Of Especially Comforting The Human Bings To Service.

Mr eliancher uty

I waonna vewyou to tolk is how especially comforting to think of this tender solicitude with reference to his own covenant people that He metes out their joys and their sorrows! Every sweet, every bitter is ordained by Him. Even “wearisome nights” are “appointed.” Not a pang I feel, not a tear I shed but is known to Him. What are called “dark dealings” are the ordinations of undeviating faithfulness. 
Man may err his ways are often crooked; “but as for God, His way is perfect!” He puts my tears into His bottle. Every moment the everlasting arms are underneath and around me. He keeps me “as the apple of His eye.” He “bears” me “as a man beareth his own son!”


Do I look to the future? Is there much of uncertainty and mystery hanging over it? It may be, much premonitory of evil. Trust Him. All is marked out for me. Dangers will be averted; bewildering mazes will show themselves to be interlaced and interweaved with mercy. “He keepeth the feet of His saints.” A hair of their head will not be touched. He leads sometimes darkly, sometimes sorrowfully; most frequently by cross and circuitous ways we ourselves would not have chosen; but “THE right way the best which covenant love and wisdom could select. 

Nothing,” says Jeremy Taylor, “does so establish the mind amidst the rollings and turbulence of present. things, as both a look above them and a look beyond them; above them, to the steady and good hand by which they are ruled; and beyond them, to the sweet and beautiful end to which, by that hand, they will be brought.” “The Great Counsellor,” says Thomas Brooks, “puts clouds and darkness round about Him, bidding us follow at His beck through the cloud, promising an eternal and uninterrupted sunshine on the other side.” On that “other side” we shall see how every apparent rough blast has been hastening our barks nearer the desired haven.

Well may I commit the keeping of my soul to Jesus in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator. He gave Himself for me. This transcendent pledge of love is the guarantee for the bestowment of every other needed blessing. Oh, blessed thought! my sorrows numbered by the Man of Sorrows; my tears counted by Him who shed first His tears and then His blood for me. He will impose no needless burden, and exact no unnecessary sacrifice. There was no redundant drop in the cup of His own sufferings; neither will there be in that of His people. “Though He slay me yet will I trust Him. “The Good Shepherd” well can the sheep who know His voice attest the truthfulness and faithfulness of this endearing name and word. Where would they have been through eternity, had He not left His throne of light and glory, travelling down to this dark valley of the curse, and giving His life a ransom for many? Think of His love to each separate member of the flock wandering over pathless wilds with unwearied patience and unquenchable ardour, ceasing not the pursuit until He finds it. 

Mr eliancher uty

I think of His love now “I AM the Good Shepherd.” Still that tender eye of watchfulness following the guilty wanderers the glories of heaven and the songs of angels unable to dim or alter His affection; the music of the words, at this moment coming as sweetly from His lips as when first He uttered them “I know my sheep.” Every individual believer the weakest, the weariest, the faintest claims His attention. His loving eye follows me day by day out to the wilderness marks out my pasture, studies my wants, and trials, and sorrows, and perplexities every steep ascent, every brook, every winding path, every thorny “thicket. 

He goeth before them.” It is not rough driving, but gentle guiding. He does not take them over an unknown road; He himself has trodden it before. He hath drunk of every “brook by the way;” He himself hath “suffered being tempted;” He is “able to succour them that are tempted.” He seems to say, “Fear not; I cannot lead you wrong; follow me in the bleak waste, the blackened wilderness, as well as by the green pastures and the still waters. Do you ask why I have left the sunny side of the valley carpeted with flowers, and bathed in sunshine leading you to some high mountain apart, some cheerless spot of sorrow? Trust me, I will lead you by paths you have not known, but they are all known to me, and selected by me Follow thou me.’”

“And am known of mine!” Reader! canst thou subscribe to these closing words of this gracious utterance? Dost thou “know” Him in all the glories of His person, in all the completeness of His finished work, in all the tenderness and unutterable love of His every dealing towards thee?

It has been remarked by Palestine travellers, that not “want! it has been beautifully called “the bleating of Messiah’s “Messiah’s sheep.” Take it as thy watchword during thy wilderness wanderings, till grace be perfected in glory. Let this be the record of thy simple faith and unwavering trust, “These are they who follow, whithersoever He sees meet to guide them. “When one beloved earthly friend is taken away, how the heart is drawn out towards those that remain! Jesus was now about to leave His sorrowing disciples. He directs them to one whose presence would fill up the vast blank His own absence was to make. His name was, The “Comforter; His mission was, “to abide with them for ever.” Accordingly, no sooner had the gates of heaven closed on their ascended Lord, than, in fulfilment of His own gracious promise, the bereaved and orphaned Church was baptized with Pentecostal fire. “When I depart, I will send Him unto you.”

Reader, do you realize your privilege living under the dispensation of the Spirit? Is it your daily prayer that He may come down in all the plenitude of His heavenly graces on your soul, even “as rain upon the mown grass, and showers that water the earth?” You cannot live without Him; there can be not one heavenly aspiration, not one breathing of love, not one upward glance of faith, without His gracious influences. Apart from him, there is no preciousness in the word, no blessing in ordinances, no permanent sanctifying results in affliction. As the angel directed Hagar to the hidden spring, this blessed agent, true to His name and office, directs His people to the waters of comfort, giving new glory to the promises, investing the Saviour’s character and work with new loveliness and beauty. 

 My Propesor

I was speakers how precious is the title which this “Word of Jesus” gives Him The Comforter! What a word for a sorrowing world! The Church militant has its tent pitched in a “valley of tears.” The name of the divine visitant who comes to her and ministers to her wants, is Comforter. Wide is the family of the afflicted, but He has a healing balm for all the weak, the tempted, the sick, the sorrowing, the bereaved, “bereaved, the dying! How different from other “sons of consolation?” 


Human friends a look may alienate; adversity may estrange; death must separate! The “Word of Jesus” speaks of One whose attribute and prerogative is to “abide with us for ever;” superior to all vicissitudes surviving death itself! And surely if anything else can endear His mission of love to His Church, it is that He comes direct from God, as the fruit and gift of Jesus’ intercession “I will pray the Father.” This holy dove of peace and comfort is let out by the hand of Jesus from the ark of covenant mercy within the veil! Nor is the gift more glorious than it is free. Does the word, the look, of a suffering child get the eye and the heart of an earthly father? “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask Him?” It is He who makes these “words of Jesus" winged words.

 “How much more tender is Jesus than the tenderest of earthly friends? The Apostles, in a moment of irritation would have called down fire from heaven on obstinate sinners. Their Master rebuked the unkind suggestion. Peter, the trusted but treacherous disciple, expected nothing but harsh and merited reproof for faithlessness. He who knew well how that heart would be bowed with penitential sorrow, sends first the kindest of messages, and then the gentlest of rebukes, “Lovest thou me?” The watchmen in the Canticles smote the bride, tore off her veil, and loaded her with reproaches. When she found her lost Lord, there was not one word of upbraiding! “So slow is He to anger,” says an illustrious believer, “so ready to forgive, that when His prophets lost all patience with the people so as to make intercession against them, yet even then could He not be got to cast off this people whom He foreknew, for his great name’s sake. “The guilty sinner to whom He speaks this comforting “word,” was frowned upon by her accusers. But, if others spurned her “from their presence, “Neither do I condemn thee.” Well it is to fall into the hands of this blessed Saviour God, for great are His mercies.

Are we to infer from this, that He winks at sin? Far from it. His blood, His work Bethlehem, and Calvary, refute the thought! Ere the guilt even of one solitary soul could be washed out, He had to descend from His everlasting throne to agonise on the accursed tree. But this “word of Jesus” is a word of tender encouragement to every sincere, broken-hearted penitent, that crimson sins, and scarlet sins, are no barriers to a free, full, everlasting forgiveness. The Israelite of old, gasping in his agony in the sands of the wilderness, had but to “look and live;” and still does He say, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Up-reared by the side of his own cross there was a monumental column for all Time, only second to itself in wonder. 

Mr. Benny Giyai

I m want talling over the head of the dying felon is the superscription written for despairing guilt and trembling penitence, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ “came into the world to save sinners.” “He never yet,” says Charnock, “put out a dim candle that was lighted at the Sun of Righteousness.” “Whatever our guiltiness be,” says Rutherford, “yet when it falleth into the sea of God’s mercy, it is but like a drop of blood fallen into the great ocean. “Reader, you may be the chief of sinners, or it may be the chief of backsliders; your soul may have started aside like a broken “bow. As the bankrupt is afraid to look into his books, you may be afraid to look into your own heart. 


You are hovering on the verge of despair. Conscience, and the memory of unnumbered sins, is uttering the desponding verdict, “I condemn thee.” Jesus has a kinder word a more cheering declaration “I condemn thee not: go, and sin no more! “As if no solitary earthly type were enough to image forth the love of Jesus, He assembles into one verse a group of the tenderest earthly relationships. Human affection has to focus its loveliest hues, but all is too little to afford an exponent of the depth and intensity of His. “As “one whom his mother comforteth;” “my sister, my spouse.” He is “Son,” “Brother” “Friend” all in one; “cleaving closer than any brother.”

And can we wonder at such language? Is it merely figurative, expressive of more than the reality? He gave Himself for us; after that pledge of His affection we must cease to marvel at any expression of the interest He feels in us. Anything He can say or do is infinitely less than what He has done.

Believer! art thou solitary and desolate? Has bereavement severed earthly ties? Has the grave made forced estrangements, sundered the closest links of earthly affection? In Jesus thou hast filial and fraternal love combined; He is the Friend of friends, whose presence and fellowship compensates for all losses, and supplies all blanks; “He setteth the solitary in families.” If thou art orphaned, friendless, comfortless here, remember there is in the Elder Brother on the Throne a love deep as the unfathomed ocean, boundless as Eternity? “And who are those who can claim the blessedness spoken of under this wondrous imagery? On whom does He lavish this unutterable affection? 

No outward profession will purchase it. No church, no priest, no ordinances, no denominational distinctions. It is on those who are possessed of holy characters. “He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven!” He who reflects the mind of Jesus; imbibes His Spirit; takes His Word as the “regulator of his daily walk, and makes His glory the great end of his being; he who lives to God and with God, and for God; the humble, lowly, Christ like, Heaven seeking Christian; he it is who can claim as his own this wondrous heritage of love! If it be a worthy object of ambition to be loved by the good and the great on earth, what must it be to have an eye of love ever beaming upon us from the Throne, in comparison of which the attachment here of brother, sister, kinsman, friend all combined pales like the stars before the rising sun! 

Though we are often ashamed to call Him “Brother,” “He is not ashamed to call us brethren.” He looks down on poor worms, and says, “The same is my mother, and sister, and brother!” “I will write upon them,” He says in another place, “my new name.” Just as we write our name on a book to tell that it belongs to us; so Jesus would write His own name on us, the wondrous volumes of His grace, that they may be read and pondered by principalities and powers. “Have we “known and believed this love of God?” Ah, how poor has been the requital! Who cannot subscribe to the words of one, whose name was in all the churches, Thy love has been as a shower; the return but a dew-drop, and that dew drop stained with sin.