June 25

“We were with Him in the Holy Mount.”—2 Peter 1:18.

PETER never forgot the Holy Mount. In his old age he recalls its glories. It is an undecaying memory in the veteran’s heart. But he knew now that it was better for him and for the others not to sojourn there, as he had proposed on that supreme night.

That would have brought back the happy and triumphant saints, the spirits of the just made perfect, Moses and Elijah, to this world of conflict and evil. I cannot but yearn at times for my “loves, my best-beloved of all”; but I know that with them it is well—it is far better. They rest from labour. They are clothed in white. They see the face of the King.

That would have blotted out from the gospel the redemption won by the Lamb of God on Calvary. Had the Transfiguration rapture been prolonged, it must have kept Jesus from His cross and His grave. But I cannot do without Golgotha and its shameful Tree. There the Sinless gives Himself for me, the sinful. There the condemnation is borne by the Innocent, and I am condemned no more.

That would have exaggerated one side of the Christian life. I need the Mount of prayer and ecstasy; there I forget my weariness, there faith and hope spread their wings again. But there must be more in my career. I have to fight sin in the work-a-day world. I have to rescue the captives at the foot of the hill. I have to glorify my Father in heaven.

So Moses and Elijah, and Jesus the Saviour, and Peter and James and John, and I too—we must not stay on the Mount.

N