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.