We are allowed to believe, then, that the pity of God passes over into sympathy. We are visited in our sorrows not by a God whose mood toward us is abstract, but whose own infinite heart knows grief. "The human life of God" is a phrase that has been used to describe the incarnation. That phrase enters into our problem here. If Jesus shows us what God is like, then the Christ who wept over Jerusalem brings us one revelation of the divine life. The pitying God becomes the sympathizing God. The biblical lesson of comfort does not halt even here. It is given a closer and more personal quality. A pitier and sympathizer may be very distant, and his aid may reach us over the abysses. If the Bible gives us the vision of a pitying father, it gives us also the vision of the God who comforteth even as a mother comforteth. In the various kinds of trouble men become aware of reserve forces in their nature. They endure what they thought they could not endure. In crisis times the muscles secure extra strength, the mind secures extra alertness, and the spirit secures extra power either to do or to bear. These reserves must be of God's giving, whether they lie ready in the nature always, or are special gifts sent direct to help us in the troublous hours. There is, however, a still more personal interpretation that the Bible offers for these experiences. They are the special visits of God to the afflicted. If the creed of the divine sympathy gets its meaning from "the human life of God" as seen in the incarnation of Christ, this part of the creed gets its meaning from the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is true that the Greek word which is translated "Comforter" might be given other meanings such as Adviser or Helper. But this does not change the point for the present discussion. An Adviser in sorrow is a Comforter, and a Helper in sorrow is a Comforter. It is significant that the consciousness of the church followed the translators eagerly and adopted the word Comforter as if it met some need of life and as if it answered to some deep experience of life. We may not go into a labored discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity. We may affirm that a humanity that sorrows is glad for a doctrine of the Godhead that magnifies the office of consolation. The comforting quality in Barnabas led the early disciples to change his name from Joses to Barnabas because he was a "son of consolation." They rejoiced in their human comforter. The church has ever found satisfaction in the revelation of a divine Comforter. In this revelation it sees the pitying God and the sympathizing God become the Comforting God.