Our Lord tells us that the Comforter's work as Comforter is to abide, to teach, to remind, to testify, to reprove. These are the ways in which He comforts. The text carries on the same idea. "The Churches... were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied." What then is the conclusion at which we arrive? That the Holy Ghost does not perform the office of Comforter by comfort only or by direct comfort, but through the exercise of other of His prerogatives, such as teaching, testifying, and reproving.
I. We must not divide the sevenfold operation of the Holy Ghost. We must not seek comfort without holiness, nor holiness without comfort; and often the path to any one of His influences lies direct and straight from the other. If you endeavour to obtain any one of His actings without the rest, probably you will thwart Him. The best way is to acknowledge the Holy Ghost as that great Being who acts upon the human mind, and to place yourself entirely in His hands, to do with you just as he sees best.
II. I believe that the Holy Ghost generally begins His consoling processes by increasing our distress. He convinces of sin first, i.e.,Christ justifying; and righteousness, i.e.,pardon; then of judgment, i.e.,the judgment, the termination of all evil; and so He brings out "judgment unto victory," and "tribulation has worked patience," and patience experience, and experience hope; and that hope maketh not ashamed; the sorrow is turned into joy, the Sanctifier is the Comforter, and the comfort is true, deep, holy, and for ever. Thus, then, even in His comfortings, the Holy Ghost, in His incalculable processes, vindicates the truth of the emblem, and is as the wind, acting in His sovereignty, but no man knoweth whence He cometh nor whither He goeth. But deep and utterly out of reach as His methods are, it is a wonderful provision that the Third Person in the blessed Trinity should be revealed to us characteristically as a Comforter. It is this which makes Him over to us in a relationship that matches the necessity of our daily being. The Holy Ghost is many things. He is a quickener, He is a gladdener, He is a glorifier, but above all He is a Comforter. "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you."
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 181.
References: Acts 9:31. C. J. Vaughan, Church of the First Days,vol. ii., p. 41; W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 266. Acts 9:32-35. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxii., No. 1315.Acts 9:34. G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 329. Acts 9:36-42. N. Axtell, Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 211.Acts 9 Contemporary Pulpit,he promises of His Gospel. We are renewed day by day in the spirit and temper of our mind.
Bishop Claughton, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 561.
References: Ephesians 6:13. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,> vol. iv., p. 255.Acts 10:4. E. M. Goulburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion,p. 112.Acts 10:5. A. W. Hare, The Alton Sermons,p. 801.Acts 10:14. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1823.