ulate Voice from heaven--a view of the
glorified Jesus; a revelation in a point of time, just as that on the
mount was in point of space. We need some; but not too much,--not all
revelation; not revelation as a customary fact. If so, I repeat, we
should neglect this ordained field of thought and action. We should live
in a sphere of supernaturalism,--in an atmosphere of wonder,--amid
a planetary roll of miracles; still unsatisfied; still needing the
suggestion of higher points to break the stupendous monotony.

And I insist that work, not vision, is to be the ordinary method of our
being here, against the position of those who shut themselves in to a
contemplative and extatic piety. They would escape from the age, and its
anxieties; they would recall past conditions; they would get into the
shadow of cloisters, and build cathedrals for an exclusive sanctity.
And, indeed, we would do well to consider those tendencies of our time
which lead us away from the inner life of faith and prayer. But this
we should cherish, not by withdrawing all sanctity from life, but by
pouring sanctity into life. We should not quit the world, to build
tabernacles in the Mount of Transfiguration, but come from out the
celestial brightness, to shed light into the world,--to make the whole
earth a cathedral; to overarch it with Christian ideals, to transfigure
its gross and guilty features, and fill it with redeeming truth and
love.

Surely, the lesson of the incident connected with the text is clear,
so far as the apostles were concerned, who beheld that dazzling,
brightness, and that heavenly companionship, apart on the mount.
They were not permitted to remain apart; but were dismissed to their
appointed work. Peter went to denial and repentance,--to toil and
martyrdom; James to utter his practical truth; John to send the fervor
of his spirit among the splendors of the Apocalypse, and, in its calmer
flow through his Gospel, to give us the clearest mirror of the Saviour's
face.

Nay, even for the Redeemer that was not to be an abiding vision; and he
illustrates the purport of life as he descends from his transfiguration
to toil, and goes forward to exchange that robe of heavenly, brightness
for the crown of thorns.

What if Jesus had remained there, upon that Mount of Vision, and himself
stood before us as only a transfigured form of glory? Where then would
be the peculiarity of his work, and its effect upon the world?

On the wall of the