. The Path of Sorrow, William Bacon
Stevens, The Rainbow in the Cloud, 1856. Here on earth you will
have many trials and sorrows, John 16, 33. We live in a world of sin, and
hence, in a world of sorrow. For man is born to sorrow as
the sparks fly upward. The apostle Paul tells us that
we must go through much tribulation to enter the kingdom of God.
Thus, it is true that the path of sorrow, and that path alone,
leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. That being so, it
befits us to learn how to transmute tribulations into blessings,
how to turn God's chastening rod into a supporting staff,
how to discern the rainbow in the cloud while we are still
wet with the raindrops of sorrow. It is the design of this volume
to aid in doing this comforting work. It seeks to ameliorate
sorrow. Not by a kind of moral anaesthetic,
deadening the sensibility of grief, and making the heart less
acceptable to woe, but rather by showing to the afflicted that
chastenings are the sure evidence of God's fatherly love. The furnace
of affliction is but the purifying agent to purge away our dross,
that the great Refiner may see His own image reflected in purified
souls, in furnishing the strongest and most scriptural consolation
which can be offered to the sorrowful and stricken-hearted We believe
that all our springs of comfort are in Jesus Christ, that they
are applied to the soul by the Holy Spirit, and they are to
be sought for by the prayer of faith, and that they result from
the overflowing grace of our Heavenly Father. We are unwilling
to lead the reader to any of the broken cisterns of earth
for consolation, when the wellspring of divine comfort, which can
alone staunch his bleeding heart, is pouring forth its free and
life-giving waters. It is the lot of all to be visited
with sorrow. There is a time to mourn marked
out in every man's life, and when that time comes, and the
fainting spirit turns away from the miserable comforters of earth,
may all who consult these pages, finding God a refuge from every
storm, and a very present help, in every time of trouble, and
may they be enabled so to look at their sorrows with a clear-sighted
eye of faith, that they shall discern a rainbow in every cloud
of affliction, and covenant mercy in every shower of grief.