Transfiguration, but let us consider for what Jesus went up into the
mountain. The common opinion is that He went up to enjoy Himself--in
search of some spiritual ecstacy. But in this case there would have
been no transfiguration. Spiritual rapture comes after earnest labour
through eager prayer--it is not found by seeking--we have not to look
for feelings or ecstacies; we need "to know the will of God, and to do
it."
Jesus went up into the mount to pray about death--the subject which had
a little before been borne in upon His mind--for we read in Matt. xvi.
21, in the narration of events just preceding the Transfiguration, that
"from that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that
He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and
chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third
day." When the devil took Him up into a mountain, he showed Him "all
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and said unto Him,
'All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship
me.'" When the Spirit of God took Jesus up into the mountain, He
showed Him the cross, the shame, the suffering,--the spear and the
crown of thorns, and said, "All these will I give Thee."
The highest experiences of the Christian life are close bound up, in
the Divine will, with suffering. Jesus went up into the mount to get a
better view of His approaching sorrow.
The Transfiguration is slightly apprehended and seldom discussed. Very
few sermons are preached, or great pictures painted, or hymns sung, on
the subject. Almost the only verse one knows about it--
When in ecstacy sublime
Tabor's glorious steep I climb,
At the too transporting light
Darkness rushes o'er my sight,
implies that it is a subject beyond human understanding.
We have hymns on His Incarnation and Advent, His Divine Glory and
Worship, His Mediatorial Character and Titles, Passion, Death,
Resurrection, Ascension, Intercession and Reign, and the Second Advent,
but none specially referring to the Transfiguration. Yet it contains
many wonderful lessons we all need to know. We have felt, perhaps,
that it was an experience peculiar to Christ--with which we can have
nothing to do--but the Scriptures say otherwise; the word here rendered
"transfigured" is the same as that translated "transformed" in Romans
xii. 2, "but be ye transfigured by the renewing of your minds," etc.,
and "changed," in 2 Cor. iii. 18, "are transfigured into the same image
from glory to glory." We want so to look at the glory of Jesus, that,
at the same time, we may see His sorrow as well--and be "transfigured
into the same image; for if we suffer with Him, we shall also be
glorified together."
There is no man who understands the Transfiguration like John Ruskin.
He says: "We are afraid to harbour in our own hearts, or to utter in
the hearing of others, any thought of our Lord as hungering, tired, or
sorrowful, or having a human soul, a human will, and affected by the
events of human life as a finite creature is: and yet one-half of the
efficacy of His atonement and the whole of the efficacy of His example
depend on His having been this to the full. Consider therefore the
Transfiguration as it relates to the human feelings of our Lord. It
was the first definite preparation for His death.... What other hill
could it have been than the southward slope of that goodly mountain,
Hermon, which is, indeed, the centre of all the promised land, from the
entering in of Hamath to the river of Egypt; the mount of fruitfulness,
from which the springs of Jordan descended to the valleys of Israel.
Along its mighty forest avenues, until the grass grew fair with the
mountain lilies, His feet dashed with the dew of Hermon, He must have
gone to pray His first recorded prayer about death; and from the steep
of it, before He knelt, could see, to the south, all the
dwelling-places of the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the
great light, the land of Zabulon and of Naphthali, Galilee of the
Gentiles: could see even with His human sight, the gleam of that lake
by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a place loved by Him and vainly
ministered to, whose house was now left unto them desolate: and, chief
of all, far in the utmost blue, the hills above Nazareth, sloping down
to His old home; hills on which the stones yet lay loose that had been
taken up to cast at Him, when He left them for ever. 'And as He prayed
two men stood by Him.'"
"Among the many ways in which we miss the help and hold of Scripture,
there is none 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 of fear. It had to be
borne by Him ... and the presence of it is surely marked for us enough
by the rising of those two at His side."
It was Christ's first preparation for death--and, therefore, to
understand His Transfiguration we must understand His Crucifixion too;
to see Hermon, we must go to Calvary; to discern how the fashion of His
countenance was altered, we must witness that other time in the garden,
when "His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down on the
ground"; to fathom how the three disciples slept through the glory, we
must remember how they slept through the sorrow too.
The word rendered decease is a strange one. It is literally
_exodus_--"going out." They spake of this exodus which He should
accomplish at Jerusalem. The same word occurs in the second epistle of
Peter: "I will endeavour that ye may be able after my exodus to have
these things always in remembrance"; and it is worthy of notice that
the verses which follow are a reminiscence of the Transfiguration.
We have conferences on many subjects--on peace, on holiness, on
temperance: who ever heard of another conference (as this was) on
_death_?
A listener might have heard some such words as these:--
First Moses might speak: "I, too, know what it is to want not to die.
I did not fear the act of dying, but the manner--away out of the
Promised Land. But when I saw the will of my God in all its beauty,
then even this bitter disappointment seemed bearable, and the kiss of
my God at the last made up for all. Death is only a kiss to those who
love God; and if I had not followed the will of my God in this, what
had I not lost? I had missed burial at the hands of the sons of God,
and my feet would not now be standing in His presence."
Then Elias might say: "I had no fear of death: nay, I even prayed for
it, saying, O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my
fathers. It was not death that I feared so much as the fashion of
dying when I fled from the face of Jezebel. But to-day I am thankful
that my dying was not left to my choosing; if it had been so, I had
missed the fiery chariot by which I climbed up to the Presence of my
King,--the swift seraphic march that brought me home."
And then Jesus might say, perhaps, something like these words--
I wish to have no wishes left,
But to leave all to Thee...
And yet two wills I find in Me
When on My death I muse;
But, Lord, I have a death to die,
And not a death to choose.
Then Moses might speak again: "Let us call God's providences by their
sweetest names: death is not death to those who love God. Thou, O
Sinless One, call it not death, call it exodus. It was my lot once to
lead the people of God out of slavery and degradation, out of heavy
labour, out of the furnace of iron; and yet methinks that will be the
true exodus when Thy people pass over, O Lord, Thy people, whom Thou
hast redeemed, when Thou by Thy dying lips dost proclaim deliverance to
the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
when, through the deep sea of Thy sorrows, a passage is made by which
the ransomed shall return. Call it not death; call it an exodus--a
mighty deliverance of the people of God."
Then Elias: "O Son of God, right well do I know that the strength of
one man may be made the strength of many; and the triumph of many may
spring from the victory of one. I myself have stood alone in the face
of an opposing people; yet by the strength of God I came off conqueror,
and many were persuaded to cry, 'The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is
God,' and the power yet remains in which I stood; it glows, and grows
within thee; it floods the air; it streams down thy garments. Fear
not! thou shalt bring many souls, not merely to assent to the truth,
but to the Truth itself. And especially standing conqueror over death,
thou shalt deliver them who were all their lives in bondage through the
fear of the same. The love of God shall uphold thee; the strength of
God be thine."
Then Jesus: "In the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight
to do Thy will, O My God."
Then Moses might continue: "Death is our best friend--he strengthens
our eyes to behold the glory which in the flesh it would blind us to
see. Once I was afraid to behold the glory of God. I stood in a cleft
of the rock, covered, as He passed by--but now, now, I can bear to
stand and gaze in the presence of my King."
Then Elias would reply: "I too knew what it was to be afraid of His
glory; in the mountain I wrapped my face in my mantle, but when His
swift messengers came to bear me home, I cast my mantle behind, in
token that I would never need it to shroud my face again. It is the
same for Thee--already that glory smites upon Thy forehead, and gilds
Thy garments, and floods Thy face with light, but beyond, beyond, Thou
shalt be crowned with glory and honour."
And Jesus would say, "Thy will be done--Thy will be done."
Then Moses once more: "A mother has two kisses for her child: one, a
daybreak kiss, wherewith she draws aside the curtains of the soul; and
one a good-night kiss, sometimes given in the dark.
"And so hath the Eternal His two loves: the love in the light, which
now encircles us; and the dark love on which our souls lean back to
sleep. Those who have felt God's daylight kiss can trust Him for it in
the dark. For thee to die will only be to lie back in the Everlasting
Arms."
Then Jesus: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."
"And behold there talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elias,
and they spake of His exodus which He should accomplish at Jerusalem."
VIII
CHRIST WILL TAKE ALL
"All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me."--JOHN vi. 37.
If one were left to determine from our English Bible the meaning of
this passage, it would be difficult to avoid the admission that it
gives countenance to that form of doctrine commonly known as
Calvinistic; for does it not present to us, in language sufficiently
clear and obvious, the Divine Sovereignty as shown in Electing Grace?
Must we not admit that there are those who by a Supreme Deed of Gift
are allotted to the mercies of the Son; over whom He exercises the care
of a good Shepherd; and is it not difficult to resist the conclusion
that, as there are some who are the objects of special solicitude and
care, so there are those who in some degree lie outside the sphere of
the Divine Benevolence?
Again, if we were to look at the 39th verse of this same chapter, and
read the words, "This is the Father's will which hath sent Me, that of
all which He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it
up again at the last day," should we not say that the natural meaning
of the passage is that there is a Doctrine of Final Perseverance,
linked on to that of the Election of Grace, and a necessary corollary
to it?
But when we turn to the Greek, we notice that in the first of the
verses quoted the word _all_ is in the neuter gender, and so does not
necessarily apply to persons at all, and we are more likely to catch
the true meaning of the words by reading it as follows: "Everything
that the Father hath given Me shall come to Me"; and in the other
passage a similar correction must be made, as is otherwise evident from
the last part of the passage, "I will raise _it_ up at the last day";
"Of everything which the Father hath given Me I should lose nothing."
Viewed in this light, the words that were supposed to imply election
teach consecration, and instead of final perseverance we read full
possession. And this we do not say with any idea of refuting
Calvinistic doctrine, having no "isms" of our own and little time to
spend in attacking those of other people. Likely enough, our rendering
of the words may be incorrect, and in any case we ought carefully to
compare similar passages in the Gospel; but be that as it may, the
truth is not affected that the Sovereignty of God and the Love of God
demand the full subjection and surrender of our being; and we are
assured that where these conditions are fulfilled, the Divine
Possession and Protection become an intense and abiding reality.
Now, in confirmation of our rendering, we will examine the manner in
which the passage is quoted by John Bunyan; and certainly we may say
that if there was a Calvinistic meaning to be got out of a passage,
John Bunyan was not the man to miss it; and moreover, since he was
totally ignorant of Greek (and I suppose of Latin, too, there being
only, as far as I know, the solitary expression in the _Pilgrim's
Progress_ "de carne et sanguine Christi," accompanied by the marginal
modesty, "the Latin I borrow"), he is not likely to fall into the
mistake to which we may be liable, of evading the plain meaning of
words by reference to the original tongue. Turning, then, to the _Holy
War_, we shall find the following, giving an account of terms proposed
by Diabolus for the surrender of the town of Mansoul; the offer of
submission being made through his ambassador, Mr. Loth-to-Stoop. "Then
Mr. Loth-to-Stoop said again, 'Sir, behold the condescension of my
master! He says that he will be content if he may but have some place
assigned to him in Mansoul as a place to live in privately, and you
shall be lord of all the rest!' Then said the Golden Prince, 'All that
the father giveth me shall come to me, and of all that he giveth me I
will lose nothing, no, not an hoof or an hair. I will not, therefore,
grant him, no, not the least corner in Mansoul to dwell in. I will
have it all to myself.'" It is a little singular, to say the least,
that he should have apprehended both the passages that we quoted in
their right sense; and we had better attribute his accuracy to a touch
of true inspiration.
Now, passing on from this point, we may think of the Lord Jesus in a
twofold character:--
1. As the Receiver appointed to collect debts due to God.
2. As the Almoner of gifts from God to men. He can come to us and say,
"My Father has appointed Me the heir of all things; He has put His
affairs into My hands, so that debts to Him are debts to Me; how much,
therefore, owest thou to thy Lord? For, all that the Father giveth Me
shall come to Me."
He can come to us again and say, "The Father hath given Me authority
over all flesh, that I should impart as well as exact; that I may give
eternal life and eternal blessing, and Holy Ghost to as many as
believe; that I should manifest His name to you, and give to you His
word and His Glory, and all things I have received of Him; that I
should give unto you rest and My own joy, and, by way of legacy in a
will which the enemy cannot dispute, should leave peace with you;
finally, ascending up on high, should send gifts to men, even to the
rebellious, that the Lord their God might dwell among them. For He
that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for you all, how
shall He not with Him also freely give you all things. How much,
therefore, hast thou received from thy Lord?"
And if we look at it rightly, He speaks but little of the dues, and
much of the gifts; for God only exacts from us that He may be able to
impart to us; there is no tyrant seated on the throne of the universe,
but only a Father waiting to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him;
and the uttermost farthing that He demands from us is only in order
that He may have the right to save us to the uttermost, if we could but
believe it.
We may say next, that if our ultimate condition must be that of entire
subjection and surrender to and harmony with the Divine Will, how sad
it is that our consecration is so slow, so protracted, so ungracious;
that we take so much time to reach the point where we are altogether
the Lord's. People can read the mystery of conversion in the parable
of the dry bones in Ezekiel; but there is consecration in the story,
too. Little by little we see the dead man coming into the place of
blessing; bone to bone, sinew to sinew, nerve to nerve; and when there
is the complete structure of a man, comes the vivifying breath from the
four winds. Not before, for God must have a man to quicken; He does
not inspire skeletons or fragments; as at the first, when a man stands
before Him, He breathes into him the breath of life and he becomes a
living soul.
We may well be ashamed when we think of the way in which consecration
to God is made. We are like the man who, because he was irritated at a
claim made upon him for a sum of money, went and paid the bill in
farthings. So we pay our dues to God, giving as little as we can, and
taking as long about it as we list. Perhaps it is because we treat Him
that way, that God is obliged to appear exacting and talk to us about
uttermost farthings at all.
Perhaps we shall be right in concluding from the 39th verse, that there
is something in the resurrection contingent on the consecration: "I
will raise _it_ up at the last day"; of one thing we may be very sure,
that the life to come is not only conterminous with but continuous with
the life that is. Death changes our surroundings but not our
characters. There is no more breach of continuity in those than there
is in an algebraical curve that goes to infinity.
We may, indeed, get dying grace, and hold a consecration meeting upon
our dying beds, but it is not death that consecrates, nor the grave
that sanctifies and cleanses from all sin. We shall begin the next
life pretty much where we left off in this. We were singing a little
while ago--
Let the veil become more thin,
Let the glory pierce between;
but, mark you, that veil does not become more thin by pulling out a
thread here and a thread there; remember how at the Crucifixion the
veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; the
veil that is on your heart will go like that, when the day comes for
things to appear which now are numbered amongst things not seen as yet,
and for you to apprehend and participate in the things which God has
laid up for those who love Him.
IX
STRONG CRYING
"The energised prayer of a righteous man is of great force."--JAMES v.
16.
It is strange that we understand so little about prayer: with most
people, including the greater part of the professedly religious, it is
regarded simply as a sort of spiritual safety-valve, adapted to relieve
the soul from strain and over-pressure; is any afflicted, they say, let
him pray; and as for us, who are merry, we will sing psalms.
Now, if we were looking at a steam-engine, and meditating over the
motive power of it, we should scarcely direct our thoughts to the
safety-valve, or say of it, "What a mighty power is stored up in this
little lever." On the contrary, our attention would be fixed on the
piston and the steam at the back of it, and on the laws which govern
its production, expansion, and condensation. And we need scarcely say
that there is not much in common between those who regard prayer simply
as an emotional safety-valve, and those who look upon it as one of the
great moving forces of the spiritual world. It happens often enough
that there are forces in the world of which people generally are
ignorant, or of which they have an idea that is totally inadequate.
As, for instance, we have known cynical politicians deride the
expression of public opinion, as being only valuable as a political
safety-valve, and useful to keep the "many-headed monster," the
populace, from more dangerous courses; but not once or twice have they
been awakened to find that there is nothing to stand before the rush of
a well-formed public sentiment. So that we say rightly public opinion
is of great force.
And certainly the idea which the majority of folk attach to the word
prayer is but very incommensurate to the part which it occupies, not
only in the development of the life of the individual soul, but in the
life and lot of the world at large.
On the other hand, the force of prayer has been understood by the
really spiritual writers of every school and of all time. They knew
that prayer is one of the secrets of life; that he who lives, prays,
and he who prays, lives; that he who prays works, and he who works
prays; and so large a part of the spiritual life is comprised in the
one word prayer, that we find them describing the soul's advance by the
character of the prayer which springs from it.
For instance, Madame Guyon, in her precious A B C of the spiritual
life, introduces her book with the title, "A Short and Easy Method of
Prayer"; St. Theresa describes the degrees of the soul's progress as
degrees of prayer, styling them Prayer of Quiet, Prayer of Union, and
so on; St. John of the Cross names his mystical way as the Ascent of
Mount Carmel, the meaning of which is evidently similar to the other.
And so, no doubt one might give other instances, confining ourselves,
of course, to the experimental Christians only, and letting the divines
and theologians alone. May we not say that our dear Lord Himself was
careful enough both in example and teaching to lead His scholars along
this way, making them aware that a great part of the soul's education
was education in prayer? He began by making them feel that they really
didn't know what prayer meant, though they had been taught to say
prayers almost since they could speak. So He brings them to a point
where they say, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his
disciples": encourages them further by admonitions to ask, seek, and
knock; He tells them that if they ask for bread and fish, they won't
get stones and snakes (but doesn't say that if you ask for a snake,
your Father will be so good as to give it to you); leads them on until
they acquire the sense of the need of a larger faith; instructs them
that prayer is the function of an organ of the spiritual life, and must
be as constant and persistent as breathing or other natural functions,
so that men ought always to pray and not to faint, and that they should
keep awake at all times praying, if they are to be found worthy to
stand before the Son of man. Finally, one of His last counsels, just
before the last great objective teaching of His own Life on the
subject, connects the force of their prayer with the state of their
life, saying, "If ye abide in Me, ye shall ask what ye will and it
shall be done unto you."
Now the verse which we quoted at the beginning speaks of certain
prayers as of great force; we infer that there are weak prayers as well
as strong ones--poor little wingless things that cannot rise into the
Celestial Audience-Chamber.
Hermas describes such when he says, "The prayer of a sad man has no
power to climb to the altar of God." And it is of great importance
that we should know the reasons which contribute to the strength or
weakness of a prayer. On such points we shall find the Apostle James
to be an authority; for he was the great intercessor of the early
Church, the man of whom they said that his knees were worn hard like
the knees of a camel. And being in addition the most practical of all
the teachers, we shall find in his writing (in spite of the fact that
Luther called it an "epistle of straw") something far more valuable
than a merely speculative theology. For instance, more than any one
else, he supplies us with conditions for the success of that great
experiment which we call prayer. Prayer of the powerful, operative
sort, has its conditions. We cannot disregard them. I have seen a man
in the Cavendish laboratory attempt to make a magnetic measurement in
the immediate vicinity of some large iron pipes, and neither of us
could tell the cause which made the apparatus behave so unreasonably.
And prayers are often hindered in a similar way by unobserved
disturbing causes. St. James supplies us with several hints:--
(i.) That a double-minded man need not expect to receive anything from
the Lord; a waverer, driven with the wind and tossed.
(ii.) That ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may
consume it upon your lusts.
(iii.) That it must be believing prayer, if it is to be effectual; let
him ask in faith; the prayer of faith shall save the sick.
(iv.) It is the prayer that springs from a rectified heart and life;
the prayer of a righteous man is of great force.