Songs in the Night

But none saith, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night. JOB 35:10

The Prince of Preachers was often a man in the dark. It surprises people who know only the famous name and the vast congregations, but it is one of the most important things about him. From the night of the Surrey Gardens disaster, when he was twenty-two, to the end of his life, Spurgeon suffered recurring bouts of depression, sometimes with an obvious cause and sometimes with none. He also suffered years of severe physical pain from gout and kidney disease. He did not hide any of this. He preached out of it, and it made him one of the tenderest pastors of the afflicted the church has known.

Any man can sing in the day

His sermon Songs in the Night takes its text from a speech of Elihu in the book of Job. Elihu complains that people in trouble look everywhere for help except to the God who gives songs in the night. Spurgeon thought that true of most Christian distress.

But what he chiefly draws from the text is who the author of such songs must be. “Any man can sing in the day,” he says. When the cup is full and the harvest is in, anybody can praise God. It is easy for a wind harp to make music when the wind is blowing. “It is easy to sing when we can read the notes by daylight, but he is the skillful singer who can sing when there is not a ray of light by which to read.” Such a singer, he says, sings from his heart and not from a book. And only God can put that song there.

Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life. PSALM 42:8

He also offers a word to those who cannot sing even that. When the present is dark, he says, you may still sing of the past. It is night now, but you can remember when you saw the sun. That is not a small thing. Memory of former mercies is one of the songs God gives in the dark.

A minister who fainted

Spurgeon was most personal about his depression when speaking to the students of his Pastors’ College. In one of the addresses later published in Lectures to My Students, under the title The Minister’s Fainting Fits, he told them plainly that fits of depression come upon most ministers, himself among them, and that they should not be surprised or ashamed. He described how such darkness had fallen on him sometimes before a great work and sometimes after it, sometimes through overwork and sometimes for no reason he could find. He did not treat it as a sin or as evidence of weak faith. He treated it as part of the lot of earthen vessels, which God uses precisely because they are weak.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:7

That was a remarkable thing for a famous preacher to say to young men who idolised him, and it has been a lifeline to many sufferers since. Depression was not, for Spurgeon, a failure of doctrine. He knew the doctrines of grace as well as any man alive, and they did not prevent the darkness. What they did was give him somewhere to stand while it lasted.

God in the furnace

In the passages gathered in Gleanings Among the Sheaves under the heading In Sorrow and Affliction, Spurgeon gathers his settled convictions about suffering. The first is that God is present in it. “As sure as ever God puts His children in the furnace,” he writes, “He will be in the furnace with them.” He points to Jacob, who met the angel only when he had to wrestle, and to John, who saw the Revelation on the barren rock of Patmos.

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned. ISAIAH 43:2

The second conviction is that affliction has a purpose and a limit. God does not afflict willingly. He never keeps His people in the furnace longer than His wise and loving purpose requires, and when that purpose is served He removes the rod. Spurgeon draws this from the end of Job’s story: The Lord turned the captivity of Job. “Our longest sorrows have a close,” he says, “and there is a bottom to the profoundest depths of our misery.”

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:17

And the third conviction is that God does His best work in His people through suffering. “The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.” That sentence is easy to say and very hard to live. Spurgeon lived it.

Deep waters

The preface to the Cheque Book, written in the last years of his life, is one of his most moving pieces of writing, precisely because it is so restrained. He says that since beginning the book he had been cast into waters to swim in which, but for God’s upholding hand, would have been waters to drown in. Sharp bodily pain followed mental depression, and both were accompanied by bereavement and by the illness of one dear to him as life. He mentions it, he says, only so that readers will know that the comfort he offers is not theoretical.

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. JOB 13:15

A caution, and a comfort

Spurgeon lived before depression was understood as it is now, and he sometimes spoke of it in wholly spiritual terms. Readers who suffer should not take him to mean that prayer and promises are the only help they may seek. He himself rested when he could, sought the sun of the south of France, and relied on the care of others. Using the means God provides — medical, practical and relational — is not a lack of faith. But his central comfort holds. Darkness is not proof that God has gone. It may be the very place where He intends to give a song.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. If you are in a season of darkness, tell God honestly how it feels. Spurgeon never pretended; you need not either.

2. Write down three mercies from a brighter season of your life. When you cannot sing of the present, sing of those.

3. If your low spirits have lasted a long time, speak to someone you trust, and consider seeing a doctor. Doing so is not a failure of faith.

4. Think of someone you know who is suffering. Visit, write or call them this week, without trying to explain their trouble.

5. Read Psalm 42 slowly, and notice how the psalmist speaks both to God and to his own soul.

A PRAYER

God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night, the night has come and I cannot find the tune.

I remember when I saw the sun. Help me to hold on to that memory until the morning comes.

You are with me in the furnace. You will not keep me there one moment longer than Your love requires.

Give me a song I could never have written myself, and let it comfort others who walk in the dark. Amen.