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.”