3. The Transfiguration marked Christ's triumph over tempta- tion. On the mount He was again tempted to refuse the cross, to escape His death and His shame, and to pass with Moses and Elijah into that glory which He had with the Father before the world was. But in that high hour He renounced the glory ; He accepted the cup, and turned His face to Calvary.
It is the renunciation of that glory on the hill-top that is the moral wonder of this great incident. Conceive of the wonderful position which our Lord occupied at the time of this Transfigura- tion. He had risen to the climax; He had transmuted the innocence of childhood into the holiness of manhood. He had uniformly resisted sin, its nearest approaches to His Spirit, and lie rose to the completeness of manhood at the age of thirty-three, shall we say, absolutely unstained by sin. If ever there was a case in which the old law, " Do this and thou shalt live," should come into play, it was now. He had kept the law of God. It was His right to enter into the glory and blessedness of immortality without death, its pains and its humiliations. And as He offered Himself with the completeness of His life to God, offered Himself
1 G. Campbell Morgan.
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there on the Mount of Transfiguration, the choice appears to have been given to Him. The glory of the higher mode of existence budded upon His person, but, had He entered heaven then, He must have entered it alone, and the golden gates must have closed upon Him. And so, as a French writer says, He turned His back on the arch of triumph, and resolutely decided upon the pathway of shadows and of grief that led to glory through the grave.
And why ? Because He loved men, and could not even go to heaven alone. Love, says the Song of Solomon, is stronger than death ; but the Transfiguration proves that it is stronger than something which is stronger than death itself — stronger than heaven and the attractions of heaven for a heavenly mind. That was the renunciation of the Christ.
TJ I read a wonderful story about Buddha, which is a strange adumbration of this experience of our Lord. It is said that when Buddha, before he was styled the enlightened one, was sitting at the base of the tree of meditation, there passed before him in proces- sion temptations of various sorts. First temptations of the flesh, and Gautama Buddha put these aside. Then temptations of the mind, and Buddha put these aside. Then various temptations of the spirit, and Buddha put these aside. And then came a subtle temptation. A temptress whispered in his ear, " Thou hast now overcome all the temptations ; enter into Nirvana now " — Nirvana being the Buddhist heaven. And Buddha very nearly gave way, the legend says. But lo ! as he sat at the base of the tree, he heard a rustling in the leaves of the tree above him. And the rustling of the leaves was caused by the agitation of those little creatures of God that crept amongst the leaves, who were looking forward, says the legend, to being saved through Buddha ; but if he escaped now into Nirvana by himself they would be left un- saved ; and the tree rustled with the agitation of the little creatures ; and Buddha was recalled, and he refused the tempta- tion to enter Nirvana then.1
^| Among the many ways in which we miss the help and hold of Scripture, none is more subtle than our habit of supposing that, even as man, Christ was free from the Fear of Death. How could He then have been tempted as we are ? since among all the trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than that Fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a unity, which we can never comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory, — as His sorrow for Lazarus, with the consciousness of the power to 1 G. A. Johnston Ross.
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restore him ; but it had to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror ; and the presence of it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those two at His side. When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered unto Him; now in the fair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the ministrants come to Him from the grave. But from the grave conquered. One, from that tomb under Abariin, which His own hand had sealed so long ago ; the other, from the rest into which he had entered, without seeing corruption. There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and spake of His decease. Then, when the prayer is ended, the task accepted, first, since the star paused over Him at Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon Him from heaven, and the testimony is borne to His everlasting Sonship and power. " Hear ye him." 1
4. The Transfiguration was the preparation for the cross ; it was the vision of the crown before the fight. The cross was set up on the holy mount because it was the Divine purpose from the first to cover the cross with glory. Only eight days have passed since first it was announced to men that the Son of God should be crucified. Already it is seen from the attitude of the disciples in general and Peter in particular that the cross will be an offence unto men. Without delay this mistaken notion, so far as these disciples are concerned, must be corrected. It must not be allowed to continue unchecked. It is necessary that those who are being trained to be the first preachers of the cross should not remain long or altogether under a misapprehension as to its significance. They must be given to understand that it is not without a high purpose, and though they may not yet understand much, their mind must be opened to perceive that somehow there is a hidden glory in what seems only a shame and a curse. Jesus too, in this hour of final acquiescence in His destiny, must, for the sake of His faith and courage, see something of the honour as well as feel somewhat of the sorrow of His cross. And so Calvary is anticipated and transfigured on the holy mount. We see it all as they speak of His decease. Jesus is in the midst bearing His cross. But the visage which will afterwards be " marred more than any man " now shines with the splendour of the sun ; the raiment that will be gambled for glistens like the snow. The malefactors are displaced, and instead we find Moses 1 Buskin, Modern Tainlers, iv. chap. xx. § 49.