Again:  the songs we sing in the night will be lasting.  Many songs we hear our fellow-creatures singing in the streets will not do to sing by-and-by; I guess they will sing a different kind of tune soon.  They can sing nowadays any rollicking, drinking songs; but they will not sing them when they come to die; they are not exactly the songs with which to cross Jordan’s billows.  It will not do to sing one of those light songs when death and you are having the last tug.  It will not do to enter heaven singing one of those unchaste, unholy sonnets.  No; but the Christian who can sing in the night will not have to leave off his song; he may keep on singing it forever.  He may put his foot in Jordan’s stream, and continue his melody; he may wade through it, and keep on singing still, and land himself safe in heaven; and when he is there, there need not be a gap in his strain, but in a nobler, sweeter strain he may still continue singing His power to save.  There are a great many of you that think Christian people are a very miserable set, don’t you?  You say, “Let me sing my song.”  Ay, but, my dear friends, we like to sing a song that will last; we don’t like your songs; they are all froth, like bubbles on the beaker, and they will soon die away and be lost.  Give me a song that will last; give me one that will not melt.  Oh, give me not the dreamster’s gold! he hoards it up, and says, “I’m rich”; and when he waketh, his gold is gone.  But give me songs in the night, for they are songs I sing forever.

Again:  the songs we warble in the night are those that show we have real faith in.  God.  Many men have just enough faith to trust God as far as they can see Him, and they always sing as far as they can see providence go right; but true faith can sing when its possessors cannot see.  It can take hold of God when they cannot discern Him.

Songs in the night, too, prove that we have true courage.  Many sing by day who are silent by night; they are afraid of thieves and robbers; but the Christian who sings in the night proves himself to be a courageous character.  It is the bold Christian who can sing God’s sonnets in the darkness.

He who can sing songs in the night, too, proves that he has true love to Christ.  It is not love to Christ to praise Him while everybody else praises Him; to walk arm in arm with Him when He has the crown on His head is no great deed, I wot; to walk with Christ in rags is something.  To believe in Christ when He is shrouded in darkness, to stick hard and fast by the Savior when all men speak ill of Him and forsake Him—­that is true faith.  He who singeth a song to Christ in the night, singeth the best song in all the world; for He singeth from the heart.

I am afraid of wearying you; therefore I shall not dwell on the excellences of night songs, but just, in the last place, show you their use.