before He knelt, could see, to the south, all the
dwelling-places of the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the
great light, the land of Zabulon and of Naphthali, Galilee of the
Gentiles: could see even with His human sight, the gleam of that lake
by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a place loved by Him and vainly
ministered to, whose house was now left unto them desolate: and, chief
of all, far in the utmost blue, the hills above Nazareth, sloping down
to His old home; hills on which the stones yet lay loose that had been
taken up to cast at Him, when He left them for ever. 'And as He prayed
two men stood by Him.'"

"Among the many ways in which we miss the help and hold of Scripture,
there is none more subtle than our habit of supposing that, even as
man, Christ was free from the fear of death. How could He then have
been tempted as we are?--since among all the trials of the earth none
spring from the dust more terrible than that of fear. It had to be
borne by Him ... and the presence of it is surely marked for us enough
by the rising of those two at His side."

It was Christ's first preparation for death--and, therefore, to
understand His Transfiguration we must understand His Crucifixion too;
to see Hermon, we must go to Calvary; to discern how the fashion of His
countenance was altered, we must witness that other time in the garden,
when "His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down on the
ground"; to fathom how the three disciples slept through the glory, we
must remember how they slept through the sorrow too.

The word rendered decease is a strange one. It is literally
_exodus_--"going out." They spake of this exodus which He should
accomplish at Jerusalem. The same word occurs in the second epistle of
Peter: "I will endeavour that ye may be able after my exodus to have
these things always in remembrance"; and it is worthy of notice that
the verses which follow are a reminiscence of the Transfiguration.

We have conferences on many subjects--on peace, on holiness, on
temperance: who ever heard of another conference (as this was) on
_death_?

A listener might have heard some such words as these:--

First Moses might speak: "I, too, know what it is to want not to die.
I did not fear the act of dying, but the manner--away out of the
Promised Land. But when I saw the will of my God in all its beauty,
then even this bitter disappointment seemed bearable, and the kiss of
my God at the