Hymns in Hospital
“I am sending you my testimony for the prayer meeting. First I want you to thank God with me and for me that all is well. Then ask God to bless each and every nurse up here because they certainly are a splendid lot. They hold chapel here every morning. The day I was operated they sang, ‘I need thee every hour.’ I felt they were just singing that for me.
“I was terribly frightened when I lay on the table but I prayed that God would be near me. I certainly felt His presence. I could not see Him, neither could I see the two doctors in the operating room but I knew they were there just the same. Do you wonder that the first words I said after the operation were, ‘O Light that followest all my way’?
“It surely means something to have a Friend who can go with you down even to the valley of the shadow of death. The next morning was the worst yet and they sang:
‘Leave, ah! leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me.’
“What do you think of that? Why, if I had been the only one in the hospital they could not have sung anything better for me.
“Just across the way from me there lies a lady very ill, and the other night while I was awake, I heard her singing, soft and sweet and trembling,
‘Or if my way lie
Where death o’erhanging nigh,
My soul doth terrify
With sudden chill.’
And then her voice came out strong:
‘Yet I am not afraid:
Whilst softly on my head
Thy tender hand is laid,
I fear no ill.’”
Here is another testimony when