One night, when a lad, lying in my bed at home, I awoke, and it was dark, and I heard a voice in the night-not a song, but I heard the voice of my mother, as she lay upon her bed of pain. She was twenty-five years in the valley of the shadow of death. Her “light affliction” endured for a quarter of a century, but it was “but for a moment,” seeing that it led to the “eternal weight of glory.”
I shall never forget how the sound of her dear voice floated into my dark room on that winter night with the wind howling around thee house, as she was saying the sweet words of the Psalmist, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
I am saying it in a rough, unmelodious voice. I heard it hymned in the exquisite tone that only a man’s mother’s voice can ever have to his own ear. Sing it. Sing it in the darkness. Sing it now all the more if the valley seems long. You are passing through the valley.