In the extremity of their terror, "they fell on their face and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lift up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only." Such is the account which we have of this wonderful and important miracle.

We will proceed to consider what effect it had, and was intended to have, on the disciples; and we will next endeavour to see what we ourselves may learn from it.

Its primary object, as it was intended to influence the disciples, must, we believe, have been to afford them consolation under the prospect of their Lord's approaching death and sufferings. As yet they were incapable of understanding or appreciating any more important or deeper lesson. On account of this, their present weakness, must have been our Saviour's injunction to them "to tell the vision to no man until the Son of Man should be risen again from the dead." And their want of apprehension must have made

even this intent of the miracle in some degree imperfect; since we find them, while actually obeying their Master's commands, still questioning with themselves, "what the rising from the dead should mean." So little, even yet, were their minds awakened, or their understandings illuminated.

But a more important end of the transfiguration was to be attained, when, after their Lord's departure from them into heaven, the disciples should themselves proceed to preach the Gospel to all the nations of the world. It was to enable them to speak more boldly and more confidently respecting the divinity of him, whom, with their own eyes, they had seen so divinely arrayed. It was to enable them to discourse as eye-witnesses of his glorious appearance, when in the discharge of their duty they would be called on to declare to the heathen world, that Christ shall come, at the last day, in the clouds of heaven, attended by his holy angels, to judge mankind. This was the principal effect intended to be

produced by this miracle, and we have sufficient evidence to prove that it was successful. Of the three disciples who were the witnesses of it, one is generally believed to refer to it; and another appeals to it in the most direct terms. Where St. John says, "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth 1," commentators on the passage have usually admitted that he alludes to the transfiguration. But whatever obscurity there may be with respect to him, there can be none in the case of Peter, who thus explicitly proceeds to found his own hopes, and those of his disciples, of a future state of happiness, on what he himself had seen. And to make it the more observable, he does this under the impression of his own approaching dissolution 2. "We have not," he says, "followed cunningly devised fables, when we have made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,

1

John i. 14.

2

2 Pet. i. 14.

but were eye-witnesses of his majesty; for he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son in whom. I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount '."

Of the third disciple who beheld the transfiguration, St. James, no writings are extant; but as he was early, in the commencement almost, of the apostolical labours, put to death by Herod2, we cannot doubt but that he was very forward and earnest in preaching the Christian doctrines, no little convinced of their truth by the sight of that which he had been permitted to behold. And thus may we gather that the miracle of the transfiguration was intended, and was effectual, for the consolation of the minds of the disciples, and for the confirmation of their faith.

Next let us consider what we ourselves are to learn from it.

1

2 Pet. i. 16.

2 Acts xii. 2.

In the first place we, as well as our Lord's immediate followers, may be assured of the divinity of him whose disciples we also are, and may look forward with the eye of faith to the time when he will come again in his glorious majesty to judge the quick and the dead; a vivid description of which is thus given by the prophet Daniel: "I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery flame issued and came forth before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened 1."

And have we any farther proof that, at this awful period, the just will meet their reward? Surely we have. For, in the appearance of Moses and Elias, so long after that they had departed from

1 Dan. vii. 9.