The Cloud and the Voice
Bishop Huntington. Luke 9:34-36 While he thus spoke, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud.… With a natural cloud the facts we associate are obscurity, dimness, a degree of mystery, a hiding of the light — some-times very mercifully softening and tempering what would be more dazzling than the delicate organ of sight could bear — yet a body so attenuated, transparent, and movable, that we feel the darkness is transient. It may pass away from the face of the sun; it may be touched by his beams, transfigured to the eye, and made almost like another sun in splendour. Such, under the laws of light and air and water and attraction, are the properties of the cloud in nature. Now, in that succession of special disclosures of the Divine Presence and care for man, of which the Bible is the completest record and Christ the perfect incarnation, it is striking to see how each principal act of revelation is covered with a cloud — a palpable veil of mystery. From the beginning to the end you see the persistent and remarkable reappearance of this symbol. Considering how these different books of the Bible were produced, and what a variety of authors, periods, countries, stages of literary culture, they proceed from, this is more than a coincidence — it is design. It discloses a general truth. As men are brought near to the very sight and feeling of their Lord, an obscurity overshadows them; there is a shrinking; reverence hides the face; the angels even, admitted to the brightest day, veil their eyes with their wings; no sight is clear enough, no faith is bold enough, not to need the screen. "They feared as they entered into the cloud." 1. Most of our deepest acquaintance with religious truth comes by a discipline of some severity. To pass out of a life of indifference and self-indulgence into one of purity and prayer requires a painful effort. If you can look back to any time when your life took a new starting-point, or rose to a higher aim, you will remember there was some hard conflict connected with it. Suffering is not only the consequence of sin, but the instrument of recovery. It is a means of penitence, and so a minister to the only real peace. 2. The second point on this practical side of the doctrine is that it is when we are entering into this cloud — having only the dark side of it before us, and its damp and chilly folds closing around us — that we are afraid. The purpose of the cloud is to shut out all that we are not meant to see. It is also a kind of background for the heavenly vision. This is only one way of expressing the exact and eternal contradiction of right and wrong. The true life is born by a painful travail. 3. For, thirdly, there comes, as the Evangelist writes, "a voice out of the cloud," which is sufficient, if we will hearken to it, to guide us through the dark, into the light, where the sun is never dim. 4. "Hear Him." Hear Him, and He will scatter the cloud from about you with the breath of His mouth. (Bishop Huntington.) Parallel Verses KJV: While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud. WEB: While he said these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered into the cloud.