» T. D. Bernard.
ST. JOHN XIV. 15-17 143
you comfortless: I will come to you" (ver. 18); and in the assurance given to those that love Him, He says (ver. 23), " My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." It may be asked. How is such language consistent with those other words of His, in which He said, " It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you " ? But the answer is simple. As the localized incarnate Son of man. He is gone away, and is now where Stephen saw Him, at the right hand of God ; but as the eternal Person of the undivided Trinity, He is omnipresent and ever acting ; nor is it within the capacity of finite beings like ourselves to put any limit on His Divine action,^
3. How does the Comforter comfort ? — We know by the fruits of His comfort. To the disciples everything about the working of that Divine Comforter was wrapt in mystery except the fruits. How He made His temple in man, how He imparted His light and His truth to His creatures, how He strengthened the vacillating, and spoke without words to the inward ear, and raised the fallen, and won back the wanderer, none could trace, none could know. The wind bloweth where it listeth : the ways of the Spirit are unsearchable. It is vain to imagine how that Heavenly Person associates Himself with our spirit, becomes to us the source of light and strength, and of the desire of good, making His work our work too, overshadowing, protecting, guarding our souls, giving us thoughts above our own thoughts, surprising us into an earnestness so unlike our common selves. Why should we expect to be conscious of His Presence ? Why should we expect, such as we are, to recognize and discern clearly what is of God? But the effects of His Presence were soon recognized in the world, and have never ceased to be recognized since. They were seen in those two contrasted lists in the Epistle to the Galatians, of the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit — of what the moral world had been and was, without Him, and of that new phenomenon and substantial fact of character which had shown itself beyond denial since He had come.
(1) Let us take the word " comfort " first in its modern sense, a sense covered by the Greek word, though not its chief meaning. Then we may say that He comforts us in our sorrow, providing consolation and affording relief.
^ E, Hoare, Great Principles of Divine Truth, 234.
144 THE GIVING OF THE COMFORTER
^ When I think over the troubles of which I have heard even this week, I know that this is a world that needs comfort. One boy of brilliant promise lies struck down by sudden illness in a nursing-home ; another man in the prime of life, doing a brilliant work, has a sickness on him to-day which I fear will never leave him, or, if it leaves him, will take away all power of work. There are two young women lately married ; one is a widow after eight months, and the other after three. Another woman has her child born dead. And as these sorrows roll on me, at the centre of this great diocese — and I rejoice that people should pour their troubles on to me, inadequate as I feel myself to help them — I look up to heaven and I say, " If there were not a Comforter sent from heaven, where should we be ? " And it was because our Saviour knew this that during that sad Holy Week, before He left, He made us this beautiful promise : " It is expedient for you that I go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you. I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter besides Me, another Comforter who shall abide with you for ever ; there shall be with you the Holy Ghost, the Comforter." ^
(2) But the Spirit's function is not merely, or chiefly, to soothe sorrow and wipe away the tear. The word really does not suggest so much the quiet room as the battle-field. It is an energetic, forceful, militant word. It implies conflict and struggle, and for the conflict and the struggle the Spirit is a fortifier — He lifts men above fear ; He reinforces them ; He gives them triumph in battle — and that is exactly what the Spirit proved to be to these first disciples.
^ We borrowed the term from a language, the makers of which set great store by these things. " Only be thou strong and very courageous," was the Lord's message to Joshua, the leader of the host of Israel. " As I was with Moses, so will I be with thee." Confortare is the rendering of the first phrase in the Vulgate Version of the Old Testament, and in the Septuagint it reads literally, " Be strong and play the man" In Isaiah xli. 10 our noble Authorized Version gives us, " Fear thou not, for I am with thee : be not dis- mayed ; for I am thy God : I will strengthen thee." Confortare is once again the equivalent for this promise of strength. We observe, therefore, that the word which our fathers considered the best English equivalent of the Greek, " Paraclete," is one with a history, in which sweetness and strength are united. There is a