Gem #81 - Jesus Our Sweet Counselor

Good old Simeon called Jesus the consolation of Israel; and so He was.

Before His actual appearance, His name was the day-star; celebrating the

passage of darkness, and predicting the rising of the sun. To Him they

looked with the same hope which cheers the nightly watchman, when from the

lonely castle-top he sees the fairest of the stars, and hails it as the

usher of the morning.

When He was on earth, He must have been the consolation of all those who

were privileged to be His companions. We can imagine how readily the

disciples would run to Christ to tell Him of their griefs, and how sweetly,

with that matchless inflection of His voice, He would speak to them, and

command their fears be gone.

Like children, they would have considered Him as their Father; and to Him

every want, every groan, every sorrow, every agony, would at once be

carried to Him; and He, like a wise physician, had a balm for every wound;

He had mixed a cup of hope for their every care; and readily did He

dispense some mighty remedy to alleviate all the fever of their troubles.

Oh! it must have been sweet to have lived with Christ. Surely, sorrows

were then but joys in masks, because they gave an opportunity to go to

Jesus to have them removed. Oh! if God had been willing, some of us may

wish, that we could have lain our weary heads upon the chest of Jesus, and

that our birth had been in that happy era, when we might have heard His

kind voice, and seen His kind look, when He said, "Let the weary ones come

to Me.

It behooved Him to slumber in the dust awhile, that He might perfume the

chamber of the grave to make it:

"No more a charnel house to fence

The relics of lost innocence."

It behooved Him to have a resurrection, that we, who shall one day be the

dead in Christ, might rise first, and in glorious bodies stand upon earth.

And it behooved Him that He should ascend up on high, that He might lead

captivity captive; that He might chain the demons of hell; that He might tie

them to His chariot-wheels, and drag them up high heaven's hill, to make them

feel a second overthrow from His right arm, when He should dash them from the

pinnacles of heaven down to the deeper depths beneath.

"It is for your good that I am going away," said Jesus, "Unless I go away,

the Counselor will not come to you." Jesus must go. Weep, you disciples:

Jesus must be gone. Mourn, you poor ones, who are to be left without a

Counselor. But hear how kindly Jesus speaks: "I will not leave you as

orphans; I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be

with you forever."

He would not leave those few poor sheep alone in the wilderness; He would not

desert His children, and leave them fatherless. Although He had a mighty

mission which filled His heart and hand; even though He had so much to

perform, that we might have thought that even His gigantic intellect would be

overburdened; although He had so much to suffer, that we might suppose His

whole soul to be concentrated upon the thought of the sufferings to be

endured. Yet it was not so; before He left, He gave soothing words of

comfort; like the good Samaritan, He poured in oil and wine, and we see what

He promised: "I will send you another Counselor-one who shall be just what I

have been, yes, even more; who shall console you in your sorrows, remove your

doubts, comfort you in your afflictions, and stand as My vicar on earth, to

do that which I would have done had I stayed with you.