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「我想起我夜間的歌曲。」（聖經詩篇七十七篇 6 節）
有一種歌鳥，在亮光中不會唱歌的。雖然主人竭力引牠出聲，但牠總是默然。有時偶然發出短而且促的一聲，但這不足代表牠的藝術。只有一個方法可以使牠唱出最美麗的音樂來，就是在籠的上下四周罩上一層不透光的黑布。
有許多人都要在夜幕下降之後，才知道歌唱，傳說夜鶯在荊棘刺著胸口時鳴啼。夜晚才聽見天使的歌頌之聲，那是大喜的資訊：“新郎來了，你們出來迎接他。”（馬太福音25章6節）這是在半夜——頂黑的時候——報的。
人何獨不然；天色尚未黑暗，靈魂充滿了自己的安逸，他能否真正領悟上帝愛的豐富和甘甜？倒不如在最黑暗的處境中才能有所表現。
光明是從黑暗中出來的，早晨亦自從夜晚滋長的。
詹姆斯 • 克理曼利（James Creelman）訪巴爾幹諸國，尋找塞維亞流亡女王娜塔麗，他記述此行的信劄中說：「在那值得紀念的旅程中，我第一次知道市上玫瑰香油精的原料，産自巴爾幹山中。使我感到興趣的是，玫瑰必須在黑暗的半夜方可採摘，採花工作就在短短的一二小時內完成。」
「起初我覺得這個採集方式似乎是古代迷信的遺傳；後來深入調查，終於知道連科學家的實驗亦證明了玫瑰花若在日光中採摘，它將損失其香味的百分之四十。」
對於人類的生活和文化，確是事實，不是兒戲幻想。── 馬克李和（Malcolm McLeord）
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"I call to remembrance my song in the night." (Psalm 77:6.)
I HAVE read somewhere of a little bird that will never sing the melody his master wishes while his cage is full of light. He learns a snatch of this, a bar of that, but never an entire song of its own until the cage is covered and the morning beams shut out.
A good many people never learn to sing until the darkling shadows fall. The fabled nightingale carols with his breast against a thorn. It was in the night that the song of the angels was heard. It was at midnight that the cry came, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him."
Indeed it is extremely doubtful if a soul can really know the love of God in its richness and in its comforting, satisfying completeness until the skies are black and lowering.
Light comes out of darkness, morning out of the womb of the night.
James Creelman, in one of his letters, describes his trip through the Balkan States in search of Natalie, the exiled Queen of Serbia.
"In that memorable journey," he says, "I learned for the first time that the world's supply of attar of roses comes from the Balkan Mountains. And the thing that interested me most," he goes on, "is that the roses must be gathered in the darkest hours. The pickers start out at one o'clock and finish picking them at two.
"At first it seemed to me a relic of superstition; but I investigated the picturesque mystery, and learned that actual scientific tests had proven that fully forty per cent of the fragrance of roses disappeared in the light of day."
And in human life and human culture that is not a playful, fanciful conceit; it is a real veritable fact. --- Malcolm J. McLeod.
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