^ Can we not learn something from a child's second cry ? A child comes to grief in some way, suffers some blow, and the elder sister or brother manages to quiet the child by appeals to its courage and fortitude ; but soon after the crying is all over the mother enters the room, and the cry breaks out afresh. It is not because the pain has come back again, it is because there is the certainty of that kind of comfort which we mean by soothing. Now, beautiful as that was, the first was just as real, perhaps more real, comfort. Comfort and fortitude have the same root in common, and he who is strengthened is most really comforted. Soothing is not denied or left out of the reckoning, but it is not the chief thing.
^ I was struck with the words of a psalm we were reading to-day — " Because thou, Lord, hast holpen me and comforted me." Help comes before comfort — help to bear up in the way of duty and not to murmur. We can seek this at once, and God will help us ; but comfort must follow slowly, and our heart refuses it when it offers itself at once. Do not blame yourself if you do not feel it, and be satisfied if God gives you some measure of strength.^
^ Professor Henry Drummond in an appreciation of the life and work of Professor W. G. Elmslie, who was one of his fellow- students at New College, Edinburgh, writes, " One of the last things I read of Elmslie saying was that what people needed most was comfort. Probably he never knew how much his mission, personally, was to give it. I presume he often preached it, but I think he must always have been it. For all who knew him will testify that to be in his presence was to leave care, and live where skies were blue." ^
2. Now we must feel the need of comfort before we can listen to the words of comfort. And God knows that it is infinitely better and happier for us to need His comforts and receive them than ever it could be not to need them and so be without them. The consolations of God mean the substituting of far higher and
1 Letters of John Ker, 339. ' Professor Elmslie, 171.
2 COR. I. 3. 4 7
better things than the things we lose to get them. The things we Jose are earthly things, those He substitutes are heavenly. And who of us but would thankfully be " allured " by our God into any earthly wilderness, if only there we might find the unspeakable joys of union with Himself ? St. Paul could say he " counted all things but loss " if he might but " win Christ " ; and, if we have even the faintest glimpse of what winning Christ means, we will say so too.
^ Everybody is signalling for comfort. There is that boy of yours; he is young, strong, daring, dashing, vivacious, vigorous. You say the boy can take care of himself, but the boy cannot. He is always signalling comfort alongside, sometimes when his parents least suspect it. Every ribbon or cup in the boy's room which speaks of some athletic conquest is comfort to his soul. Every time his eye rests upon it, if he is a Whitefield's boy, I fancy he says to himself, "No quest, no conquest." Even the tilings which mean defeat in your boy's athletic life are in them- selves comforts to him if only he can know that he himself put out the last ounce of strength to win the anticipated and sought- for victory, and that the reason why he lost it was because in the world's arena of fair play there was a better man than himself who conquered. As he grows in years he takes comfort out of his success and out of his defeats when those defeats mean he has done his best and has been overmastered by superior technique or skill or strength.
Every mother knows how the dear little girl in the home is continually signalling for comfort and calling alongside those words of sympathy and those deeds of interest which mean everything to her in her advancing and developing life.
There, little girl, don't cry.
They have broken your doll, I know,
And your tea-set blue and your playhouse, too, Ai'e things of the long ago.
Heaven holds that for which you sigh: There, little girl, don't cry.
There, little girl, don't cry.
They have broken your heart, I know. And the rainbow gleams of your faithful dreams
Are things of the long ago. But heaven holds that for which you sigh:
There, little girl, don't cry.^
^ J^'. Boynton.
8 COMFORT
3. The words "all comfort" admit of no limitations and no deduction ; and one would suppose that, however full of discom- forts the outward life of the followers of such a God might be, their inward religious life must necessarily be always and in all circumstances a comfortable life. But, as a fact, it often seems as if exactly the opposite were the case and the religious lives of larae numbers of the children of God were full, not of comfort, but of the utmost discomfort. This discomfort arises from anxiety as to their relations to God, and doubts as to His love. They torment themselves with the thought that they are too good-for-nothing to be worthy of His care, and they suspect Him of being indifferent to their trials, and of forsaking them in times of need. They are anxious and troubled about everything in their religious life, about their frames and feelings, their indifference to the Bible, their want of fervency in prayer, their coldness of heart. They are tormented with unavailing regrets over their past, and with devouring anxieties for their future. They feel unworthy to enter God's presence, and dare not believe that they belong to Him. They can be happy and comfortable with their earthly friends, but they cannot be happy or comfortable with God. And although He declares Himself to be the God of all comfort, they continually complain that they cannot find comfort anywhere; and their sorrowful looks and the doleful tones of their voice show that they are speaking the truth.