speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem0: " Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees, and say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not ; your God will come and save youp." He chooses to speak to us by men, rather than by angels ; because they, by their own experience of the bitterness of sin and of the consolations of the Gospel, are able to testify of " the things which they have heard, and seen, and handled*1;" andean speak with tenderness and compassion to others, from a sense of their own great and manifold infir- mities1". It usually happens, too, that those ministers who are made most useful to the Church of God have themselves been brought into deep waters, and been subjected to many trials; God " giving them thereby the tongue of the learned," and qualifying them to " speak a word in season " to persons in all the varied circumstances of life s. To this St. Paul ascribes both the trials and consolations which had so greatly abounded in his experience : " God," says he, " comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble with the same comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation ; or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation1."]
But, if we would justly appreciate the consolations prepared for us, let us take,
II. A more particular view of them, as represented in the image before us —
The images in the Holy Scriptures have this dis- tinguished excellence, that they bring home to the comprehension and the feelings of every man truths which are at once the most exalted and most inte- resting that can be presented to our view. It is quite erroneous to suppose, that, because an image is com- mon, it is therefore unfit to be a vehicle of Divine truth ; we should rather say, it is therefore the most proper for illustrating such things as are analogous to it. The idea of a little infant sucking at his mother's breast, and borne in her arms, on her side, or dandled on her knees, may seem unworthy to express the love
0 Isai. xl. 1, 2.
P Isai. xxxv. 3, 4. See also, particularly in this view, Isai. lxi. 1—3.
°- 1 John i. 1. r Heh. v. 1, 2. s Isai. 1. 4.
* 2 Cor. i. 4 — C. This passage is worthy of very particular atten- tion, especially in the view in which it is here adduced.