As is the Master, so is the servant. That is the broad, general
principle that lies in my text. To be with Christ makes men
Christlike. A soul habitually in contact with Jesus will imbibe
sweetness from Him, as garments laid away in a drawer with some
preservative perfume absorb fragrance from that beside which they
lie. Therefore the surest way for Christian people to become what God
would have them to be, is to direct the greater part of their effort,
not so much to the acquirement of individual characteristics and
excellences, as to the keeping up of continuity of communion with the
Master. Then the excellences will come. Astronomers, for instance,
have found out that if they take a sensitive plate and lay it so as
to receive the light from a star, and keep it in place by giving it a
motion corresponding with the apparent motion of the heavens, for
hours and hours, there will become visible upon it a photographic
image of dim stars that no human eye or telescope can see. Persistent
lying before the light stamps the image of the light upon the plate.
Communion with Christ is the secret of Christlikeness. So instead of
all the wearisome, painful, futile attempts at tinkering one's own
character apart from Him, here is the royal road. Not that there is
no effort in it. We must never forget nor undervalue the necessity
for struggle in the Christian life. But that truth needs to be
supplemented with the thought that comes from my text--viz. that the
fruitful direction in which the struggle is to be mainly made lies in
keeping ourselves in touch with Jesus Christ, and if we do that, then
transformation comes by beholding. 'We all, reflecting as a mirror
does, the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image.'
'They have been with Jesus,' and so they were like Him.

But now look at the specific kinds of excellence which seem to have
come out of this communion. 'They beheld the _boldness_ of Peter and