- A BUNDLE OF ARROWS
- [list:3tv36pzm][list:3tv36pzm]by Reverend B Carradine
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.
[youtube:3tv36pzm]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzWrsHHlLaY[/youtube:3tv36pzm]
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
sightâ€â€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.â€Â
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.â€Â
<A 'moment' cut from the forming times and presented by the one known as ~Sparrow>
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FOOTNOTES /// ANNOTATIONS /// SOURCE:
Reverend B. Carradine, A Bundle of Arrows, pg 34-37
B o o k s F o r T h e A g e s
AGES Software • Albany, OR USA
Version 2.0 © 1996, 1997
"Maggie By My Side"
Music by Stephen Foster (1854)