Silent Times: Chapter 17 - The Office of Consoler
By J.R. Miller
There are some people who seem to be specially gifted for the office of comforter and consoler. The sorrowing and troubled are attracted to them--as steel filings to a magnet, or as thirsty ones to a spring of water. The paths to their doors are worn by the passing feet of many weary ones. No office among men is more sacred, or fuller of blessing; for in no other field can wider opportunity be found for rendering helpful service to sorrowing and troubled humanity.
It was to this service, in an eminent degree, that Christ was set apart. He said of himself, that the Spirit had sent him "to heal the broken-hearted." His whole ministry was one of consolation to the sorrowing. The weary and the heart-sore came to him with their burdens; the penitent crept to his feet with their confessions; mourners sought his sympathy; and, wherever he went, he carried cheer, hope and inspiration. No one who came to him with a trouble--went away uncomforted. His deep and ready sympathy, and his gentle, uplifting help--made him pre-eminently a consoler.
Those who would follow in Christ's footsteps, and repeat in their human measure his ministry of love and beneficence in this world--must strive to be sons of consolation. There is always need for this sacred ministry. Wherever one may live, there is no other human experience that one is so sure of meeting, as sorrow. In other respects men differ--in race, in color, in social condition, in culture, in degrees of refinement, in customs and modes of life--but in one respect all are alike--all have sorrow. There are many languages spoken on the earth, and the traveler ofttimes finds himself unable to understand the word that falls upon his ear; but there is one language that he finds the same in all zones, in all conditions--the language of grief. Everywhere there are tears, telling of sadness. There is no circle in which there is not some heavy heart. We pass no day in which we do not meet with those who are oppressed with some open or secret grief.
An old clergyman once said to a company of students he was addressing, that they ought never to conduct a Christian service without some word of comfort for the troubled, for they would always have some troubled ones in their audience. Wherever we go, we come upon those who long for sympathy, and whose hearts are crying out for comfort. Therefore, those who have learned to comfort others have found a ministry of great usefulness.
It was the early prayer of Mrs. Prentiss, who has helped so many weary pilgrims heavenward:
"Oh that this heart, with grief so well acquainted,
Might be a fountain, rich and sweet and full,
For all the weary that have fallen and fainted
In life's parched desert--thirsty, sorrowful.
O Man of sorrows, teach my lips, that often
Have told the sacred story of my woe,
To speak of you until stony griefs I soften,
Until those that know you not, learn you to know."
Her prayer was answered; for of this gifted woman, after her death, it was said with great truthfulness, "Hers was in an eminent degree the blessing of those who were ready to perish. Weary, overtaxed mothers, misunderstood and unappreciated wives, servants, pale seamstresses, delicate women forced to live in an atmosphere of drunkenness and coarse brutality, widows and orphans in the bitterness of their bereavement, mothers with their tears dropping over empty cradles--to thousands of such she was a messenger from heaven."
To receive such eulogy when one's work is finished, is better than to have died amid the richest splendors of wealth, or to have had the paeans of fame sung over one's grave.
