XII. "AND IT CAME TO PASS ABOUT AN EIGHT DAYS AFTER THESE SAYINGS, HE TOOK PETER AND JOHN AND JAMES, AND WENT UP INTO A MOUNTAIN TO PRAY. AND AS HE PRAYED, THE FASHION OF HIS COUNTENANCE WAS ALTERED, AND HIS RAIMENT WAS WHITE AND GLISTERING. AND, BEHOLD, THERE TALKED WITH HIM TWO MEN, WHICH WERE MOSES AND ELIAS: WHO APPEARED IN GLORY, AND SPAKE OF HIS DECEASE WHICH HE SHOULD ACCOMPLISH AT JERUSALEM."—S. LUKE ix. 28–31. THE shadow of the Cross was growing daily darker and more defined. Foes were gaining in numbers and intensity. Friends were more and more wavering and uncertain. It was time to speak out. It was necessary that those who were inclined to follow should know the terms of service. It was more necessary still that some should accept the terms of service and give the Master the sympathy He so deeply needed and so anxiously craved. And Jesus had spoken. "The Son of Man," said He, "must suffer and be slain, and those who will come after must expect to share that lot—they must in turn take up their cross." The only answer had been silence and mistrust-from one of His best beloved an open and vigorous rebuke-"That be far from Thee, Lord." The appeal had failed. The faithful of His followers still clung to Him; but rather, we may believe, with a vague hope that His boding might be groundless-His fate reversed. They could not give Him what He sought. They could not sympathize, they did not understand. "And about an eight days after these sayings He took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray." He had not found sympathy with men, He went to seek it-seeking where He knew that He should find-with His Father. Yet He took with Him of those who had failed Him— Peter and John and James; took them for their sakes that, seeing the glory of the eternal to-morrow, they might accept the dark cross of the transient to-day; took them for His own sake, because at least they were His friends. He took them, I say, for their sakes. He took these three Apostles in particular, because these three in particular needed encouragement, and had thereafter a heavy cross to bear;-one the trial of a grievous sin; another, the trial of a long life; the third, the trial of an early death. The trial of a grievous sin-S. Peter, who denied his Lord. The trial of a long life-S. John, who outlasted all the vicissitudes of the infant Church, outlived all his brethren, and bore the toils, the anxieties, the sorrows of more than ninety years, the only Apostle without the glory of a martyr crown. The trial of an early death-S. James, whom Herod slew with the sword at the very outset of his apostolic career, before, as it must have seemed to him, he had dealt one stroke for Jesus. What, then, is the lesson of the Transfiguration as far as these three are passively concerned? Through S. Peter. You that are bowed down under the burden of sin, however grievous-let not Satan tempt you to despair or self-abandonment. Take up the Cross of Penitence, the glory lies beyond. Again, through S. John. You that have borne the world's buffets so long, have seen your friends one by one depart, and now |