The Nature of Comfort
By F.B. Meyer

      "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort"

      (2 Cor. 1:3).

      In God there is the mother-nature as well as the Fatherhood. All love was first in Him, ere it was lit up in human hearts. The fires that burn so brightly on the altars of motherhood the world over, were lit in the first instance from the Heart of God; and He keeps them alight. And therefore the love that is so quick to detect and so swift to hush the wail of the babe; which is so sensitive to discover that something ails the troubled heart; which is so inventive of little methods of solace, now by tender touch, and again by delicate suggestion--this love is in the great heart of God, and awaits our need to enwrap us in the embrace of an infinite sympathy and comfort.

      The apostle had known this many a time; and when he tells out his experiences on this matter, we feel we are listening to one who knew whereof he spake. Few have suffered more than he did, from the moment that he gave up all for Christ, to the hour in which he died a martyr for the faith--the break with old friends; the physical sufferings of his lot; the homelessness, and privations, and continual journeyings; the care of all the churches, the opposition of false brethren. Every epistle bears some evidence of the anguish constantly being inflicted on his noble and tender heart. And yet he said, God comforteth us. "Who comforteth in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God" (2 Cor. 1:4).