Matthew 17:1-2

THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION

‘And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigures before them.’

Matthew 17:1

We have to do with the Transfiguration as it stands before us a fact in history.

I. Transfigured only once.—This manifestation was only once in Christ’s life on this earth, and that once was only given to a chosen few. Some Christians seem to think that they must be always going up to mounts of extraordinary joy and revelation; and they almost murmur in their hearts if they are called every day to walk on in the lower level of common duties and common privileges. This is not after God’s method.

II. Transfigured in the night.—It must have greatly enhanced the wonder and beauty of the scene that the Transfiguration took place, as we gather from St. Luke’s narrative, in the night—God using it, as He is most wont, to be an emblem and a picture of spiritual truth, always shrouded in the night of ignorance and of sin; but the darkness of sin and sorrow only makes to stand out more markedly and more brightly the beauty and the blessedness of the Redeemer and the redeemed. The one topic of the conversation was the Cross. Will it not be so in the great gathering of the saints? Shall we ever tire of it? It was a glorious hour—too pure, too heavenly, for such a world as this! When in a moment ‘they lifted up their eyes,’ and lo! it was all gone.

III. The glory passed, but Jesus remained.—That night the glory all went and ‘they saw Jesus only.’ And so it is with the pageant of this world—however beautiful it may be. It has its little while; it shines; it sparkles; it is gone! Nothing really lasts, but He who is ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,’—who alone can satisfy a human soul, and who never goes away,—‘ Jesus only!’

—The Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

‘It is impossible to look up from the plain to the towering peaks of Hermon, almost the only mountain which deserves the name in Palestine, … and not be struck with its appropriateness to the scene. The fact of its rising high above all the other hills of Palestine, and of its setting the last limit to the wanderings of Him who was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, falls in with the supposition which the words mentally force upon us. High up on its southern slopes there must be many a point where the disciples could be “taken apart by themselves.” ’