Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night.
YOU may see, if you will read your Bible, that the night is spoken of in
the Old Testament much as we speak of it now, as a beautiful and holy
thing. The old Jews were not afraid of any terror by night. They
rejoiced to consider the heavens, the work of God’s fingers, the moon and
the stars, which he had ordained. They looked on night, as we do, as a
blessed time of rest and peace for men, in which the beasts of the forest
seek their meat from God, while all things are springing and growing, man
knows not how, under the sleepless eye of a good and loving Creator.
But, on the other hand, you may remark that St. Paul, in his Epistles,
speaks of night in a very different tone. He is always opposing night to
day, and darkness to light; as if darkness was evil in itself, and a
pattern of all evil in men’s souls. And St. Paul knew what he was
saying, and knew how to say it; for he spoke by the Holy Spirit of God.
The reason of this difference is simple. The old Jews spoke of God’s
night, such as we country folks may see, thank God, as often as we will.
St. Paul spoke of man’s night, such as it might be seen, alas! in the
cities of the Roman empire. All those to whom he wrote—Romans,
Corinthians, Ephesians, and the rest—dwelt in great cities, heathen and
profligate; and night in them was mixed up with all that was ugly,
dangerous, and foul. They were bad enough by day: after sunset, they
became hells on earth. The people, high and low, were sunk in
wickedness; the lower classes in poverty, and often despair. The streets
were utterly unlighted; and in the darkness robbery, house-breaking,
murder, were so common, that no one who had anything to lose went through
the streets without his weapon or a guard; while inside the houses,
things went on at night—works of darkness—of which no man who knows of
them dare talk. For as St. Paul says, ‘It is a shame even to speak of
those things which are done by them in secret.’ Evil things are done by
night still, in London, Paris, New York, and many a great city; but they
are pure, respectable, comfortable, and happy, when compared with one of
those old heathen cities, which St. Paul knew but too well.
Again. Our own forefathers were afraid of the night and its terrors, and
looked on night as on an ugly time: but for very different reasons from
those for which St. Paul warned his disciples of night and the works of
darkness. Though they lived in the country, they did not rejoice in
God’s heaven, or in the moon and stars which he had ordained. They
fancied that the night was the time in which all ghastly and ugly
phantoms began to move; that it was peopled with ghosts, skeletons,
demons, witches, who held revels on the hill-tops, or stole into houses
to suck the life out of sleeping men. The cry of the wild fowl, and the
howling of the wind, were to them the yells of evil spirits. They dared
not pass a graveyard by night for fear of seeing things of which we will
not talk. They fancied that the forests, the fens, the caves, were full
of spiteful and ugly spirits, who tempted men to danger and to death; and
when they prayed to be delivered from the perils and dangers of the
night, they prayed not only against those real dangers of fire, of
robbers, of sudden sickness, and so forth, against which we all must
pray, but against a thousand horrible creatures which the good God never
created, but which their own fancy had invented.
Now in the Bible, from beginning to end, you will find no teaching of
this kind. That there are angels, and that there are also evil spirits,
the Bible says distinctly; and that they can sometimes appear to men.
But it is most worthy of remark how little the Bible says about them, not
how much; how it keeps them, as it were, in the background, instead of
bringing them forward; while our forefathers seem continually talking of
them, continually bringing them forward—I had almost said they thought of
nothing else. If you compare the Holy Bible with the works which were
most popular among our forefathers, especially among the lower class,
till within the last 200 years, you will see at once what I mean,—how
ghosts, apparitions, demons, witchcraft, are perpetually spoken of in
them; how seldom they are spoken of in the Bible; lest, I suppose, men
should think of them rather than of God, as our forefathers seem to have
been but too much given to do.
And so with this Psalm. It takes for granted that men will have terrors
by night; that they will be at times afraid of what may come to them in
the darkness. But it tells them not to be afraid, for that as long as
they say to God, ‘Thou art my hope and my stronghold; in thee will I
trust,’ so long they will not be afraid for any terror by night.
It was because our forefathers did not say that, that they were afraid,
and the terror by night grew on them; till at times it made them half mad
with fear of ghosts, witches, demons, and such-like; and with the madness
of fear came the madness of cruelty; and they committed, again and again,
such atrocities as I will not speak of here; crimes for which we must
trust that God has forgiven them, for they knew not what they did.
But, though we happily no longer believe in the terror by night which
comes from witches, demons, or ghosts, there is another kind of terror by
night in which we must believe, for it comes to us from God, and should
be listened to as the voice of God: even that terror about our own
sinfulness, folly, weakness which comes to us in dreams or in sleepless
nights. Some will say, ‘These painful dreams, these painful waking
thoughts, are merely bodily, and can be explained by bodily causes, known
to physicians.’ Whether they can or not, matters very little to you and
me. Things may be bodily, and yet teach us spiritual lessons. A
book—the very Bible itself—is a bodily thing: bodily leaves of paper,
printed with bodily ink; and yet out of it we may learn lessons for our
souls of the most awful and eternal importance. And so with these night
fancies and night thoughts. We may learn from them. We are forced often
to learn from them, whether we will or not. They are often God’s message
to us, calling us to repentance and amendment of life. They are often
God’s book of judgment, wherein our sins are written, which God is
setting before us, and showing us the things which we have done.
Who that has come to middle age does not know how dreams sometimes remind
him painfully of what he once was, of what he would be still, without
God’s grace? How in his dreams he finds himself tempted by the old sins;
giving way to the old meannesses, weaknesses, follies? How dreams remind
him, awfully enough, that though his circumstances have changed,—his
opinions, his whole manner of life, have changed—yet he is still the same
person that he was ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, and will be for
ever? Nothing bears witness to the abiding, enduring, immortal oneness
of the soul like dreams when they prove to a man, in a way which cannot
be mistaken—that is, by making him do the deed over again in fancy—that
he is the same person who told that lie, felt that hatred, many a year
ago; and who would do the same again, if God’s grace left him to that
weak and sinful nature, which is his master in sleep, and runs riot in
his dreams. Whether God sends to men in these days dreams which enable
them to look forward, and to foretell things to come, I cannot say. But
this I can say, that God sends dreams to men which enable them to look
back, and recollect things past, which they had forgotten only too
easily; and that these humbling and penitential dreams are God’s warning
that (as the Article says) the infection of nature doth remain, even in
those who are regenerate; that nothing but the continual help of God’s
Spirit will keep us from falling back, or falling away.
Again: those sad thoughts which weigh on the mind when lying awake at
night, when all things look black to a man; when he is more ashamed of
himself, more angry with himself, more ready to take the darkest view of
his own character and of his own prospects of life, than he ever is by
day,—do not these thoughts, too, come from God? Is it not God who is
holding the man’s eyes waking? Is it not God who is making him search
out his own heart, and commune with his spirit? I believe that so it is.
If any one says, ‘It is all caused by the darkness and silence. You have
nothing to distract your attention as you have by day, and therefore the
mind becomes unwholesomely excited, and feeds upon itself,’ I answer,
then they are good things, now and then, this darkness and this silence,
if they do prevent the mind from being distracted, as it is all day long,
by business and pleasure; if they leave a man’s soul alone with itself,
to look itself in the face, and be thoroughly ashamed of what it sees.
In the noise and glare of the day, we are all too apt to fancy that all
is right with us, and say, ‘I am rich, and increased with goods, and have
need of nothing;’ and the night does us a kindly office if it helps us to
find out that we knew not that we were poor, and miserable, and blind,
and naked—not only in the sight of God, but in our own sight, when we
look honestly at ourselves.