Beside Still Waters gathers passages from the preaching and writing of Charles Haddon Spurgeon on the comfort God gives His people in affliction. The selections speak to bereavement, prolonged illness, depression, anxiety about the future, and the sense of God's absence, each drawing the reader back to the character of Christ and the promises of Scripture rather than to an improvement in circumstances.

Spurgeon knew the ground he writes about, having carried both chronic physical pain and recurring depression through decades of ministry, and that gives these readings a weight that cheerier books lack. The short entries suit someone who cannot concentrate for long, which makes this a natural book to give to the grieving or the seriously ill, or to keep at hand in a hard season.