ST. MATTHEW xvn. i, 2 355
and Elijah who, themselves covered with glory, adorn the cross. Instead of the darkness and the cry of desertion, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " there is the bright cloud and the approving voice of the Heavenly Father, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It is a marvellous and striking situation ; the cross, while only eight days old in its earthly history, set up and surrounded by a wealth of highest glory.
TJ The Transfiguration was designed, in the first instance, to strengthen Jesus and nerve Him for the dread ordeal which awaited Him. It was as though the veil had been drawn aside and the eternal world for a little space disclosed to His view. It was like a vision of home to the exile, like a foretaste of rest to the weary traveller. He was granted a glimpse of the glory which He had resigned that He might tabernacle among the children of men, winning redemption for them, and an earnest likewise of the joy that was set before Him. From the vantage- ground of the Mount of Transfiguration He descried the consum- mation which awaited Him beyond the Hill of Calvary. Nor was that the only consolation which was vouchsafed to Him. His heart had been grieved by the dulness of the twelve, the folly of the multitude, and the hostility of the rulers, and in that tran- scendent hour it was revealed to Him how His work was viewed by God and the glorified saints. Though He stood alone on earth, misunderstood, forsaken, and persecuted, He had Heaven's sympathy and approval.1
T{ A great artist has represented the crown of life which Christ holds out to men as a circlet of gold with another circlet of thorns intertwined. The idea symbolized is true to fact. Jesus Himself experienced it. Here on the mount He is being crowned with glory ; it is a moment of honour and joy, a season to be pro- longed and enjoyed without anything intervening, but He still stands upon the earth, and within the gold there is the thorn which yet will tear and bruise His holy brow. " They spake of his decease." 2
III.
The Practical Suggestions op the Transfiguration.
In one sense the Transfiguration of Christ rises into a plane of thought and feeling beyond our power to enter. No other son
1 D. Smith, The Days of His Flesh, 272. 8 E. T. Vernon, The Holy Mount, 83. ST. MATT. — 23
354 THE TRANSFIGURATION
of man was, or ever shall be, transfigured as was the Lord. No other ever reached manhood without a sting of memory or a qualm of regret. No other ever kept the faith with a clear vision and an unbroken victory. No other ever lived under the sure and constant sense that this world was but his Father's footstool, and the world unseen his Father's house. Yet we must not forget that the Transfiguration was a wholly human experience. It was as human as His hunger, or His weariness, or the accents of His voice in prayer, or His trembling under temptation. Because it is so entirely human it is possible for us to understand its signifi- cance, to pass through it each in his own measure, and to enter into its felicity and reward.
TJ The Transfiguration is not an impressive spectacle arranged for the Apostles, but a peep into the awful background behind life. Let me use a simple parable : imagine a man who had a friend whom he greatly admired and loved, and suppose him to be talking with his friend, who suddenly excuses himself on the plea of an engagement, and goes out ; and the other follows him, out of curiosity, and sees him meet another man and talk intently with him, not deferentially or humbly, but as a man talks with an equal. And then drawing nearer he might suddenly see that the man his friend has gone out to meet, and with whom he is talking so intently, is some high minister of State, or even the King himself ! That is a simple comparison, to make clear what the Apostles might have felt. They had gone into the mountain ex- pecting to hear their Master speak quietly to them or betake Himself to silent prayer ; and then they find Him robed in light and holding converse with the spirits of the air, telling His plans, so to speak, to two great prophets of the ancient world. If this had been but a pageant enacted for their benefit to dazzle and bewilder them, it would have been a poor and self-conscious affair ; but it becomes a scene of portentous mystery if one thinks of them as being permitted to have a glimpse of the high, urgent, and terrifying things that were going on all the time in the un- seen background of the Saviour's mind. The essence of the greatness of the scene is that it was overheard. And thus I think that wonder and beauty, those two mighty forces, take on a very different value for us when we can come to realize that they are small hints given us, tiny glimpses conceded to us, of some very great and mysterious thing that is pressingly and speedily pro- ing, every day and every hour, in the vast background of life ; and we ought to realize that it is not only human life as we see