Jesus Our Sweet Counselor
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.