THE THREE TABERNACLES


And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for
us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles , one for
thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. MARK ix. 5.


Caught up in glory and in rapture, the Apostle seems to have
forgotten the world from which he had ascended, and to which
he still belonged, and to have craved permanent shelter and
extatic communion within the mystic splendors that brightened
the Mount of Transfiguration. But it was true, not only as
to the confusion of his faculties, but the purport of his
desire, that "he knew not what he said." For even "while he
yet spake," the cloud overshadowed them, the heavenly forms
vanished, they found themselves with Jesus alone, and an
awful Voice summoned them from contemplation to duty, --from
vision to work.

Peter knew not what he said. He would have converted the
means into an end. He and his fellow-disciples had been
called to follow Christ not that they might see visions, but
had been permitted to see visions that they might follow
Christ. Just previous to that celestial interview, Jesus had
announced to them his own painful doom, and had swept away