Now in the Bible, from beginning to end, you will find no teaching of this kind. That there are angels, and that there are also evil spirits, the Bible says distinctly; and that they can sometimes appear to men. But it is most worthy of remark how little the Bible says about them, not how much; how it keeps them, as it were, in the background, instead of bringing them forward; while our forefathers seem continually talking of them, continually bringing them forward—I had almost said they thought of nothing else. If you compare the Holy Bible with the works which were most popular among our forefathers, especially among the lower class, till within the last 200 years, you will see at once what I mean,—how ghosts, apparitions, demons, witchcraft, are perpetually spoken of in them; how seldom they are spoken of in the Bible; lest, I suppose, men should think of them rather than of God, as our forefathers seem to have been but too much given to do.
And so with this Psalm. It takes for granted that men will have terrors by night; that they will be at times afraid of what may come to them in the darkness. But it tells them not to be afraid, for that as long as they say to God, ‘Thou art my hope and my stronghold; in thee will I trust,’ so long they will not be afraid for any terror by night.
It was because our forefathers did not say that, that they were afraid, and the terror by night grew on them; till at times it made them half mad with fear of ghosts, witches, demons, and such-like; and with the madness of fear came the madness of cruelty; and they committed, again and again, such atrocities as I will not speak of here; crimes for which we must trust that God has forgiven them, for they knew not what they did.
But, though we happily no longer believe in the terror by night which comes from witches, demons, or ghosts, there is another kind of terror by night in which we must believe, for it comes to us from God, and should be listened to as the voice of God: even that terror about our own sinfulness, folly, weakness which comes to us in dreams or in sleepless nights. Some will say, ‘These painful dreams, these painful waking thoughts, are merely bodily, and can be explained by bodily causes, known to physicians.’ Whether they can or not, matters very little to you and me. Things may be bodily, and yet teach us spiritual lessons. A book—the very Bible itself—is a bodily thing: bodily leaves of paper, printed with bodily ink; and yet out of it we may learn lessons for our souls of the most awful and eternal importance. And so with these night fancies and night thoughts. We may learn from them. We are forced often to learn from them, whether we will or not. They are often God’s message to us, calling us to repentance and amendment of life. They are often God’s book of judgment, wherein our sins are written, which God is setting before us, and showing us the things which we have done.
Who that has come to middle age does not know how dreams sometimes remind him painfully of what he once was, of what he would be still, without God’s grace? How in his dreams he finds himself tempted by the old sins; giving way to the old meannesses, weaknesses, follies? How dreams remind him, awfully enough, that though his circumstances have changed,—his opinions, his whole manner of life, have changed—yet he is still the same person that he was ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, and will be for ever? Nothing bears witness to the abiding, enduring, immortal oneness of the soul like dreams when they prove to a man, in a way which cannot be mistaken—that is, by making him do the deed over again in fancy—that he is the same person who told that lie, felt that hatred, many a year ago; and who would do the same again, if God’s grace left him to that weak and sinful nature, which is his master in sleep, and runs riot in his dreams. Whether God sends to men in these days dreams which enable them to look forward, and to foretell things to come, I cannot say. But this I can say, that God sends dreams to men which enable them to look back, and recollect things past, which they had forgotten only too easily; and that these humbling and penitential dreams are God’s warning that (as the Article says) the infection of nature doth remain, even in those who are regenerate; that nothing but the continual help of God’s Spirit will keep us from falling back, or falling away.
Again: those sad thoughts which weigh on the mind when lying awake at night, when all things look black to a man; when he is more ashamed of himself, more angry with himself, more ready to take the darkest view of his own character and of his own prospects of life, than he ever is by day,—do not these thoughts, too, come from God? Is it not God who is holding the man’s eyes waking? Is it not God who is making him search out his own heart, and commune with his spirit? I believe that so it is. If any one says, ‘It is all caused by the darkness and silence. You have nothing to distract your attention as you have by day, and therefore the mind becomes unwholesomely excited, and feeds upon itself,’ I answer, then they are good things, now and then, this darkness and this silence, if they do prevent the mind from being distracted, as it is all day long, by business and pleasure; if they leave a man’s soul alone with itself, to look itself in the face, and be thoroughly ashamed of what it sees. In the noise and glare of the day, we are all too apt to fancy that all is right with us, and say, ‘I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing;’ and the night does us a kindly office if it helps us to find out that we knew not that we were poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked—not only in the sight of God, but in our own sight, when we look honestly at ourselves.
The wise man says:—
‘Oh, would some power the gift but give us,
To see ourselves as others see us!’
and those painful thoughts make us do that. For if we see some faults in ourselves, be sure our neighbours see them likewise, and perhaps many more beside.
But more: these sad thoughts make us see ourselves as God sees us. For if we see faults in ourselves, we may be sure that the pure and holy God, in whose sight the very heavens are not clean, and who charges his angels with folly, sees our faults with infinitely greater clearness, and in infinitely greater number. So let us face those sad night thoughts, however painful, however humiliating they may be; for by them God is calling us to repentance, and forcing us to keep Lent in spirit and in truth, whether we keep it outwardly or not.