§ Cf. His expressions : His ' time not come,' His ' hour,' His being ' straitened to accomplish,' He ' must work the works of
TRANSFIGURATION
TRAN SFIGURATION
745
outward seeming its proper home, living there a concurrent life on a higher plane, with peculiar relations to an unseen world, holding power over it, and bringing power from it ; and in such wise that men, observing His external attitudes, grew in wonder, debate, belief, or unbelief. His Self grew. Day by day it enlarged its domain, and took on an extraordinary presence of which He was conscious, a secretly luminous life known to Himself, only glimpses of which He could bring within the ken of the disciples.
Nor was this whole process secret from the disciples. We have to note in them a growing perception of the mystery of His life. They began their following of Him with their own mental prepossessions. These He was daily dis- turbing. Their attention He was continually arresting. The particulars of His life they were driven to scan eagerly from their various points of view, curious concerning it, questioning regarding it, taking sides about it, some slowly rising towards a clear knowledge of the reality, others hardening into the exact reverse. A calm and unimpassioned looking at the material outside manifestation of His Life without any reference to the inward reality of it, was precisely the one thing that did not happen. That it was more than human they divined, but what, how, to what extent the ' more ' came in, they could not explain; they were earnestly inquiring. And thus they reached the stage when they could acknowledge His Messianic proportions : the confession at Caesarea. That great avowal pre- cipitated the crisis. It was bound to be followed by a further revelation of His purposes. Then came the startling announcement of the Death, opening before their eyes a dark foreground of repudiation and suffering, of whose features Christ Himself, it is probable, could at the moment furnish no clear picture : an announcement whose efi'ect was not mitigated by the further revelation of Resurrection and the coming of the Kingdom. It was a memorable week that followed. The silence of the narrative tells of the intensity of the time. They were on the summits where life absorbs the soul. Thither the juncture of events had brought them. The Master must be lucid.
But first to Himself. A necessary hour is upon Him. Knowing it, He, according to His wont, restrains not the inevitable, but seeks solitude and God. He spends the night in prayer. In the light of His people's destiny, in the face of His prophetic forerunners, conscious of a deeper need and a more desperate struggle than theirs. He presses His life closer to God's, reaching out after completer sym- pathy and perfect understanding of His purposes and of His own part in fulfilling them, and receives in return that wonderful and beautiful inflow of life which stirs up unfathomable springs of purity within, and transmutes even His face and form. It was as when in the sunlight, peering into the heart of a gem, we see depth opening beyond depth until it looks as if there were no end to the chambers of splendour that are shut up in the little stone ; flake after flake of luminous colour floating up out of the unseen fountain which lies somewhere in its heart. In that high hour Christ knew Himself.
He likewise learned His task. In the .same self- revealing hoiar the issue of His life was registering itself in tiie sight of God, who ' seeth the end in the beginning,' and won His approval. The issue was inevitable. For Christ to know God's will was to do it. There was neither doubt nor debate, but immediate decision. He iiad no instinctive unwillingness like Jeremiah. Rather He resembled Isaiah, who, when he had seen the Majesty of
God,' His raising Lazarus ' for the priory of God,' His cure of the blind man ' that the works of God be made manifest,' etc. etc.
Jehovah, came forth from His presence Avith an awe upon him that never left him, and a force of conviction that never deserted him, and with the feeling of an imperative necessity lying on him to speak His word to men which he could not resist. So Christ. He had seen His OAvn glory and felt its power in Him, and was uplifted with a radiant energy before which, as it seemed, no wickedness could stand, and which inspired with a joy deep and strong and solemn. The sweet and awful gladness of His consecration fills His heart and shines out in His face. The Transfiguration was the Divine defiance of the coming darkness (cf. 2Co4«).*
The Transfiguration event transformed His mind : it transformed also His ministry. Its fascination was upon Him, impelling Him to make it manifest with a certain eager wistfulness. The motive is not : Death is before Me, the sooner it is over the better ; but. The beauty of the Father's face has risen upon Me, let it shine out into the hearts of men, and draw all men unto it.
The endeavour to bring this home to the dis- ciples now dominates His thought and directs His activity, dividing both from His Galilsean teaching and work by the clearest line of demarcation. Themes original to the Law and the Prophets yield to the ' excellent glory ' of the Cross, and the nature of the Kingdom His death would intro- duce. Miraclesf and parables cease as an integral part of His ministry. Public addresses, which hitherto had been the rule, are now limited, so far as we read, to the Temple courts and the Sanhe- drin ; their place is taken by more private converse. There is a less obvious calling of attention to Himself, in view of a keener anxiety to concentrate attention on the Spirit that animates Himself and the Father, and is needful for that higher form of fellowship of men with God than Israel had known, which He Himself enjoyed, and which He jjiomises will glorify them as it had glorified Him.:;: From this last consideration we deduce the significance of the event for us. It is the same as for Christ and His disciples. 'We shall be like him,' says the disciple who had felt most effectually the power of His personal presence ( 1 Jn 3^).