r help it, but we do not {84} decide its issues. In the
midst of such a time of social distress, Mr. Lowell in one of his
lectures wrote: "I take great comfort in God. I think He is
considerably amused sometimes, but on the whole loves us and would not
let us get at the matchbox if He did not know that the frame of the
universe was fireproof." That is the modern statement of the
underlying faith and self-control and patience which come of confessing
that in this world it is not we alone who do it all. "Why so hot,
little man?" says Mr. Emerson. "I take great comfort in God," says Mr.
Lowell; and the Old Testament, with a much tenderer note repeats:
"Underneath are the everlasting arms."

{85}

XXXIV

THE COMFORT OF THE TRUTH

_John_ xiv. 14, 16.

Jesus says that he will send a Comforter, and that it will be the
spirit of the truth. Many people say just the opposite of this. If
you want comfort, they think that you must not have truth. Is not the
truth often an uncomforting and uncomfortable thing? Too much truth
seems dangerous. The spirit of the truth is a hard, cold spirit.
Should not a comforter shade and soften the truth? But Jesus answers
there is nothing so permanently comforting as the truth. Why, for
instance, is it that we judge people so severely? It is not as a rule
that we know the whole truth about them, but that we know only a
fragment of the truth. The more we know, the gentler grow our
judgments. Would it not be so if people who judge you should know all
your secret hopes and conflicts and dreams? Why is it again that
people are so despondent about their own times, their community, the
tendency of things? It is because {86} they have not entered deeply
enough into the truth of the times. The more they know, the more they
hope. And why is it that God is all-merciful? It is because He is
also all-wise. He knows all about us, our desires and our repentances,
and so in the midst of our wrong-doing He continues merciful. His Holy
Spirit bears in one hand comfort and in the other truth. How does a
student get peace of mind? He finds it when he gets hold of some
stable truth. It may not be a large truth, but it is a real truth, and
therefore it is a comfort. How does a man in his moral struggles get
comfort? He gets it not by swerving, or dodging, or compromising, but
by being true. The only permanent comfort is in the sense of fidelity.
You are like a sailor in the stor