COMFORT VS. PETTING

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 22.

COMFORT VS. PETTING.

THERE is a vast difference between comforting people and petting them. We are enjoined to "comfort one another," to "comfort the feeble-minded," but care should be exercised lest the solid comfort of the gospel degenerate into sickly sentiment and a man-pleasing spirit. The gospel is not a thing of mere sympathy; it is a system of remedies; it proposes to comfort by curing, not by administering anodynes. It not only says at the tomb of Lazarus, "Thy brother shall rise again," but it brings him to life. It proposes to comfort, not by hiding the coffin with flowers and eulogizing the dead, but by sanctifying and fortifying the living while living so that when dead he may yet speak for himself, and neither flowers nor eulogium be necessary.

Comfort means to make strong as well as to soothe. It includes the edification and fortification accomplished under the magical touches of Faith, Hope, and Love. These are all strengthening, nerving, inspiring. They impel to the most wonderful achievement, they inure to the severest hardships. They give genuine comfort. This comfort saints need, and must have.

But petting is not comforting. On the contrary, it in the end breeds discomfort, discontent, if not schism and mutiny. It makes the present incumbent exceedingly popular for a time with the class which is susceptible of that sort of work; but woe betide his successor. For him is prepared a pathway of thorns.

Petting spoils. It emasculates, enervates, demoralizes. It substitutes forces personal, sentimental, animal, for those which are religious and spiritual. It ignores God, truth, and conscience; it exalts self, art, and prejudice. It spoils both him that gives and him that takes; debauches both the petter and petted. It spoils, because it temporizes with evils which it has not the courage to cure until conviction evaporates and they become set fast, ineradicable. It feeds on sweets until the appetite is depraved and the system weak and anemic. It invents stays and props and pillows until all stamina and backbone have disappeared. It pleases until the taste is implacable; stimulates and caters until all desire for proper and substantial food is gone; and rears a sickly tyrant where else had been a saintly warrior; a spoiled and worthless servant where else had been an obedient, laborious, and sacrificing s...

The facile, the weak, the insincere, may pet, but only strength, trueness, and saintliness can comfort. He only whom God fills with strength can fill others with comfort.

Comfort is a Jonathan in Ziph. Petting is an

Absalom in the gate. The one builds for God; the other undermines for self. One is the love which edifieth, the other the sentiment which prostitutes.

The Holy Ghost is the great Comforter. Was his mission to soothe, to narcotize, to pamper lust, to apologize for sin? Did he come to close the eye with gentle stroke and lull to sleep with heavenly song?

When he came on the day of Pentecost, what was the character of the "comfort" bestowed? Did the apostles weep with self-pity or shout with self-satisfaction? "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." It was not soothing, not quieting, not stupefying; it aroused them to the boldest utterance and most vehement action. Every dormant energy was awakened, every nerve thrilled, every muscle made to quiver. The spirit of prophecy, such as fell upon Ezekiel and carried him away in bitterness of spirit, fell upon son and daughter, young man and old, servant and handmaiden, till every heart was heated with the fire that was in it, and every tongue vied with the other for a hearing. And what was the message? —Sin, righteousness, judgment to come; "God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ." The effect of this was that "they were pricked in their hearts, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?" If he ever preached on "heavenly recognition," we do not know it; certain it is he made no mention of it then.

The "comfort of the Holy Ghost" is the impartation of strength, manhood, martyr spirit; "strengthen you by His Spirit with might." Under the influence of His baptism "they spake the word with boldness." By Him as the comforter they were not only able to stand before governors and kings, reasoning of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, but they were "strengthened with all might according to his glorious power unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness." This was none of your drawing-room, rose-scented, feather-bed piety. It bred soldiers and martyrs. The comfort that we need is not the comfort of poetic sentiment, the incantations of charmers, the romancings and speculations of "filthy dreamers." The gospel preacher is no barber, no manicure, he is no soothsayer. He comforts by the "sword of the Spirit" as well as by the balm of Gilead. He is not only to "bind up the broken-hearted," but to preach "the day of vengeance of our God," that he may have broken hearts to bind up. The true gospel preacher makes peace and gives comfort not by surrendering to worldliness, compromising with sin, and cajoling with sinners, but by getting men to repent of their sins and lead holy lives.

There is no sorrow but in sin; there is no comfort but in holiness, and they are the world's best comforters who, as vehicles of the Holy Ghost, reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come, and make men holy. Let us have earnest, honest workers—men of faith, conscience, and patience; let them subsoil the individual, the Church, with the plowshare of conviction; break up the fallow ground; pull up the thorns; plant the rose of Sharon; water it, like Magdalene, with tears of holy grief—then beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and may we say, Grace, grace unto it; comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.—St. Louis Christian Advocate.