Hope for troubled spirits

Let it never be forgotten that the subject of the sorrows of the Savior has proved to be more efficacious for comfort to mourners than any other theme in the compass of revelation, or out of it. Even the glories of Christ afford no such consolation to afflicted spirits as the sufferings of Christ. Christ is in all attitudes the consolation of Israel, but he is most so as a man of sorrows.

Troubled spirits turn not so much to Bethlehem as to Calvary, they prefer Gethsemane to Nazareth. The afflicted do not so much look for comfort to Christ as he will come a second time in splendor of state, as to Christ as he came the first time, a weary man and full of woes. The passion-flower yields us the best perfume, the tree of the cross bleeds the most healing balm. Like in this case cures like, for there is no remedy for sorrow beneath the sun like the sorrows of Immanuel. As Aaron’s rod swallowed up all the other rods, so the griefs of Jesus make our griefs disappear.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Man Of Sorrows," delivered March 2, 1873. Image by -Chiotas- on Flickr under Creative Commons License.