The Incomparable Comfort of the Christian Faith

As a system of consolation, Christianity has no equal. No other religion in the world touches the hidden springs of the soul, or reaches the lowest depths of human sorrow, but the religion of Christ. When your hearts have been overwhelmed, when adversity has wrapped you within its gloomy shroud, when the broken billows of grief have swollen and surged around your soul, how have you fled to the Scriptures of truth for aid and support, for guidance and comfort! You have not gone to them in vain. “The God of all comfort” speaks in his Word, and there is no word of comfort like that which He speaks.

The application of His truth to the varied, the peculiar and personal trials and sorrows of His Church is one of the strongest proofs of its divinity. Take to the Word of God whatever sorrow you may; go with whatever mental clouding, with whatever spirit sadness, with whatever heart grief; whatever be its character, its complexion, its depth unsurpassed in the history of human sorrow there is consolation and support in the Word of God for your mind.

God will not leave you in trouble, but will sustain you in it, will bring you out of, and sanctify you by it to the endless glory and praise of His great and precious name!

Christian mourner, let me once more direct your eye, too dimmed perhaps by tears to behold this divine source of true, unfailing comfort. God’s Word is the book of the afflicted. Written to unfold the wondrous history of the “Man of Sorrows,” it would seem to have been equally written for you, O child of grief! God speaks to your sad and sorrowing heart from every page of this sacred volume, with words of comfort, loving, gentle, and persuasive as a mother’s. “As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you.”

The Bible is the opening of the heart of God. It is God’s heart unveiled, each beat inviting the mourner, the poor in spirit, the widow, the fatherless, the bereaved, the persecuted, the sufferer, yes, every child of affliction and grief to the refuge and sympathy, the protection and soothing of His heart. Oh, thank God for the comfort and consolation of the Scripture! Open it with what sorrow and burden and perplexity you may, be it the guilt of sin, the pressure of trial, or the decays of sorrow, it speaks to the heart such words of comfort as only God could speak.

Have you ever borne your grief to God’s Word, especially to the experiential Psalms of David and not felt that it was written for that particular sorrow? You have found your grief more accurately portrayed, your state of mind more truly described, and your case more exactly and fully met, probably in a single chapter, or verse than in all the human treatises that the pen of man ever wrote.

Run to the Word of God, then, in every sorrow! You will know more of the mind and heart of God than you, perhaps, ever learned in all the schools before. Draw, then, O child of sorrow, your consolation from God’s Word. Oh, clasp this precious Word of comfort to your sorrowful heart, and exclaim, “It is mine! The Jesus of whom it speaks is mine, the salvation it reveals is mine, the promises it contains are mine, the Heaven it unveils is mine, and all the consolation, comfort, and sympathy which wells up from these hidden springs, is mine!”

–Octavius Winslow (Updated for today’s reader)