Part 2

The cloud curtains are also the temple curtains beyond which men are ever seeking God. As the pillared cloud led Israel victoriously through troubled waters and desert sands, so the mysteries of life and death, and the natural world in which we live, have led the human mind to religious contemplation. Man found himself entangled in the maze of sin, helplessly confused amid the ways that wound about, and crossed, and led to still more hopeless entanglements. Despair pointed to the narrow, tangled ways and said, “There is nothing better.” Looking upward, the distant clouds spoke of a larger world and greater freedom, and beckoned man to try again. By faith he was saved. To a thoughtful, reverent man, all nature reveals and conceals the One who brought it into existence. An awakened soul will never be satisfied until he finds God. He longs to see the Hand that parts the curtains and hurls the lightnings. He yearns to see the Face whose smile fills the sky with sunlight, and transfigures the cloudy curtains, until they become the portals of the heavenly temple. While mystery is not the mother of religion, it is, and ever has been, an important part of the Christian faith. “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing,” says King Solomon. He might have added, “It is the glory of man to search until he find it.”

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.

One of the richest harvests garnered from the sky is a revelation of the accuracy with which God works. The stars do not dwell in a land of “Hit and Miss,” and eclipses are not accidental happenings. No ship cuts the waves of the sea with half the accuracy as star and planet move in their appointed courses. There are no swervings nor deviations from the plan of God, so that an astronomer can calculate the exact second when a comet will return from its long journey through unseen realms; as well as foretell the conjunction of planets a thousand years from now. God has appointed an exact second for the rising of the sun, and another exact second for its setting, and man knows what both of them are a thousand years before the day arrives. Then let us till the sky until we learn that He who planned the high-arched blue, and marked orbits for stars and planets, is also the Designer of our own lives, and has set for us a divine purpose somewhat like the vastness of the sky. Yielding ourselves to God as the heavenly constellations yield themselves to their controlling powers, each one has a greater life to live, and a more sublime destiny to attain, than his fondest dreams. How foolish it is to till the soil for money, and miss the very essence of life, by failing to utilize the sky that yields such tender ministries with so little effort!

It is well to look upward and learn a lesson of patience, for the open sky teaches that the plans of God are not worked out in a day. The journey from star-dust to harvest-ladened planet peopled by a happy family of contented men, requires many millions of years, yet, from the beginning it was in the mind of God. He has never altered his plan, but with divine accuracy the work has passed from stage to stage of development with perfect progression. With such an example, we must learn patience and not become discouraged when we cannot see the end from the beginning. A child can make a shelf full of mud pies in one summer’s afternoon, and they will last no longer than the first rain. Hasty work means wasted effort. Life that endures must be planned of God, fulfilled with astronomical accuracy, and most patiently developed.

How wonderful the brain that is molded after something of the vastness of the open sky, and how thrilling to walk and till the fields of heavenly blue! We were meant for those heights. It does not require a very great elevation in the pure atmosphere of a Western State to push back the horizon forty and fifty miles. This planet is not the objective of life. It is only the hilltop where God has placed us for a little while that we may catch a vision as wide as the universe and as high as his own White Throne.

V

UNQUARRIED STATUES

Michael Angelo, with his statues of David and Moses, proved that Phidias and Praxiteles had not exhausted the marvelous possibilities of the art of sculpture. Rodin, with his “Thinker,” has shown, while Phidias and Praxiteles demonstrated the possibility of giving immortality to the unsurpassed beauty of Grecian form, and while Michael Angelo revealed the power of expressing grace, as in David, and commanding leadership, as in Moses, that the achievements of these two schools of art were the Pillars of Hercules, not marking the limit of art, but the open gateway to uncharted seas and undiscovered realms in the art of reshaping marble. There is not a lofty sentiment of the soul, a struggling aspiration toward goodness, or form of idealism that cannot be made to live in marble, and exert undying influence. There is more than “an angel in the block of marble.” There are all the hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, longings and aspirations, desires and despairs; there is all that is manly, noble, and heroic, lying in any block of marble awaiting the coming of the liberating chisel. What inspiration to the young artist of to-day, and what joy to all lovers of the beautiful! The depths of earth are stored with a wealth of unquarried statues.

The progress of civilization is ofttimes hindered because youth, in thinking of statues, consider the pedestals upon which they rest rather than the depth from which they were quarried. They very often do not care to begin life at the right place. Because they covet praise, and enjoy the warm, congenial atmosphere of appreciation, they shun the depths, hours of loneliness, the unrequited toil of preparation, and the laborious efforts of beginning. Modeling clay is an important part of the achievement; but getting the proper marble is one of the first essentials.

The experience of Michael Angelo is common to all men of real achievement: he found that the market place does not offer marble blocks of sufficient size for him to work out his divine conception. Hucksters and makers of money in the market place seldom understand ambitious youth that asks for larger blocks than they are capable of handling. Their idea of a great thought is an ornament for the mantelpiece. But men of achievement will not be daunted. Locking his studio, Angelo went to superintend the breaking of blocks in the mountain of Carrara, and when the sluggish-minded people of the mountains refused to do his bidding, he opened new quarries in Seravez. Before he could carve his statue he knew that he must quarry a block of marble sufficiently large. He knew also that the block of marble could be had for the digging. He found what he needed but did not exhaust the treasury. The world still has the material, richer than that which made Angelo and Rodin famous, awaiting the youth of ambition to undertake great things, and the willingness, at any cost, to superintend the breaking of the marble blocks from the buried storehouses.

The pleasure of nature is to store her raw material in seemingly inaccessible strongholds. She does not willingly yield them to men lacking vision and great conceptions. If they were of easy access, common men would crush them to make roads for donkeys to tramp over. Nature’s treasures are too valuable for ignorance to destroy, so she locks them in secret depths or inaccessible heights, awaiting the coming of the man of genius. If only a man yields himself to the divine leadings, and catches a vision of a statue like Moses, or a façade for the Church of San Lorenzo, or for a mausoleum for the Medici, no mountainside is too steep to chisel a roadway through the jagged rocks, no morass so yielding but that a solid highway may be erected, no water so troubled but that boats may safely transport the precious marble. He will not depend upon hirelings nor lean upon borrowed strength. The dream of beauty must be wrought in marble, the unquarried statue must be lifted from obscurity and made to live in some public place, therefore he will personally attend to the breaking of the blocks.

It is not an easy matter to live out a divine idea and make it a thing tangible and real for a critical world to examine and criticize and afterwards love and venerate. Sluggards and lovers of ease cannot do it. To them an unquarried statue is only a stone. For centuries no one has given it any attention; why should they? They would rather have something to eat and drink. A cushioned chair is far more comfortable to sit on, and a potato is much more substantial food. What they want is something to eat, and a place in which to lounge, and because they do not see the value of great ideas they can never be forgotten when dead, for they were never known while living.

He lives who forgets to live and concentrates all his powers in bringing to light the vision of his beauty-loving soul. It may be the beauty of art or the beauty of worthy living; it may be the beauty of perfect workmanship in shop or factory, or the beauty of a wholesome influence flowing from noble character; it may be loveliness of sympathetic serving, or the beauty of aggressive battle for righteousness; it may take any one of many forms of exalted thinking and endeavor, yet its realization comes only when one eats, and drinks, and bends every energy, not for the sake of living, but for the realization of that which is more than living.

How lamentable for a human life to end and find at the final judgment that all its days were of less value to the world than that of a coral polyp! How wonderful for one to be made out of dust, and after a while to crumble back into dust, and yet, refusing to grovel in the dust, leave the world richer, and better, and more beautiful, so that people of another age will breathe his name in reverence as they behold that which he hath wrought. Professor Finsen, the inventor of the “light cure,” was an invalid for many years, yet he labored like a slave, in the severest self-denial, to bring his invention, without compensation, to the service of the world’s sick and suffering. He had but one dread and that was the regret of dying, and leaving his little five-year-old boy without any memory of his father. He desired to live long enough to impress his face and life upon the memory of his son, that, in the after years, the growing man would never forget the one who toiled so earnestly for him. He did not want to be forgotten. How little did he dream of the immortality that was his! He found an unquarried statue in the sunbeam where others had overlooked it. Through ceaseless toil he brought it within the vision of the world and gained a name that countless ages will not forget.

How wonderful to be the son of such a man! And though the image of the father’s face be blotted from the memory, the statue that he carved will help and heal the generations. How wonderful to be the son of such a man, but how much more wonderful it is to be the man himself! To fight with optimistic heart against the ravages of disease, to overcome the natural yearnings of a father’s heart, to endure the most slavish toil without thought or hope of compensation, to be a sick man fighting for others who were sick; a dying man making battle against disease that others may not taste of death!

This is the joy unspeakable, to know that life is not in vain, but everlastingly worth while. The visions shall not fade as summer clouds at twilight time, but shall live in that which is as imperishable as marble. Each one can say with deep resolve: “Men shall behold the beauty of my soul by beholding the beauty of my daily life. Since words are blossoms, I shall, with gracious speech, show my friends how choice a garden I have planted in my heart. Since every blossom bears a seed I shall take pleasure in planting them within the hearts of others, that the beauty of my life may live in them. Out of the marble block that it has been mine to break from its hiding place, I shall carve the image I have treasured so long within my heart.” To do this is to find a joy unspeakable. Life is not useless, but gloriously worth while. Eating, and drinking, and toiling for that which is far more than life, one can never die.

VI

THE AGES TO COME

No matter how earnestly we may love our life-calling, and rejoice in our chosen field of activity, there are hours when the easiest task becomes irksome and its daily repetition seems unbearable. However healthy the soul and robust the moral nature, a constant onslaught of sorrow may wound like a poisoned dart, filling the soul with painful forebodings. Beholding the transitoriness of life, and the apparent frailty and uncertainty of those things upon which we place our heaviest dependence, we become depressed, and feel that nothing is permanent and that life’s products are but empty shadows. These are common experiences, and their frequent repetition does not lessen their depressive power. Coming upon us to-day they are just as hurtful as when they challenged us for the first time.

That we may overcome these disagreeable tendencies, and live a life victorious, Paul revealed the secret of his own achievements. To him work never became drudgery, sorrow never festered or left a feverish wound, while even the most commonplace incident was of the deepest significance because he had learned to acquire and maintain a deep perspective that placed each moment of time in the white light of eternity. He believed that we are not created for the hour but for the centuries, and that we must work not so much for the present hour as for the years that are yet to be. The one purpose of every word and deed, to Paul, was to “show the ages to come the exceeding riches of God’s grace.”

As the prolific and luxuriant vegetation of the carboniferous age bordered the lakes with ferns, the rivers with reeds, and the hillsides and valleys with gigantic trees of grotesque form, that, in the ages to come, man might have the exhaustless coalbeds to protect him from the cold; as the coral polyps, buried beneath the waves, love and labor and die, generation after generation, until a coral island lifts its head to receive the kisses of the passing waves and extend the arms of a protecting harbor, that, in the ages to come, the storm-tossed mariners may find safe shelter against the stormy wind and wave; so you and I are to love, and labor, and die, not for ourselves, but that the ages to come, through our goodness and fidelity, may behold the riches of God’s grace.

This does not mean that we are to so bury the present in the future that our lives shall consist of nothing save vague dreams and idle contemplations. It means the opposite. We are to magnify the present and give it increasing value by crowding it with an eternal significance. We are not to drop to-day into the silent ocean of the future and see it fade from sight, but into to-day we are to crowd to-morrow and all the other to-morrows that shall follow. Instead of losing the drop of water in Niagara we are to crowd all the dash and splendor and power of Niagara into the single drop of water; instead of losing the dew in the ocean, we crowd the ocean into the dewdrop; instead of burying the present into the future, we gather all eternity and crowd it into a single lifetime, so that every second of time becomes as precious as a thousand years of eternity, and the smallest task we have to perform becomes as sacred as the songs of the angels.