through a glass darkly, or prophesy in part, and talk as a child,
but see face to face, and know even as he was known.



SERMON III. THE TRANSFIGURATION



(Preached before the Queen.)

Matthew xvii. 2 and 9. And he was transfigured before them. . . .
And he charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the
Son of Man be risen again from the dead.

Any one who will consider the gospels, will see that there is a
peculiar calm, a soberness and modesty about them, very different
from what we should have expected to find in them. Speaking, as
they do, of the grandest person who ever trod this earth, of the
grandest events which ever happened upon this earth--of the events,
indeed, which settled the future of this earth for ever,--one would
not be surprised at their using grand words--the grandest they could
find. If they had gone off into beautiful poetry; if they had
filled pages with words of astonishment, admiration, delight; if
they had told us their own thoughts and feelings at the sight of our
Lord; if they had given us long and full descriptions of our Lord's
face and figure, even (as forged documents have pretended to do) to
the very colour of his hair, we should have thought it but natural.

But there is nothing of the kind in either of the four gospels, even