By J.R. Miller
"The lives which seem so poor, so low,
The hearts which are so cramped and dull,
The baffled hopes, the impulse slow,
Thou takest, touchest all, and lo!
They blossom to the beautiful."
--SUSAN COOLIDGE.
Every Christian's life should be transfigured. There is a sense in which even a true believer's body becomes transfigured. We have all seen faces that appeared to shine as if there were some hidden light behind them. There are some old people who have learned well life's lessons of patience, peace, contentment, love, trust, and hope, and whose faces really glow as they near the sunset gates. Sometimes it is a saintly sufferer, who, in long endurance of pain, learns to lie on Christ's bosom in sweet unmurmuring quiet, and whose features take upon themselves increasingly the brightness of holy peace.
But whatever grace may do for the body, it always transfigures the character. The love of God finds us ruined sinners, and leaves us glorified saints. We are predestinated "to be conformed to the image of his Son." Nor are we to wait for death to transform us; the work should begin at once. We have a responsibility, too, in this work. The sculptor takes the blackened marble block and hews it into a form of beauty. The marble is passive in his hands, and does nothing but submit to be cut and hewn and polished as he will. But we are not insensate marble; we have a part in the fashioning of our lives into spiritual holiness. We will never become like Christ without our own desire and effort.
We ought to know well what our part is, what we have to do with our own sanctification. How, then, may we become transfigured Christians?
There is a transfiguring power in prayer. It was as our Lord was praying that the fashion of his countenance was altered. What is prayer? It is far more than the tame saying over of certain forms of devotion. It is the pouring out of the heart's deepest cravings. It is the highest act of which the soul is capable. When you pray truly, all that is best, noblest, most exalted, purest, heavenliest in you, presses up toward God. Hence earnest prayer always lights up the very face, and lifts up the life into higher, holier mood. We grow toward that which we much desire. Hence prayers for Christ-likeness have a transfiguring effect.
Holy thoughts in the heart have also a transfiguring influence on the life. "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." If we allow jealousies, envies, ugly tempers, pride, and other evil things to stay in our heart, our life will grow into the likeness of these unlovely things. But if we cherish pure, gentle, unselfish, holy thoughts and feelings, our life will become beautiful.
Professor Drummond tells of a young girl whose character ripened into rare loveliness. Her friends watched her growing gentleness and heavenliness with wonder. They could not understand the secret of it. She wore about her neck a little locket within which no one was allowed to look. Once, however, she was very ill, and one of her companions was permitted then to open this sacred ornament, and she saw there the words, "Whom having not seen I love." This was the secret. It was love for the unseen Christ that transfigured her life. If we think continually of the Christ, meditating upon him, thinking over sweet thoughts of him, and letting his love dwell within us, we shall grow like him.
Communion with Christ transfigures a life. Every one we meet leaves a touch upon us which becomes part of our character. Our lives are like sheets of paper, and every one who comes writes a word, or a line, or leaves a little picture painted there. Our intimate companions and friends, who draw very close to us, and are much with us, entering into our inner heart-life, make very deep impressions upon us.
If, therefore, we live with Christ, abide in him, the close, continued companionship with him will change us into his likeness. Personal friendship with Christ in this world is as possible as any merely human friendship. The companionship is spiritual, but it is real. The devout Christian has no other friend who enters so fully into his life as does the Lord Christ Jesus. The effect of this companionship is the transfiguring of the character. It is not without reason that the artists paint the beloved disciple as likest his Lord in features. He knew Jesus more intimately than any of the other disciples, and, in his deeper, closer companionship, was more affected and impressed by the Lord's beauty of holiness.
Again, keeping the eye upon the likeness of Christ transfigures the life. The old monks intently gazed upon the crucifix, and they said that the prints of the nails would come in their hands and feet, and the thorn-scars in their brow as they beheld. It was but a gross fancy; yet in the fancy there is a spiritual truth. Gazing by faith upon Christ, the lines of his beauty indeed print themselves on our hearts. This is the meaning of St. Paul's word: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image." The Gospel is the mirror. There we see the image of Christ. If we earnestly, continually, and lovingly behold it, the effect will be the changing of our own lives into the same likeness. The transformation is wrought by the divine Spirit, and our part is only to behold, to continue beholding, the blessed beauty. We sit before the camera, and our own picture is printed on the prepared glass. We sit before Christ, and we become the camera, and his image is printed on our soul.
There is a pathetic story of a French sculptor, which illustrates the sacredness with which life's ideal should be cherished and guarded. He was a genius, and was at work on his masterpiece. But he was a poor man, and lived in a small garret, which was studio, workshop, and bedroom to him. He had his statue almost finished, in clay, when one night there came suddenly a great frost over the city. The sculptor lay on his bed, with his statue before him in the centre of the fireless room. As the chill air came down upon him, he knew that in the intense cold there was danger that the water in the interstices of the clay would freeze and destroy his precious work. So the old man arose from his bed, and took the clothes that had covered him in his sleep, and reverently wrapped them about his statue to save it, then lay down himself in the cold, uncovered. In the morning, when his friends came in, they found the old sculptor dead; but the image was preserved unharmed.
We each have in our soul, if we are true believers in Christ, a vision of spiritual loveliness into which we are striving to fashion our lives. This vision is our conception of the character of Christ. "That is what I am going to be some day," we say. Far away beyond our present attainment as this vision may shine, yet we are ever striving to reach it. This is the ideal which we carry in our heart amid all our toiling and struggling. This ideal we must keep free from all marring or stain. We must save it though, like the old sculptor, we lose our very life in guarding it. We should be willing to die rather than give it up to be destroyed. We should preserve the image of Christ, bright, radiant, unsoiled, in our soul, until it transforms our dull, sinful, earthly life into its own transfigured beauty.
No other aim in life is worthy of an immortal being. We may become like the angels; what debasement, then, to let our lives, with all their glorious possibilities, be dragged down into the dust of shame and dishonor! Rather let us seek continually the glory for which we were made and redeemed. "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is. And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."
"Wonderful the whiteness of thy glory;
Can we truly that perfection share?
Yes; our lives are pages of thy story,
We thy shape and superscription bear;
Tarnished forms--torn leaves--but thou canst mend them,
Thou thine own completeness canst unfold
From our imperfections, and wilt end them--
Dross consuming, turning dust to gold."
A drop of water lay one day in a gutter, soiled, stained, polluted. Looking up into the blue of the sky, it began to wish for purity, to long to be cleansed and made crystalline. Its sigh was heard, and it was quickly lifted up by the sun's gentle fingers--up, out of the foul gutter, into the sweet air, then higher and higher; at length the gentle winds caught it and bore it away, away, and by and by it rested on a distant mountain-top, a flake of pure, white, beautiful snow.
This is a little parable of what the grace of God does for every sinful life that longs and cries for purity and holiness.
