But, blessed be God, we have consolation, we have joy in the Holy Ghost. Ye might ask the clouds to rest on your head, the rivers to roll down in streams from both your eyes, for your grief would ‘have need of all the watery things that nature could produce’. If ye had not something in the world beside your reason, beside the fleeting joys of earth-if ye had not something which God had given to you, some hope beyond the sky, some refuge that should be more than terrestrial, some deliverance which should be more than earthly, then ye might weep -ah! weep your heart out at your eyes, and let your whole bodies waste away in one perpetual tear. If the Bible were not the truth of God-if we could not meet together around his mercy seat, then ye might put your hands upon your loins and walk about as if ye were in travail. Ay, my friends, if it were not true, ye might weep. Even worldly men admit that there is something extremely comforting in the sacred Scriptures, and in our holy religion I have even heard it said of some, that after they had, by their logic, as they thought, annihilated Christianity, and proved it to be untrue, they acknowledged that they had spoilt an excellently comforting delusion, and that they could almost sit down and weep to think it was not a reality. Oh, son of affliction and misery, wouldst thou forget for a time thy pains and griefs? This is the Bethesda, the house of mercy this is the place where God designs to cheer thee, and to make thy distresses stay their never ceasing course this is the spot where his children love to be found, because here they find consolation in the midst of tribulation, joy in their sorrows, and comfort in their afflictions. SEEK ye rest from your distresses ye children of woe and sorrow? This is the place where ye may lighten your burden, and lose your cares. ‘For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.’-2 Corinthians 1:5. DELIVERED ON SABBATH MORNING, MARCH 11, 1855, BY THE
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