His approaching sorrow.

The Transfiguration is slightly apprehended and seldom discussed. Very
few sermons are preached, or great pictures painted, or hymns sung, on
the subject. Almost the only verse one knows about it--

When in ecstacy sublime
Tabor's glorious steep I climb,
At the too transporting light
Darkness rushes o'er my sight,

implies that it is a subject beyond human understanding.

We have hymns on His Incarnation and Advent, His Divine Glory and
Worship, His Mediatorial Character and Titles, Passion, Death,
Resurrection, Ascension, Intercession and Reign, and the Second Advent,
but none specially referring to the Transfiguration. Yet it contains
many wonderful lessons we all need to know. We have felt, perhaps,
that it was an experience peculiar to Christ--with which we can have
nothing to do--but the Scriptures say otherwise; the word here rendered
"transfigured" is the same as that translated "transformed" in Romans
xii. 2, "but be ye transfigured by the renewing of your minds," etc.,
and "changed," in 2 Cor. iii. 18, "are transfigured into the same image
from glory to glory." We want so to look at the glory of Jesus, that,
at the same time, we may see His sorrow as well--and be "transfigured
into the same image; for if we suffer with Him, we shall also be
glorified together."

There is no man who understands the Transfiguration like John Ruskin.
He says: "We are afraid to harbour in our own hearts, or to utter in
the hearing of others, any thought of our Lord as hungering, tired, or
sorrowful, or having a human soul, a human will, and affected by the
events of human life as a finite creature is: and yet one-half of the
efficacy of His atonement and the whole of the efficacy of His example
depend on His having been this to the full. Consider therefore the
Transfiguration as it relates to the human feelings of our Lord. It
was the first definite preparation for His death.... What other hill
could it have been than the southward slope of that goodly mountain,
Hermon, which is, indeed, the centre of all the promised land, from the
entering in of Hamath to the river of Egypt; the mount of fruitfulness,
from which the springs of Jordan descended to the valleys of Israel.
Along its mighty forest avenues, until the grass grew fair with the
mountain lilies, His feet dashed with the dew of Hermon, He must have
gone to pray His first recorded prayer about death; and from the steep
of it,