morrow morning. So whenever insomnia has come my way since, I have simply remembered that the Holy Spirit was there and I have looked up to Him to speak to me and to teach me and He has done so and insomnia has taken its flight.
In the thought of the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete there is a cure for a breaking heart. How many aching, breaking hearts there are in this world of ours, so full of death and separation from those we most dearly love. How many a woman there is, who a few years ago, or a few months or a few weeks ago, had no care, no worry, for by her side was a Christian husband who was so wise and strong that the wife rested all responsibility upon him and she walked care-free through life and satisfied with his love and companionship. But one awful day, he was taken from her. She was left alone and all the cares and responsibilities rested upon her. How empty that heart has been ever since; how empty the whole world has been. She has just dragged [pg 073] through her life and her duties as best she could with an aching and almost breaking heart. But there is One, if she only knew it, wiser and more loving than the tenderest husband, One willing to bear all the care and responsibilities of life for her, One who is able, if, she will only let Him, to fill every nook and corner of her empty and aching heart; that One is the Paraclete. I said something like this in St. Andrews' Hall in Glasgow. At the close of the meeting a sad-faced Christian woman, wearing a widow's garb, came to me as I stepped out of the hall into the reception room. She hurried to me and said, “Dr. Torrey, this is the anniversary of my dear husband's death. Just one year ago to-day he was taken from me. I came to-day to see if you could not speak some word to help me. You have given me just the word I need. I will never be lonesome again.” A year and a half passed by. I was on the yacht of a friend on the lochs of the Clyde. One day a little boat put out from shore and came alongside the yacht. One of the first to come up the side of the yacht was this widow. She hurried to me and the first thing she said was, “The thought that you gave me that day in St. Andrews' Hall on the anniversary of my husband's leaving me has been with me ever since, and the Holy Spirit does satisfy me and fill my heart.”
But it is in our work for our Master that the thought of the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete comes with greatest helpfulness. I think it may be permissible to illustrate it from my own experience. I entered the ministry because I was literally forced to. For years I refused [pg 074] to be a Christian, because I was determined that I would not be a preacher, and I feared that if I surrendered to Christ I must enter the ministry. My conversion turned upon my yielding to Him at this point. The night I yielded, I did not say, “I will accept Christ” or “I will give up sin,” or anything of that sort, I simply cried, “Take this awful burden off my heart, and I will preach the Gospel.” But no one could be less fitted by natural temperament for the ministry than I. From early boyhood, I was extraordinarily timid and bashful. Even after I had entered Yale College, when I would go home in the summer and my mother would call me in to meet her friends, I was so frightened that when I thought I spoke I did not make an audible sound. When her friends had gone, my mother would ask, “Why didn't you say something to them?” And I would reply that I supposed I had, but my mother would say, “You did not utter a sound.” Think of a young fellow like that entering the ministry. I never mustered courage even to speak in a public prayer-meeting until after I was in the theological seminary. Then I felt, if I was to enter the ministry, I must be able to at least speak in a prayer-meeting. I learned a little piece by heart to say, but when the hour came, I forgot much of it in my terror. At the critical moment, I grasped the back of the settee in front of me and pulled myself hurriedly to my feet and held on to the settee. One Niagara seemed to be going up one side and another down another; my voice faltered. I repeated as much as I could remember and sat down. Think of a man [pg 075] like that entering the ministry. In the early days of my ministry, I would write my sermons out in full and commit them to memory, stand up and twist a button until I had repeated it off as best I could and would then sink back into the pulpit chair with a sense of relief that that was over for another week. I cannot tell you what I suffered in those early days of my ministry. But the glad day came when I came to know the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete. When the thought got possession of me that when I stood up to preach, there was Another who stood by my side, that while the audience saw me God saw Him, and that the responsibility was all upon Him, and that He was abundantly able to meet it and care for it all, and that all I had to do was to stand back as far out of sight as possible and let Him do the work. I have no dread of preaching now; preaching is the greatest joy of my life, and sometimes when I stand up to speak and realize that He is there, that all the responsibility is upon Him, such a joy fills my heart that I can scarce restrain myself from shouting and leaping. He is just as ready to help us in all our work; in our Sunday-school classes; in our personal work and in every other line of Christian effort. Many hesitate to speak to others about accepting Christ. They are afraid they will not say the right thing; they fear that they will do more harm than they will good. You certainly will if you do it, but if you will just believe in the Paraclete and trust Him to say it and to say it in His way, you will never do harm but always good. It may seem at the time that you have accomplished nothing, [pg 076] but perhaps years after you will find out you have accomplished much and even if you do not find it out in this world, you will find it out in eternity.
There are many ways in which the Paraclete stands by us and helps us of which we will speak at length when we come to study His work. He stands by us when we pray (Rom. viii. 26, 27); when we study the Word (John xiv. 26; xvi. 12-14); when we do personal work (Acts viii. 29); when we preach or teach (1 Cor. ii. 4); when we are tempted (Rom. viii. 2); when we leave this world (Acts vii. 54-60). Let us get this thought firmly fixed now and for all time that the Holy Spirit is One called to our side to take our part.
“Ever present, truest Friend,
Ever near, Thine aid to lend.”