_THE TRANSFIGURATION._
The Transfiguration of Christ marks the culminating point in the Divine
life; the few remaining months are a rapid descent into the valley of
Sacrifice and Death. The story is told by each of the three Synoptists,
with an almost equal amount of detail, and all agree as to the time when
it occurred; for though St. Matthew and St. Mark make the interval six
days, while St. Luke speaks of it as "about eight," there is no real
disagreement; St. Luke's reckoning is inclusive. As to the locality,
too, they all agree, though in a certain indefinite way. St. Matthew and
St. Mark leave it indeterminate, simply saying that it was "a high
mountain," while St. Luke calls it "the mountain." Tradition has long
localised the scene upon Mount Tabor, but evidently she has read off her
bearings from her own fancies, rather than from the facts of the
narrative. To say nothing of the distance of Mount Tabor from Cæsarea
Philippi--which, though a difficulty, is not an insuperable one, since
it might easily be covered in less than the six intervening days--Tabor
is but one of the group of heights which fringe the Plain of Esdraelon,
and so one to which the definite article would not, and could not, be
applied. Besides, Tabor now was crowned by a Roman fortress, and so
could scarcely be said to be "apart" from the strifes and ways of men,
while it stood within the borders of Galilee, whereas St. Mark, by
implication, sets his "high mountain" outside the Galilean bounds (ix.
30). But if Tabor fails to meet the requirements of the narrative, Mount
Hermon answers them exactly, throwing its spurs close up to Cæsarea
Philippi, while its snow-crowned peak shone out pure and white above the
lesser heights of Galilee.
It is not an unmeaning coincidence that each of the Evangelists should
introduce his narrative with the same temporal word, "after." That word
is something more than a connecting link, a bridge thrown over a blank
space of days; it is rather, when taken in connection with the preceding
narrative, the key which unlocks the whole meaning and mystery of the
Transfiguration. "After these sayings," writes St. Luke. What sayings?
Let us go back a little, and see. Jesus had asked His disciples as to
the drift of popular opinion about Himself, and had drawn from Peter the
memorable confession--that first Apostle's Creed--"Thou art the Christ
of God." Immediately, however, Jesus leads down their minds from these
celestial heights to the lowest depths of degradation, dishonour, and
death, as He says, "The Son of man must suffer many things, and be
rejected of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and
the third day be raised up." Those words shattered their bright dream at
once. Like some fearful nightmare, the foreshadow of the cross fell upon
their hearts, filling them with fear and gloom, and striking down hope,
and courage, yea, even faith itself. It would almost seem as if the
disciples were unnerved, paralyzed by the blow, and as if an atrophy had
stolen over their hearts and lips alike; for the next six days are one
void of silence, without word or deed, as far as the records show. How
shall their lost hope be recalled, or courage be revived? How shall they
be taught that death does not end all--that the enigma was true of
Himself, as well as of them, that He shall find His life by losing it?
The Transfiguration is the answer.
Taking with Him Peter, John, and James--the three who shall yet be
witnesses of His agony--Jesus retires to the mountain height, probably
intending, as our Evangelist indicates, to spend the night in prayer.
Keeping the midnight watch was nothing new to these disciples; it was
their frequent experience upon the Galilean lake; but now, left to the
quiet of their own thoughts, and with none of the excitements of the
spoil about them, they yield to the cravings of nature and fall asleep.
Awaking, they find their Master still engaged in prayer, all oblivious
of earthly hours, and as they watch He is transfigured before them. The
fashion, or appearance, of His countenance, as St. Luke tersely puts it,
"became another," all suffused with a heavenly radiance, while His very
garments became lustrous with a whiteness which was beyond the fuller's
art and beyond the whiteness of the snow, and all iridescent, flashing
and sparkling as if set with stars. Suddenly, ere their eyes have grown
accustomed to the new splendours, two celestial visitants appear,
wearing the glorious body of the heavenly life and conversing with
Jesus.
Such was the scene upon the "holy mount," which the Apostles could never
forget, and which St. Peter recalls with a lingering wonder and delight
in the far-off after-years (2 Pet. i. 18). Can we push aside the outward
draperies, and read the Divine thought and purpose that are hidden
within? We think we may. And--
1. We see the place and meaning of the Transfiguration in the life of
Jesus. Hitherto the humanity of Jesus had been naturally and perfectly
human; for though heavenly signs have, as at the Advent and the Baptism,
borne witness to its super-humanity, these signs have been temporary and
external, shining or alighting upon it from without. Now, however, the
sign is from within. The brightness of the outer flesh is but the
outshining of the inner glory. And what was that glory but the "glory of
the Lord," a manifestation of the Deity, that fulness of the Godhead
which dwelt within? The faces of other sons of men have shone, as when
Moses stepped downwards from the mount, or as Stephen looked upwards to
the opened heavens; but it was the shining of a reflected glory, like
the sunlight upon the moon. But when the humanity of Jesus was thus
transfigured it was a native glory, the inward radiance of the soul
stealing through, and lighting up, the enveloping globe of human flesh.
It is easy to see why this celestial appearance should not be the normal
manifestation of the Christ; for had it been, He would no longer have
been the "Son of man." Between Himself and the humanity He had come to
redeem would have been a gulf wide and profound, while the Fatherhood of
God would have been a truth lying back in the vistas of the unknown, a
truth unfelt; for men only reach up to that Fatherhood through the
Brotherhood of Christ. But if we ask why now, just for once, there
should be this transfiguring of the Person of Jesus, the answer is not
so evident. Godet has a suggestion which is as natural as it is
beautiful. He represents the Transfiguration as the natural issue of a
perfect, a sinless his, a life in which death should have no place, as
it would have had no place in the life of unfallen man. Innocence,
holiness, glory--these would have been the successive steps connecting
earth with heaven, an ever-upward path, across which death would not
even have cast a shadow. Such would have been the path opened to the
first Adam, had not sin intervened, bringing death as its wage and
penalty. And now, as the Second Adam takes the place of the first,
moving steadily along the path of obedience from which the first Adam
swerved, should we not naturally look for that life to end in some
translation or transfiguration, the body of the earthly life blossoming
into the body of the heavenly? and where else so appropriately as here,
upon the "holy mount," when the spirits of the perfected come forth to
meet Him, and the chariot of cloud is ready to convey Him to the heavens
which are so near? It is thus something more than conjecture--it is a
probability--that had the life of Jesus been by itself, detached from
mankind in general, the Transfiguration had been the mode and the
beginning of the glorification. The way to the heavens, from which He
was self-exiled, was open to Him from the mount of glory, but He
preferred to pass up by the mount of passion and of sacrifice. The
burden of the world's redemption is upon Him, and that eternal purpose
leads Him down from the Transfiguration glories, and onwards to a cross
and grave. He chooses to die, with and for man, rather than to live and
reign without man.
But not only does the "holy mount" throw its light on what would have
been the path of unfallen man, it gives us in prophecy a vision of the
resurrection life. Compare the picture of the transfigured Christ, as
drawn by the Synoptists, with the picture, drawn by John himself, of the
Christ of the Exaltation, and how strikingly similar they are! (Rev. i.
13-17). In both descriptions we have an affluence of metaphor and
simile, which affluence was itself but the stammering of our weak human
speech, as it seeks to tell the unutterable. In both we have a whiteness
like the snow, while to portray the countenance St. John repeats almost
verbatim St. Matthew's words, "His face did shine as the sun." Evidently
the Christ of the Transfiguration and the Christ of the Exaltation are
one and the same Person; and why do we blame Peter for speaking in such
random, delirious words upon the mount, when John, by the glory of that
same vision, in Patmos, is stricken to the ground as if dead, not able
to speak at all? When Peter spoke, somewhat incoherently, about the
"three tabernacles," it was not, as some aver, the random speech of one
who was but half awake, but of one whose reason was dazzled and confused
with the blinding glory. And so the Transfiguration anticipates the
Glorification, investing the sacred Person with those same robes of
light and royalty He had laid aside for a time, but which He will
shortly assume again--the habiliments of an eternal re-enthronement.
2. Again, the holy mount shows us the place of death in the life of man.
We read, "There talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elijah;"
and as if the Evangelist would emphasize the fact that it was no
apparition, existing only in their heated imagination, he repeats the
statement (ver. 35) that they were "two men." Strange gathering--Moses,
Elias, and Christ!--the Law in the person of Moses, the Prophets in the
person of Elias, both doing homage to the Christ, who was Himself the
fulfilment of prophecy and law. But what the Evangelist seems to note
particularly is the humanness of the two celestials. Though the earthly
life of each ended in an abrupt, unearthly way, the one having a
translation, the other a Divine interment (whatever that may mean), they
have both been residents of the heavenly world for centuries. But as
they appear to-day "in glory," that is, with the glorified body of the
heavenly life, outwardly, visibly, their bodies are still human. There
is nothing about their form and build that is grotesque, or even
unearthly. They have not even the traditional but fictitious wings with
which poetry is wont to set on the inhabitants of the sky. They are
still "men," with bodies resembling, both in size and form, the old body
of earth. But if the appearance of these "men" reminds us of earth, if
we wait awhile, we see that their natures are very unearthly, not
unnatural so much as supernatural. They glide down through the air with
the ease of a bird and the swiftness of light, and when the interview
ends, and they go their separate ways, these heavenly "men" gather up
their robes and vanish, strangely and suddenly as they came. And yet
they can make use of earthly supports, even the grosser forms of matter,
planting their feet upon the grass as naturally as when Moses climbed up
Pisgah or as Elijah stood in Horeb's cave.
And not only do the bodies of these celestials retain still the image of
the earthly life, but the bent of their minds is the same, the set and
drift of their thoughts following the old directions. The earthly lives
of Moses and Elias had been spent in different lands, in different
times; five hundred eventful years pushed them far apart; but their
mission had been one. Both were prophets of the Highest, the one
bringing God's law down to the people, the other leading a lapsed people
back and up to God's law. Yes, and they are prophets still, but with a
nearer vision now. No longer do they gaze through the crimson lenses of
the sacrificial blood, beholding the Promised One afar off. They have
read the Divine thought and purpose of redemption; they are initiated
into its mysteries; and now that the cross is close at hand, they come
to bring to the world's Saviour their heavenly greetings, and to invest
Him, by anticipation, with robes of glory, soon to be His for evermore.
Such is the apocalypse of the holy mount. The veil which hides from our
dull eye of sense the hereafter was lifted up. The heavens were opened
to them, no longer far away beyond the cold stars, but near them,
touching them on every side. They saw the saints of other days
interesting themselves in earthly events--in one event at least, and
speaking of that death which they mourned and feared, calmly, as a thing
expected and desired, but calling it by its new and softened name, a
"departure," an "exodus." And as they see the past centuries saluting
Him whom they have learned to call the Christ, "the Son of God," as the
truth of immortality is borne in upon them, not as a vague conception of
the mind, but by oral and ocular demonstration, would they not see the
shadow of the coming death in a different light? would not the painful
pressure upon their spirits be eased somewhat, if not, indeed, entirely
removed? and--
"The Apostle's heart of rock
Be nerved against temptation's shock"?
Would they not more patiently endure, now that they had become apostles
of the Invisible, seers of the Unseen?
But if the glory of the holy mount sets in a fairer light the cross and
grave of Christ, may we not throw from the mirror of our thought some of
its light upon our lowlier graves? What is death, after all, but the
transition into life? Retaining its earthly accent, we call it a
"decease;" but that is true only of the corporeal nature, that body of
"flesh and blood" which cannot inherit the higher kingdom of glory to
which we pass. There is no break in the continuity of the soul's
existence, not even one parenthetic hour. When He who was the
Resurrection and the Life said, "To-day shalt thou be with Me in
paradise," that word passed on a forgiven soul directly to a state of
conscious blessedness. From "the azure deep of air" does the eagle look
regretfully upon the eyrie of its crag, where it lay in its unfledged
weakness? or does it mourn the broken shell from which its young life
emerged? And why should we mourn, or weep with unrestrained tears, when
the shell is broken that the freed spirit may soar up to the regions of
the blessed, and range the eternities of God? Paganism closed the story
of human life with an interrogation-point, and sought to fill up with
guesses the blank she did not know. Christianity speaks with clearer
voice; hers is "a sure and certain hope," for He who "hath abolished
death" hath "brought life and immortality to light." Earth's exodus is
heaven's genesis, and what we call the end celestials call the
beginning.
And not only does the mount speak of the certainties of the after-life,
it gives, in a binocular vision, the likeness of the resurrection body,
answering, in part, the standing question, "How are the dead raised
up?" The body of the heavenly life must have some correspondence with,
and resemblance to, the body of our earthly life. It will, in a sense,
grow out of it. It will not be something entirely new, but the old
refined, spiritualized, the dross and earthliness all removed, the marks
of care, and pain, and sin all wiped out. And more, the Transfiguration
mount gives us indubitable proof that heaven and earth lie, virtually,
close together, and that the so-called "departed" are not entirely
severed from earthly things; they can still read the shadows upon
earthly dials, and hear the strike of earthly hours. They are not so
absorbed and lost in the new glories as to take no note of earthly
events; nor are they restrained from visiting, at permitted times, the
earth they have not wholly left; for as heaven was theirs, when on
earth, in hope and anticipation, so now, in heaven, earth is theirs in
thought and memory. They have still interests here, associations they
cannot forget, friends who are still beloved, and harvests of influence
they still may reap. With the absurdities and follies of so-called
Spiritualism we have no sort of sympathy--they are the vagaries of weak
minds; but even their eccentricities and excesses shall not be allowed
to rob us of what is a truly Christian hope, that they who cared for us
on earth care for us still, and that they who loved and prayed for us
below love us none the less, and pray for us none the less frequently,
now that the conflict with them is over, and the eternal rest begun. And
why may not their spirits touch ours, influencing our mind and heart,
even when we are not conscious whence those influences come? for are
they not, with the angels, "ministering spirits, sent forth to do
service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?" The Mount of
Transfiguration does indeed stand "apart," for on its summit the paths
of the celestials and of the terrestrials meet and merge; and it is
"high" indeed, for it touches heaven.
3. Again, the holy mount shows us the place of death in the life of
Jesus. How long the vision lasted we cannot tell, but in all probability
the interview was but brief. What supreme moments they were! and what a
rush of tumultuous thoughts, we may suppose, would fill the minds of the
two saints, as they stand again on the familiar earth! But listen! They
speak no word to revive the old-time memories; they bring no tidings of
the heavenly world; they do not even ask, as they well might, the
thousand questions concerning His life and ministry. They think, they
speak, of one thing only, the "decease which He was about to accomplish
at Jerusalem." Here, then, we see the drift of heavenly minds, and here
we learn a truth which is wonderfully true, that the death of Jesus, the
cross of Jesus, was the one central thought of heaven, as it is the one
central hope of earth. But how can it be such if the life of Jesus is
all we need, and if the death is but an ordinary death, an appendix,
necessary indeed, but unimportant? Such is the belief of some, but such
certainly is not the teaching of this narrative, nor of the other
Scriptures. Heaven sets the cross of Jesus "in the midst," the one
central fact of history. He was born that He might die; He lived that He
might die. All the lines of His human life converge upon Calvary, as He
Himself said, "For unto this hour came I into the world." And why is
that death so all-important, bending towards its cross all the lines of
Scripture, as it now monopolizes the speech of these two celestials?
Why? There is but one answer which is satisfactory, the answer St.
Peter himself gives: "His own Self bare our sins in His body upon the
tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness" (1
Pet. ii. 24). And so the Mount of Transfiguration looks towards the
Mount of Sacrifice. It lights up Calvary, and lays a wreath of glory
upon the cross.
We need not speak again of Peter's random words, as he seeks to detain
the celestial visitants. He would fain prolong what to him is a Feast of
Tabernacles, and he suggests the building of three booths upon the
mountain slope--"one for Thee," putting his Lord first, "and one for
Moses, and one for Elias." He makes no mention of himself or of his
companions. He is content to remain outside, so that he may only be
near, as it were on the fringe of the transfiguring glories. But what a
strange request! what wandering, delirious words, almost enough to make
celestials smile! Well might the Evangelist excuse Peter's random words
by saying, "Not knowing what he said." But if Peter gets no answer to
his request, and if he is not permitted to build the tabernacles, Heaven
spreads over the group its canopy of cloud, that Shekinah-cloud whose
very shadow was brightness; while once again, as at the Baptism, a Voice
speaks out of the cloud, the voice of the Father: "This is My Son, My
Chosen; hear ye Him." And so the mountain pageant fades; for when the
cloud has passed away Moses and Elias have disappeared, "Jesus only" is
left with the three disciples. Then they retrace their steps down the
mountain side, the three carrying in their heart a precious memory, the
strains of a lingering music, which they only put into words when the
Son of man is risen from the dead; while Jesus turns, not reluctantly,
from the opened door and the welcome of Heaven, to make an atonement
upon Calvary, and through the veil of His rent flesh to make a way for
sinful man even into the Holiest.