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.”