1. If we imagine that the sun-like splendour of our Lord's countenance and the snow-like whiteness of His raiment were but a reflection of the glory of heaven, we shall miss the significance of the Transfiguration. There was a manifestation of heavenly glory — the bright cloud overshadowed them — but that was not till after the glory so graphically described in the narrative had shown itself in our Lord's face and raiment. What the disciples saw was the bright shining of Christ's own spirit, which, asserting itself over flesh and raiment, made the one to shine as the sun and the other to glisten like the driven snow. It was His glory the disciples saw; the glory which belonged to His pure and perfect character, and which belongs in a greater or less degree to every one who is changed into the same image. For " we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord," may be " changed into the same image from glory to glory."
*[f We are told that Francis of Assisi, when absorbed in prayer, " became changed almost into another man " ; and once at least was " beheld praying by night, his hands stretched out after the manner of a cross, his whole body uplifted from the earth and wrapt in a shining cloud as though the wondrous illumination of the body were a witness to the wondrous enlightenment of his mind." The sympathetic vision of her closest companions saw Teresa's personality, when she was writing her great mystical works, so changed and exalted that it seemed to them that her
1 Evelyn Underhill, The Mystic Way, 120.
ST. MATTHEW xvil i, 2 349
countenance shone with a supernatural light. Again, St. Catherine of Bologna, always pale on account of her chronic ill-health, was seen by her sisters in choir with a "shining, rosy countenance radiant like light " : and we are told of St. Catherine of Genoa, that when she came forth from her hiding-place after ecstasy " her face was rosy as it might be a cherub's : and it seemed as if she might have said, Who shall separate me from the love of God ? " In such reports we seem to see the germ of that experi- ence which lies at the root of the story of the Transfiguration of Christ. As Moses came down with shining face from the mountain, so these turn towards the temporal order a countenance that is irradiated by the reflection of the Uncreated Light.1
2. The Transfiguration of Jesus was the natural consummation of His human life, the natural issue of all that had preceded it. Born into the world by the Holy Spirit, He had lived a life linked to, and yet separated from, humanity; linked to it in all the essential facts of its nature, separate from it in its sin, both as a principle and as an activity, He had taken His way from His first outlook upon life as a human being, a babe in His mother's arms, through the years of childhood and growth, through all the temptation and testing of manhood, and through the severer temptation of public ministry, and here, at last, that humanity, perfect in creation, perfect through probation, was perfected in glory. The life of Jesus was bound to reach this point of trans- figuration. It could do no other. In Jesus of Nazareth there was the perfect unfolding before Heaven and before men of the Divine intention as to the process of human life. Beginning in weakness and limitation, passing through difficulties and tempta- tion, gaining perpetual victory over temptation by abiding only, at all times and under all circumstances, in the will of God. At last, all the testing being ended, the life passed into the presence of God Himself, and into the light of heaven, not through the gate of death, but through the painless and glorious process of transfiguration. The Transfiguration of Jesus was the outcome of His unceasing victory in every hour of temptation. The garrison of His life had been kept against every attack of the foe ; no room had been found in any avenue of His being, or in all the circle of His manhood, for anything contrary to the will of God. His life 1 Evelyn Underhill, Tlie Mystic Way, 120.
350 THE TRANSFIGURATION
was a perfect harmony, and the unceasing burden of its music was the goodness, the perfectness, and acceptableness of the will of Cod.
^| Reverently take a flower as an illustration of the process, watching it in its progress from seedling to perfect blossoming. Tin- blossom rested in the seed in potentiality and possibility. Take a seed and hold it in the hand — strange little seed, without beauty, the very embodiment of weakness. But lying within that husk in which the human eye detects no line of beauty or grace, no gleam or flash of glory, there lie the gorgeous colours and magnifi- cent flower itself. From that seed through processes of law, plant and bud proceed, until at last the perfect blossom is formed. God's humanity has blossomed once in the course of the ages, and that transfigured man upon the holy mount, flashing in the splendour of a light like the sun, glistering with the glory of a whiteness like that of the snow, and flaming with the magnificent beauty of the lightning that flashes its radiance upon the darkness, that was God's perfect man. That was the realization of the thought that v as in the mind of God when He said, "Let us make man in our image." *