soul with warnings and admonitions, now chiding, then caressing, to draw their souls to
God.
536And yet, even this is no comparison; for all the sacrifices of the godliest mother, and
all the comfort wherewith she comforts her children, are utterly nothing compared to the
delightful and divine comfort of the Holy Spirit.
Oh, that Comforter, the Holy Ghost, who never ceases to care for God’s children, who
ever resumes with new animation the weaving of their soul-garments, even tho their wilful-
ness has broken the threads! On earth there is no suitable comparison for it. In the human
life there may be a typesomewhere; but a full-sized image to measure this divine comfort
there is not. It is wholly unique, wholly divine, the measure of all other comfort. The comfort
wherewith we comfort others has value and significance only when it is bright with the
spark, of the divine comfort.
The Song of Songs contains a description of the tender love of Immanuel for His Church:
He, the Bridegroom who calls for the bride; she, the bride who pines with love for her God-
given Bridegroom. This is, therefore, something entirely different: the love, not of comfort,
but of the tenderest, most intimate communion and mutual belonging together; the one
not happy without the other; both destined for each other; by the divine ordinance united,
and by virtue of that same ordinance wretched unless the one possesses the other. Such is
not the Holy Spirit’s love in the comforting. The communion of Christ and the Church is
for time and eternity; but, the comfort of the Holy Ghost will cease—not His work of love,
but that of the comforting. Comfort can be administered only so long as there is one uncom-
forted and comfortless. So long as Israel must pray to be delivered from iniquities; so long
as tears flow; so long as there is bitter sorrow and distress,—so long will the Holy Spirit be
our Comforter.
But when sin is ended and misery is no more, when death is abolished and the last sorrow
is endured and the last tear wiped away, then, I ask, what remains there for the Holy Spirit
to comfort? How could there still be room for a Comforter?
To the question, Why, then, did the Lord say, “I will send you another Comforter, that
He may abide with you forever”? (John xiv. 16) I answer with another question: Is it to the
honor of a child that, while he cries for his mother’s comfort, he forgets her as soon as the
sorrow is past? This can not be; this would be a denial of the nature of love. He that is truly
comforted entertains for his comforter such intense feeling of gratitude, obligation, and at-
537tachment that he can not be silent, but after having enjoyed the comfort craves also the
sweetness of love. The same is true regarding the Holy Spirit. When He shall have comforted
us from our last distress, and removed us from sorrow forever, then we can not say, “O Holy
Spirit, now Thou mayest depart in peace”; but, we shall be constrained to cry, “Oh, refresh
and enrich us now with Thy Love forever?”
XXII. Love and the Comforter.