when on
the earth, and teaching him lessons from it in words like these: "This
is not the first time I have heard the Lord's voice, from out this cloud
of glory. Out of the burning bush He called me, 'Moses, Moses.' At Sinai
He said, 'Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud.' And again He appeared
in 'a pillar of a cloud,' and said, 'Behold thou shall sleep with thy
fathers.' I saw not that cloud again on earth until you beheld it. My
thoughts were about death. I prayed about it, not as your Master and
mine has done in preparation therefor, but that I might not then die.
This was my prayer: 'Let me go over I pray Thee and see the good land
that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon,'--the very
mountain where we now are. But the Lord would not hear me. I prayed yet
again more earnestly, and the Lord said unto me, 'Let it suffice thee;
speak no more unto me of this matter.' From yonder mountain of Nebo He
showed me all the land we now see from Hermon; and then I died. The Lord
buried me in yonder land of Moab. No man knoweth my sepulchre unto this
day. I died, my great hope of forty years disappointed. My repeated
earnest prayer was ungranted then, but it has not been unanswered. This
'goodly' Lebanon, to which I looked from Nebo with longing eyes, is more
'goodly' now than when it sadly faded from my dying vision. You, John,
are one of the witnesses to the answer to my dying prayer. Never did the
Shechinah at Horeb, or Sinai, or the Tabernacle, seem so resplendent as
on this Mount Hermon. Here it has enwrapped Elijah and me, the favored
two whose mission Gabriel might have envied. We were sent down from
heaven to talk with Jesus concerning His death, of which He has told
you. In view of it He has lead you, the favored three hither to pray.
It was while He prayed that ye 'beheld His glory.' Not only for me, but
much more for Him, is Hermon _the_ mount--'The Holy Mount,' because the
mount of Prayer, and therefore the mount of Transfiguration."

_CHAPTER XVII_

_St. John's Imperfections_

"Master, we saw one casting out demons in Thy name; and we forbade
him, because he followeth not with us."--_John._

"Lord, wilt Thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and
consume them, even as Elijah did?"--_James and John._

"Grant us that we may sit, one on Thy right hand, and one on Thy
left hand, in Thy glory."--_James and John._

"And when the ten heard it, they bega