---

1. God is the consoler of man by the very fact of His existence. There is a class of passages in the Bible which appear to rest the peace of the human soul upon the mere fact of the existence of the larger life of God. It is because God is that man is bidden to be at peace. I pity the man who has never in his best moods felt his life consoled and comforted in its littleness by the larger lives that he could look at, and know that they too Were men, living in the same humanity with himself, only living in it so much more largely. For so much of our need of consolation comes just in this way, from the littleness of our life, its pettishness and weariness insensibly transferring itself to all life, and making us sceptical about anything great or worth living for in life at all; and it is our rescue from this debilitating doubt that is the blessing which falls upon us when, leaving our own insignificance behind, we let our hearts rest with comfort on the mere fact that there are men of great, broad, generous, and healthy lives — men like the greatest that we know. It is not the most active people to whom we owe the most.

2. Then there is the sympathy of this same God. It becomes known to us, not merely that He is, but that He cares for us. Not merely His life, but His love, becomes a fact. The real reason why the sufferer rejoices in the sympathy of God is, that thereby, through love, that dear and perfect nature after which he has struggled before, is made completely known to him. Love is the translating medium. Through God's sympathy he knows God more intensely and more nearly, and so all the consolations of God's being have become more real to him. How do we learn of such a sympathy of God? How can we really come to believe that He knows our individual troubles, and sorrows for them with us? More than from any abstract or scientific arguments about the universality of great laws, I think it is the bigness of the world, the millions upon millions of needy souls, that makes it hard for men to believe in the discriminating care and personal love of God for each. In such perplexity what shall we do?

(1) Give free and bold play to those instincts of the heart which believe that the Creator must care for the creatures He has made, and that the only really effective care then must be that which takes each of them into His love.

2. Open the heart to that same conviction, as it has been profoundly impressed upon the hearts of multitudes of men everywhere.

3. Get the great spirit of the Bible. Get possessed of its idea, that there is not one life which the Lifegiver ever loses out of His sight; not one which sins so that He casts it away.

3. God has great truths which He brings to the hearts He wishes to console. He gives them His great truths of consolation. What are those truths? Education, spirituality, and immortality — these seem to be the sum of them.

4. Man wants to feel God doing something on his life, showing His sympathy by some strong act. And so he prays for God to help him, to do something positive for him. All that there is consolatory in God — being, sympathy, truth, power — Christ has set in the clearness and the splendour of His life. If you want consolation you must come to Him.

(Phillips Brooks.)

---

---

KJV: Are the consolations of God small with thee? is there any secret thing with thee?

WEB: Are the consolations of God too small for you, even the word that is gentle toward you?