SPURGEON

SONGS IN THE NIGHT

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born at Kelvedon, Essex, England, in 1834.  He was one of the most powerful and popular preachers of his time, and his extraordinary force of character and wonderful enthusiasm attracted vast audiences.  His voice was unusually powerful, clear and melodious, and he used it with consummate skill.  In the preparation of his sermons he meditated much but wrote not a word, so that he was in the truest sense a purely extemporaneous speaker.  Sincerity, intensity, imagination and humor, he had in preeminent degree, and an English style that has been described as “a long bright river of silver speech which unwound, evenly and endlessly, like a ribbon from a revolving spool that could fill itself as fast as it emptied itself.”  Thirty-eight volumes of his sermons were issued in his lifetime and are still in increasing demand.  Dr. Robertson Nicoll says:  “Our children will think more of these sermons than we do; and as I get older I read them more and more.”  He died in 1892.

SPURGEON

1834—­1892

SONGS IN THE NIGHT

But none saith, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night?—­Job xxxv., 10.

Elihu was a wise man, exceeding wise, tho not as wise as the all-wise Jehovah, who sees light in the clouds, and finds order in confusion; hence Elihu, being much puzzled at beholding Job thus afflicted, cast about him to find the cause of it, and he very wisely hit upon one of the most likely reasons, altho it did not happen to be the right one in Job’s case.  He said within himself—­“Surely, if men be tried and troubled exceedingly, it is because, while they think about their troubles and distress themselves about their fears, they do not say, ‘Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night?’” Elihu’s reason was right in the majority of cases.  The great cause of the Christian’s distress, the reason of the depths of sorrow into which many believers are plunged, is this—­that while they are looking about, on the right hand and on the left, to see how they may escape their troubles, they forget to look to the hills whence all real help cometh; they do not say, “Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night?” We shall, however, leave that inquiry, and dwell upon those sweet words, “God my maker, who giveth songs in the night.”