If any of them are in the valley and in the darkness with
you, it will be a great help to comfort them. John Bunyan tells us,
that as Christian was going through the valley he found it a dreadful
dark place, and terrible demons and goblins were all about him, and
poor Christian thought he must perish for certain; but just when his
doubts were the strongest, he heard a sweet voice; he listened to it,
and he heard a man in front of him saying, "Yea, when I pass through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Now, that man
did not know who was near him, but he was unwittingly singing to cheer
a man behind. Christian, when you are in trouble, sing; you do not
know who is near you. Sing, perhaps you will get a companion by it.
Sing! perhaps there will be many a heart cheered by your song. There
is some broken spirit, it may be, that will be bound up by your
sonnets. Sing! there is some poor distrest brother, perhaps, shut up
in the Castle of Despair, who, like King Richard, will hear your song
inside the walls, and sing to you again, and you may be the means of
getting him a ransom.
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