02.07. Songs in the Night
Chapter 7 SONGS IN THE NIGHT.
Music by day is beautiful and grateful, but melody at night, wafted through quivering leaves or floating across the water is lovelier still, and is always felt to wield a peculiar and greater power over the heart. The notes of a flute stealing through the starlight can never be heard without emotion, while a song by night heard in the distance melts every power of the soul, thrills every chord of the heart and is ever after hung up in the halls of memory a picture of rare and unfading beauty.
It might puzzle some to answer why a song in the night is so peculiarly affecting to the mind and spirit. For, after saying that the voices of the singers seem to be softened at such a time; that the garish day is over; that the sight and sound of labor are gone; and a stillness has settled and a loneliness outspread over the wood and field and stream in a way to prepare one to be melted and moved, yet other things are felt to exit that seem to defy all analysis of thought and therefore render impossible any expression of the same in words.
Irving’s description of the music he heard at the Alhambra in the moonlight will ever remain a gem of literary beauty. While the gondolier’s song on the star-gemmed Adriatic has touched the heart and fired the pens of a thousand writers. The writer, when a small lad, lay one night in an old grassy field near Brandon, Miss. Sent on a mission to the railroad, he was camping with several men a mile from the place. It was near the close of the Civil War and Confederate troops were encamped in and around the county seat we have named. Suddenly a military band began playing in the distant town. Floating over the treetops and hillsides it came to us as we lay courting sleep, with a thrilling melting power we have never forgotten to this hour. Wide awake now, we listened with wet eyes and swelling heart to "Old Dog Tray," "Maggie By My Side," and other strains that made the boy feel that his body was all too small to hold the different emotions which surged like billows in his breast. It was a song in the night, and the lad will never cease to remember the song and the night.
Repeatedly we have been aroused since we became an evangelist by the voices of young men singing as they passed down the street, and always we awoke with pleasure, although we were tired and it was long after twelve. But the nocturnal melody did the business, and we found our heart going out in prayer and good wishes for the late singers.
Every one who possesses the least sensibility of soul must admit that the awakening by the sound of a serenade is always pleasant. The instruments and voices breaking in on the ear of a person half asleep, or half awake if we will, weave a delicious spell, a delighted momentary thrill so pure and sweet as hardly to belong to earth. Any imperfections in the performance are not noticed in the gradual recovery of consciousness, while the night with its strange softening, crowning touch to the harmony itself, makes the waker think for a second that he has heard a strain from the heavenly world. It was only, however, a song in the night.
David had evidently listened to music at such a time. And hence we find him taking the beauty, tenderness, pleasure and melting power of such occurrences and applying them to certain experiences of the spiritual life.
According to the Book of Psalms, he knew of two kinds of song in the night; one in which he would sing to God and the other in which God sent the song to him. To the first the Psalmist alludes in the words, "I call to remembrance my song in the night."
He admits that he had been so troubled he could not speak; but he recalled some hymn of praise he had written and dedicated to God in happier days, and commenced singing it to Him in the night.
We scarcely know of a more pathetic scene in David’s life than this. The man was in trouble, his soul was without comfort, his spirit was overwhelmed, he could not sleep and could not speak, and yet burdened, sad, wakeful in his misery and smitten voiceless on the earthward and human side, he, in spite of everything and all things, commenced singing to God. Here was faithfulness indeed Here was love and loyalty to the Divine One, no matter what men and devils did nor how the natural heart drooped, sickened and ached all but to death.
We have heard mighty and glorious anthems swell upward to God from crowded church and camp ground, and we question whether a sweeter or more acceptable song ever came into the ears of the Almighty than the hymn of love and praise uttered by the trembling lips of a suffering, tortured, persecuted and discouraged child and servant of his on earth. To sing in the day when all goes well is easy; but to sing in the night is faithfulness, devotion and worship of the highest order. No one can doubt that this pleases God, moves him and would naturally draw him to come to the quick relief of such a follower. Every parent knows how the voice of a child in distress instantly inclines his heart to bring immediate help and comfort. While in the case of Deity, if deliverance should be delayed, it would not be for lack of love and interest, but that such a soul might obtain all the benefit of such a situation in its own enrichment and development, and that the world and universe itself might have added to its spiritual wealth. the benediction and grace of such a character and life. A song in the day is an easy affair. Any worldling can render such a performance. But the song in the night! The faithful utterance in times of trouble. The true thing said in time of greatest difficulty. The loyal, submissive, devoted speeches spoken about God when the soul is comfortless, enemies are thick, troubles are multiplied and relief is not in sight--here is something worth talking about, and that few seem able to do! Well may we pray for the world’s good and the glorifying of Christ’s Redemption that the Singers in the night might be increased an hundred and a thousand fold.
We recently read of a little boy who was run over and badly injured in a street accident. As he lay under the hands of the surgeon, he asked the physician if he might sing while he operated on him. The doctor consented and the little fellow with blanched cheeks and quivering lips, began singing and sang over and over again, with his childish treble, the first verse of that noble hymn called "Palms."
"Blossoms and palms in varied beauty vie, Decked is the road with fragrant flowers to greet Him; Jesus has come, a world’s sad tears to dry, E’en now the throng rush forth with joy to meet Him.
Sing and rejoice with one accord, Sing joyous songs for this sublime ovation, Hosanna. Praised be the Lord, Blessed is He who has brought us salvation."
It was at night, and yet a crowd of attendants nurses could not keep from gathering about the martyr singer. We doubt not that all got a nobler view of life at the spectacle, and we do not question that the surgeon did his very best for the little sufferer, who sang so courageously in the midst of his agony. Would to God that, instead of complaints, Heaven could hear the singing of its afflicted and smitten children coming up out of the night. Not only would it be nobler on our part, but better for the world itself. It was Paul’s song in the night, while he was fastened in the stocks, which brought relief from heaven to himself and salvation to the jailer and many others in the prison. And we can but feel that it will be our singing in the night of trouble that will produce earthquakes of conviction, open the doors of outer and inner prisons and awaken and set free the slumberers and captives of sin on every side and in every place. The other kind of song in the night to which David refers is the one that God himself sent to him. So he speaks of the Lord "compassing him about with songs;" and again he writes, "In the night His song shall be with me." In the first instance the man uplifts his song to God; in the latter case God sends down a song to the man. And here also it comes in the night. The Psalmist says, "In the night His song shall be with me!"
Here God is doing the comforting. The serenade comes from the skies. The singing is done in heaven and then wafted earthward to the child of God in the night.
Hence it is that when John was sent to Patmos, and the darkness of persecution, exile and loneliness had settled upon him, the Lord made the Gold and Silver Trumpet Company and the String Band of the Holy City come out and play on the hillsides of heaven. The banished servant of Christ heard the singing, and "the sound of the harpers harping on their harps," and was so blessed and filled that he wrote a long letter to the seven churches about it, and all the churches have been reading that letter ever since.
Paul had many a night of sorrow and affliction to come down upon him, but every time the Lord saw to it that his lonely and oppressed follower received a serenade from the kingdom of glory. In one of them he was caught up, and saw and heard unspeakable things. He said afterwards that he did not know in the ecstasy and glory which filled him whether he was in the body or out of the body.
Wesley heard this singing. And so does every faithful minister of Jesus Christ who preaches the whole truth and finds himself opposed, contradicted, and struck at by friend and foe, and by men and devils. The shadows come, but with them the divine serenade. Heavenly voices strike upon the listening ear of the soul, and a song begun in heaven floats downward, and is finished in the swelling heart of the smitten, wearied, but still loving and loyal follower of the Son of God.
There are aged servants of the Lord who awaken a great while before day and cannot sleep again. And there are physically afflicted ones who cannot slumber for pain. And there are bereaved Christians whose homes have been stripped by death, and who lie awake at night thinking of the empty chair and vacant room, and the new-made grave in the cemetery. All of these three classes know what we mean by the song in the night. They also know that but for such songs which God gives in the darkness, their hearts would have broken and they would have gone down into a pit of despair and into the grave itself. But the singing from the skies saved them. At three different periods, the writer has taken long railroad trips alone, while his dead lay in the baggage car in front. As he leaned his head against the window frame of the flying train, and looked out at the distant stars, feeling crushed with the emptiness of the world and the full desolation of life at such a season of trouble, yet each time God remembered his lonely and sorrowing servant and sent him a song in the night. Otherwise he feels that his heart must surely have broken by the way.
He, in common with others who are presenting a full salvation, will alike meet with many sore trials and difficulties. All will undoubtedly be wounded by friend, stabbed by foe, and be maligned, abused and opposed on every hand. The night of natural sorrow and trouble is certain to come, but with it is equally sure the blessed, blissful serenade of the skies.
God is faithful, and because he is faithful, he will see to it when the darkness comes, that the song which will make us endure the long night, and even forget the gloom, shall come also.
We, like the lad, may be stretched in the shadows on the cold fields of earth, and far this side of the Golden City. But the Lord will take note of condition and situation, and full of pity for the solitary sufferer, will cause one of the bands of heaven to commence playing from some hillside of glory. And the listening ear shall hear, and the upturned face of the man on the stony ground will glow, and ever afterwards in speaking of that hour and experience he will say with one of old, I was caught up, and saw and heard things unspeakable. I know not whether I was in the body or out of the body. God knoweth. I do know that I was in the dark, and God sent me a song in the night.
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