I know Thee who hast kept my path, and made Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow, So that it reached me like a solemn joy.
^ A picture of deep pathos, carrying its own tender suggestion to the heart, appeared in the Academy of 1897. It was painted by Byam Shaw, and entitled " The Comforter." In the interior of a room, upon a bed, there lies a form, the face of which is not seen, only a hand lying upon the silk counterpane with a wedding- ring upon the finger. By the side of the bed there sits a young man, his elbow leaning upon the bed, his head supported by his ^ J. Brierley, The Secret of Living, 218.
JOB XXXV. lo 123
hand, his face drawn with grief. In his loneliness he sits there while his beloved, with slow and painful breaths, sighs out her little store of life. The picture gives the impression of stillness ; the heedless world is without, ignorant and uncaring, ^ while the pitiful tragedy is working itself out within. But the young man, as he sits there in his unutterable anguish, is not alone ; the Com- forter has come. Seated beside him is a white figure, unseen to him but consciously near. The pierced hands hold the hand of the young man, and in that silent room of death there is another watcher.^
^ Night and darkness, with their uses and abuses, are, after all, of limited area. The sunlight is so much more than they. This ebon blackness, so seeming all-enveloping, is merely a result of your position on a sloping planet. The night's dimension is a trifle compared with the light that is abroad. All around you, though you cannot see it, the pulsing beam is raying out from the centre, spreading through the immensity of the outer spaces. It is you who are in the night, not the solar system. It is not for lack of sunshine that you see nothing. That is an affair of your present position, your present need. And when the need is gone, the night will go. Your destiny is not the night, but the day. Your darkest hour is only its prelude. We see already the boundary of the night, for
On the glimmering limit far withdrawn God makes Himself an awful rose of dawn.^
These stones that make the meadow brooklet murmur
Are keys on which it plays. O'er every shelving rock its touch grows firmer,
Eesounding notes to raise.
If all the course were smooth by which it passes
Adown the pastures fair. Then those who wander through its flowers and grasses
Would hear no music there.
These troubles sore, and griefs, and hard conditions,
Through which I pass along, When going forth to keep my Lord's commissions,
May all be turned to song.
' J. Burns, Elustrations from Art (1912), 10. 2 J. Brierley, The Secret of Living, 221.
124 SONGS IN THE NIGHT
What are they but sweet harp-strings for the spirit
Boldly to play upon ? If all the lot were pleasant I inherit,
These harmonies were gone !
If every path o'er which my footsteps wander,
Were smooth as ocean strand, There were no theme for gratitude and wonder
At Grod's delivering hand.
All this will plain appear when ends life's story,
Where rivers meet the tide That stills their murmurs in a sea of glory,
Where peace and rest abide.^
III.
The Value of the SoNa in the Night.
1. The singing of a glad song cheers and comforts the singer. Life and sunshine are native to the soul. God fashioned us as children of light, and His original thought concerning us was that we should walk in the light, move to music, and taste the sweetness of manifold felicity. We were created for glory and gladness, as certainly as the angels were. Our invincible horror of sickness, weakness, loneliness, and death tells most eloquently that we were predestinated to health, strength, fellowship, and life. We have an ineradicable genius for joy, and when plunged into gloomy spheres of trial are perplexed and dismayed. Un- natural conditions are always perilous, and the soul subjected to deep sadness is in danger of wild unbeliefs, subtle selfish- ness, benumbing indifference to life, profane murmuring, and defiance.
^ It is a fine thing to go about one's work singing some hymn with praise in it, and with Jesus' name in it. And if singing may not always be allowable under all circumstances, you can hum a tune. And that brings up to the memory the words connected with it. I know of a woman who was much given to worrying. She made it a rule to sing the long metre doxology whenever things seemed not right. Ofttimes she could
1 W. E. Winks.
JOB XXXV. lo 125
hardly get her lips shaped up to begin the first words. But she would persist. And by the time the fourth line came it was ringing out, and her atmosphere had changed without and within.^
^ The music in Jenny Lind was ever an inspiration, which lifted her, as the lark is carried heavenward by its song — the lark, her own chosen symbol, carved over her house-door; the lark, the winged thing that "singing ever soars," and "soaring ever sings." "What a gift is Art," she herself writes; "music above all — when we understand, not to make it an idol, but to place it at the foot of the Cross, laying all our longings, sufferings, joys and expectations in a light of a dying and risen Saviour ! He alone — and surely nothing else — is the goal of all our intense longing, whether we know it or not." ^