“I call your attention, first, to THE PASS AND ITS TERRORS— “the valley of the shadow of death.” (Psalm 23:4) Get the idea of a narrow ravine, something like the Gorge of Gondo or some other stern pass upon the higher Alps where the rocks seem piled to heaven, and the sunlight is seen above as through a narrow rift.
Troubles are sometimes heaped on one another, pile on pile, and the road is a dreary defile through which the pilgrim on his journey to heaven has to wend his way.
Set before your mind’s eye a valley shut in with stupendous rocks that seem to meet overhead, a narrowing defile, dark as midnight itself. Through this valley, or rocky ravine, the heavenly footman has to follow the path appointed for him in the eternal purpose of the Infinite mind. Through such a dreary rift many a child of God is making his way at this moment, and to him I speak.
Our first observation about it is that it is exceedingly gloomy. This is its chief characteristic. It is the valley of the shadow— the shadow of death. Death is terrible, and the very shadow of it is cold and chill, and freezes to the marrow.
I have stood under rocks which have not merely cooled me, but have cast around a horribly damp chill, as though the embrace of death had been about me, and its cold within me. One hastens to escape from such a deadly shade, which has tended to strike you with fever.
And such it seems to me is the shade cast by the wing of death when the man feels that he is under such trouble of soul that he cannot live, and would not even wish to do so if he could.
The joy of life has been like the sun under an eclipse; and in the chill, dark, damp shade of a terrible sorrow the man has cowered down, and beneath the icy touch of doubt has shivered, has felt fevered and frightened, and has been as one out of his mind.
I speak to some young hearts here who, I hope, know nothing about this gloom. Do not want to know it. Keep bright while you can. Sing while you may. Be larks, and mount aloft, and sing as you mount; but there are some of God’s people who are not much in the lark line; they are a great deal more like owls.
They sit alone and keep silence; or if they do open their mouths it is to give forth a discontented hoot. Companions of dragons, and very suitable companions, too, such mournful ones need all the gentle sympathy we can afford them. Even those who are bright and cheerful do, many of them, occasionally pass through the dreary glen where everything is doleful; and their spirits sink below zero.
I know that wise brethren say, “You should not give way to feelings of depression.” Quite right, no more we should. But we do; and perchance when your brain is as weary as ours you will not bear yourselves more bravely than we do.
“But desponding people are very much to be blamed.” I know they are, but they are also very much to be pitied; and, perhaps, if those who blame quite so furiously could once know what depression is, they would think it cruel to scatter blame where comfort is needed.
There are experiences of the children of God which are full of spiritual darkness; and I am almost persuaded that those of God’s servants who have been most highly favoured have, nevertheless, suffered more times of darkness than others.
The covenant is never known to Abraham so well as when a horror of great darkness comes over him, and then he sees the shining lamp moving between the pieces of the sacrifice. A greater than Abraham was early led of the Spirit into the wilderness, and yet again ere He closed His life He was sorrowful and very heavy in the garden.
In this heaviness, for which there is a needs be, believers have a black foil which sets out the brightness of eternal love and faithfulness. Blessed be God for mountains of joy, and valleys of peace, and gardens of delight; but there is a Vale of Death-shade, and most of us have traversed its tremendous glooms.
Moreover, there are parts of human life which are dangerous as well as gloomy. In journeying through the passes of the East an escort is usually needed, for the robber lurks among the rocks, and shoots down upon the traveller, or blocks up his way with sword and spear.
The name of the Khyber Pass is still terrible in our memories, and there are Khybers in most men’s lives. There are points in human history that are specially dangerous. Oh, you that are beginners, I do not wish to frighten you; I do not want to tell you that the ways of wisdom are terrible, for they are not. No, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”
But, for all that, there are enemies on the road to heaven; and there are “Cut-throat Lanes” where, when the enemy finds your spirits cast down, he pounces upon you unawares with temptation, and before you know it you may be wounded and sore grieved.
There are spots in the valley of deathshade where every bush conceals an adversary, where temptations spring out of the very ground like the fiery serpents from amongst the desert sand, where the soul is among lions, even among them that are set on fire of hell.
If you have not yet come to that part of your pilgrimage I am glad of it, and I hope that you may be spared it, in answer to that needful prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.”
But if you are called to walk through this dangerous ravine, what will you do? Why, say this— Yea, though I walk through that dangerous pass of which I have heard, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Recollect that a Christian man is never so much in danger from abundance of temptation as from the carnal security of his own heart. We are often most in jeopardy when we are not tempted; and the worst devil in the world may be no devil at all.
“Deliver me,” said a man of great experience, “from a sleeping devil, for if he roars at me he keeps me awake; but when he lets me alone then my heart presumes that all is safe, and I am betrayed.”
You young people, or old people either, who are placed in the course of providence in positious of great trial and temptation, need not wish for an easier pathway, for it may be that you are safer now, being on your guard, than those who are not fiercely tried, but sit at ease, and are in great peril from sloth and spiritual indifference. Better consume with fire than perish of dry rot.
The cold mountains of trial are far safer than the sultry plains of pleasure. I am not, therefore, alarmed at manifest danger, neither would I have you greatly dismayed because there is a gloomy gorge between you and heaven.”
-Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 27 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1881), 27: 230-232.
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