It was from behind the curtained clouds that God spoke, introducing Jesus as the world’s Redeemer, saying, “This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.” It was an overhanging canopy of cloud that curtained the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, and it was in this curtained tabernacle that they beheld the glory of their Lord. To hide the shame of those who crucified His Son, God hung a curtain of cloud about the sun, enveloping Calvary in the shades of night. It was a curtain of cloud that hid the ascending Lord from the sight of the wondering, astonished, fear-filled disciples. It was from amid their soft drapery that the angels spoke of his coming again, and it is upon the clouds that the Son of man shall come in his glory to judge the nations. From the glory of the Patmos vision, John exclaimed, “Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him!” To the very end Christ is surrounded with the curtained clouds of mystery. “And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud One sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.”
Mystery has a large part in the Christian faith, not to discourage, but to encourage the prayerful, aspiring souls of men. The drapery of cloud hangs all about, not to defeat, but to challenge. It is no illusion like a great desert distance filled with the blue of emptiness, that strews the sands with the bones of those whom it deceives, but is as real as the curtains of the ancient tabernacle that held the symbol of Jehovah’s presence. Life’s mysteries are often most tantalizing; its problems artfully made difficult of solution; but always within their depths is God.
To-day, for our development, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it is the promise that some day we shall see, not through the mists darkly, but face to face with God. Some day we shall pass beyond the cloudy portals, and the vision of God and our own immortality shall lie before our enraptured vision. The puzzle of life shall there find perfect solution. The equation in which life is now the unknown quantity shall find its answer. In that cloudless land we shall know even as we are known. The shadows of death are the last shadow the soul of the righteous shall ever see. Until that glad day comes, let us fit ourselves, through prayer and goodness, to receive such revelations of the mystery of godliness as God may care to reveal as he parts the curtains of our life’s horizon, knowing that we journey to a perfect, unclouded day.
IV.
Tilling the Sky
Man, that must till the soil for the building of his body, must also till the sky for the growing of his soul. This was the thought of a little woman among the Ozarks, who had given a long and beautiful life in training her people of the hills. It was Commencement Day in the college she had founded. Gathered about her were the young men and young women from the humble homes of those rugged hills. They were now leaving her sheltering care to “commence” life. She was such a tiny bit of woman, but through the lens of tears in those students’ eyes, she was greater and more stately than any queen. Her eyes gleamed with a love-lighted moisture, her lips trembled with great emotions as she rose to offer her last words of counsel. She knew that very soon they would be beyond the reach of her voice, and her desire was to write just one more message upon the pages of their memories, a message that should never be erased. Breathlessly we awaited her words, which were these: “My children, whatever you do, or wherever you go, this one task I place before you. Continue your study of astronomy, for there is nothing that so uplifts and widens one’s life as a study of the sky.”
These were not the words of a mere dreamer, but of a very practical woman, and were words of wisdom uttered to young men and young women who were practical students, yearning to make their lives count. These students were trained observers who would travel that they might see things as they are; they were scholars who would study in order to make discoveries. They were to enter the strain and struggle of competition. They were to match their brawn and brain against honest rivalry and unscrupulous dishonesty. They were not entering paradise, yet, amid it all, the one who yearned most for their unmeasured success and honor, urged them to cast their plowshare deep into the wide expanse of overarching blue, whose owner is God, but whose harvests belong to the reaper.
The little woman was very practical, for a man must not permit the narrowing influences of earthly endeavor to cramp and destroy the soul. This is the tendency of most of our daily duties, even those of the most fascinating and absorbing scientific character. A man may follow the footsteps of Luther Burbank and devote his life to the study of plants, and through his magic touch, may bring beauty of form and richness of flavor to bud and blossom, vegetable and fruit, and yet the very fascination of the work may bind him into a narrow world of just buds and blossoms, vegetables and fruits. He may, like Edison or Steinmetz, choose the fairyland of electricity; or, like Madame Curé, enter the enchanted realm of radio-activity; or, like Morse and Bell and Davenport, become wizards in the world of invention, and find a joy that is as perilous as it is unutterable. Any realm of nature or invention, absorbs and fascinates as clover blossoms claim the bee. He who studies will find that a lifetime is too short to fathom the unmeasured depths of an atom or explore the mysteries of one drop of dew.
But the very fascination of these things is their peril, for the tendency of any line of endeavor is to narrow and to restrict one’s life. One need not yield to this tendency, but the chances are that he will. Darwin reports spending several delightful years studying fish-worms, but while engaged in this absorbing task he lost all taste for music. Ericsson had a similar experience. Planning, with steel armor, to remake the navies of the world, he refused his soul all sound of blended tones, endeavoring to feed his whole nature on armor plate. It was not until Ole Bull, against Ericsson’s desire, entered his factory, and began playing his violin, that the great inventor became a weeping, willing captive, kneeling at the shrine of music, tearfully confessing that he had then found that which he had lost, and for which his soul had been craving. When a man, through the microscope, begins a life study of the infinitesimal, he is apt to get his own ego into the field of vision and magnify himself. On the other hand, considering only his own achievements in art or architecture, one is apt to exaggerate his own importance saying, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have builded?” However, when he begins to study the stars and comprehend something of the vastness of the plan upon which God has made the heaven and the earth, he will see his own littleness and exclaim with the psalmist, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man?”
No earth-made ceiling is high enough for a growing brain. Each individual must have a God-made sky in which to lift his head and think the thoughts of the Almighty. The earthly thing upon which we set our affection and which we think so essential may mean the wreck and ruin of the soul. It is easy to neglect the brain, and direct all one’s energies toward gaining earthly possessions, not for the opportunities afforded for benevolence, but that one may dress in style and enjoy a social life, not knowing that it is far better to be a great thinker than to be the best dressed man in Paris. Poverty may be infinitely better than wealth when the individual has a familiar sky above his head and a good book in his hand. How insignificant are earth’s greatest obstacles compared with the immensities of stellar space! Nothing can hinder the man who is accustomed to measure the distances between stars. With his eyes on the distant suns, poverty becomes a mole-hill; poor health, but a breath of mist; and success is within easy reach. It is good for one to till the sky until he learns the vastness of his Creator’s thoughts.