We all like comfort. But what kind of comfort do we not merely like but need? Merely to be comfortable?--To be free from pain, anxiety, sorrow?- -To have only pleasant faces round us, and pleasant things said to us? If we want that comfort, we shall very seldom have it. It will be very seldom good for us to have it. The comfort which poor human beings want in such a world as this, is not the comfort of ease, but the comfort of strength. The comforter whom we need is not one who will merely say kind things, but give help--help to the weary and heavy laden heart which has no time to rest. We need not the sunny and smiling face, but the strong and helping arm. For we may be in that state that smiles are shocking to us, and mere kindness,--though we may be grateful for it--of no more comfort to us than sweet music to a drowning man. We may be miserable, and unable to help being miserable, and unwilling to help it too. We do not wish to flee from our sorrow, we do not wish to forget our sorrow. We dare not; it is so awful, so heartrending, so plain spoken, that God, the master and tutor of our hearts must wish us to face it and endure it. Our Father has given us the cup--shall we not drink it? But who will help us to drink the bitter cup? Who will be the comforter, and give us not mere kind words, but strength? Who will give us the faith to say with Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him?" Who will give us the firm reason to look steadily at our grief, and learn the lesson it was meant to teach? Who will give us the temperate will, to keep sober and calm amid the shocks and changes of mortal life? Above all, I may say--Who will lead us into all truth? How much is our sorrow increased-- how much of it is caused by simple ignorance! Why has our anxiety come? How are we to look at it? What are we to do? Oh, that we had a comforter who would lead us into all truth:--not make us infallible, or all knowing, but lead us into truth; at least put us in the way of truth, put things in their true light to us, and give us sound and rational views of life and duty. Oh, for a comforter who would give us the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness, and fill us with that spirit of God's holy fear, which would make us not superstitious, not slavish, not anxious, but simply obedient, loyal and resigned.