" Who comforteth us in all our affliction." Let us note the word in which the Apostle describes the condition of the way- faring pilgrims. They are passing through " afflictions " ; that is to say, they are in straits, in tight corners. Their way has become narrowed ; they are hemmed in by cares or sorrows or tempta- tions, and they are in a tight place. " He comforteth us " in such conditions.
^ Frederic Myers gives a touching extract from his mother's diary, which indicates the extraordinary sympathy and comfort which he, then a child of eight, seems to have given her in her bereavement [the loss of her husband]. She said to him once that she could never be happy again, and the child replied, " You know God can do everything, and He might give us just once a vision of him as should make us happy all our lives after." Of course, a sensitive and clever child can, and often does, in the presence of overwhelming grief, suggest words and thoughts of
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consolation of almost preternatural fineness and appositeness, purely by a precocity of intelligence — ex ore, infantium — just as he can traffic with a coin whose battered heraldry he does not understand. But there does seem to be something more than that here — a loyal affection, a facing of great issues, a vitality of spirit, which cannot be passed over.^
(1) He comforts us in physical weakness. — In the breakage or decay of physical power He brings out spiritual richness and strength. This was something that St. Paul knew well. Only two chapters later in this same Epistle there comes the great verse where he describes it — " Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." It is something whose experience is repeated constantly on every side of us. It is hard for us to imagine how flat and shallow human life would be if there were taken out of it this constant element, the coming up of the spiritual where the physical has failed : and so, as the result of this, the impression, made even upon men who seem to trust most in the physical, that there is a spiritual life which lies deeper, on which their profoundest reliance must and may be placed. A man who has been in the full whirl of prosperous business fails in these hard-pressed days, and then for the first time he learns the joy of conscious integrity preserved through all temptations, and of daily trust in God for daily bread. A man who never knew an ache or pain comes to a break in health, from which he can look out into nothing but years of sickness ; and then the soul within him, which has been so borne along in the torrent of bodily health that it has seemed almost like a mere part and consequence of the bodily condition, separates itself, claims its independence and supremacy, and stands strong in the midst of weakness, calm in the very centre of the turmoil and panic of the aching body.
^ I do not know that there is anything more trying to a man of energy and activity and pride than to find himself crippled, and to see the whole world going by him. He once had the power of the senate, he once had power over the assembly, but now his voice is feeble, and his zeal is spent, and men are saying, " What a man he was," as if he were but a mere trembling, shivering shadow now. Although sometimes the decay of mental faculties takes off the acuteness of suffering, yet there are many * A. 0. Benson, The Leaves of the Tree, 165.
lo COMFORT
men who have pride that will not be alleviated, and who cannot bear to see the world going past them, and they not keeping step but standing still. Not to be able to do what they once could do — to many souls there is anguish in that ; there is grace in it too, if they only know where to find it. Autumnal days are the most beautiful days of the year, and they ought to be the most beautiful days in a man's life. In October things do not grow any more, they ripen, they fulfil the destiny of the summer, and the thought of autumn is that it is going down, going forth. When all things in nature know and feel that death is coming near, do they sheet themselves in black as pagan Christians do ? Do they turn everything to hideous mourning as pagan Christians do ? They cry : " Bring forth our royal garments," and the oak puts on the habiliments of beauty, and all the herbs of the field turn to scarlet and yellow and every colour that is most precious ; and the whole month of autumn goes tramping towards death, glowing and glorious.^
(2) He comforts in sorrow. — Sorrow is an indisputable fact of human experience. In many respects it is also an inexplicable fact ; but there it is. We cannot account for it, but we all feel it. We may soar upon the wings of thought into the highest heaven, we may sink the plummet of inquiry into the depth, but we should not touch the bounds of this mystery. How did pain and grief ever enter into a universe ruled by a perfectly wise and loving God ? Why, having entered, is it not by an act of the Omnipo- tent Will at once and for ever removed ? How is it that its pangs are to all appearance so unevenly distributed, falling so heavily upon one, so lightly upon another; here harassing and cutting short a career of usefulness, there sparing a cumberer of the ground ; here crushing the hopes of struggling virtue, and there leaving free and unrestrained the development of vice ? These are questions which have agitated the minds of men ever since men began to think at all. And it might not be difficult to point out some considerations tending to lessen the perplexity, and to reconcile the mind to the existence and continuance of the physical evils referred to ; it might be shown that, even so far as we can see, there is less real evil in their permission than there would be in their absolute compulsory removal. But when we come to deal with sorrow, not merely as a practical but as a per- sonal fact, no general considerations suffice ; speculation is power-