It is very useful to sing in the night of our troubles, first, because it will cheer ourselves.  When you were boys living in the country, and had some distance to go alone at night, don’t you remember how you whistled and sang to keep your courage up?  Well, what we do in the natural world we ought to do in the spiritual.  There is nothing like singing to keep your spirits alive.  When we have been in trouble, we have often thought ourselves to be well-nigh overwhelmed with difficulty; and we have said, “Let us have a song.”  We have begun to sing; and Martin Luther says, “The devil cannot bear singing.”  That is about the truth; he does not like music.  It was so in Saul’s days:  an evil spirit rested on Saul; but when David played on his harp, the evil spirit went away from him.  This is usually the case:  if we can begin to sing we shall remove our fears.  I like to hear servants sometimes humming a tune at their work; I love to hear a plowman in the country singing as he goes along with his horses.  Why not?  You say he has no time to praise God; but he can sing a song—­surely he can sing a Psalm, it will take no more time.  Singing is the best thing to purge ourselves of evil thoughts.  Keep your mouth full of songs, and you will often keep your heart full of praises; keep on singing as long as you can; you will find it a good method of driving away your fears.

Sing, again, for another reason:  because it will cheer your companions.  If any of them are in the valley and in the darkness with you, it will be a great help to comfort them.  John Bunyan tells us, that as Christian was going through the valley he found it a dreadful dark place, and terrible demons and goblins were all about him, and poor Christian thought he must perish for certain; but just when his doubts were the strongest, he heard a sweet voice; he listened to it, and he heard a man in front of him saying, “Yea, when I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”  Now, that man did not know who was near him, but he was unwittingly singing to cheer a man behind.  Christian, when you are in trouble, sing; you do not know who is near you.  Sing, perhaps you will get a companion by it.  Sing! perhaps there will be many a heart cheered by your song.  There is some broken spirit, it may be, that will be bound up by your sonnets.  Sing! there is some poor distrest brother, perhaps, shut up in the Castle of Despair, who, like King Richard, will hear your song inside the walls, and sing to you again, and you may be the means of getting him a ransom.  Sing, Christian, wherever you go; try, if you can, to wash your face every morning in a bath of praise.  When you go down from your chamber, never go to look on man till you have first looked on your God; and when you have looked on Him, seek to come down with a face beaming with joy; carry a smile, for you will cheer up many a poor way-worn pilgrim by it.