The voice out of the cloud and other discourses

CHAPTER I. &ty Voice ©ut of ti)e ONouiJ

"While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them : and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him." — Matt. xvii. 5.

To what extent the transfiguration of Christ, in what is called the holy mount, may have had reference to himself simply, as a means of advancing his own perfection as mediator between God and man, is doubtless a question worthy of a special consideration. Some have regarded it as a stage in the progress of the divine development in the manhood of Christ, as a new anointing for his mission of teaching and doing and suffering, involving such an unusual exhibition to himself of his inherent glory, as strengthened him for final victory. But what the latent connection existing between this event and the perfection of Christ as mediator, between the light of Tabor and the shades of Gethsemane, between the life now so vigorously unfolding and the decease yet to be accomplished at Jerusalem ; or how far the former may have been preparatory to the latter, we do not now inquire. Doubtless, however, some such connection did exist, giving to the transfiguration, even in this respect, a significancy profoundly deep and interesting.

But while admitting, as we do, the bearings of this event upon Christ personally, we at the same time believe that it is not without its lessons for us ; that what is here so minutely and yet so graphically portrayed was designed, not only for the support of his immediate disciples, but for the instruction also of the Church of God to the end of time. And especially are the words now under consideration to be regarded as vitally important. There is indeed, in the very frequency of repetition which they have received in the sacred annals, that which indicates them to be words of deep and comprehensive import. The source whence they emanate, the subject to which they refer, the circumstances under which they were uttered, all contribute to enhance their value and render them worthy of a devout contemplation. And I trust that while attempting their exposition, I shall be encouraged by your kind attention and assisted by your fervent prayers.

As our estranged humanity can only be introduced to the Father by the Son, so it is meet the Son should first be introduced to humanity by the Father. And connected with this ceremony is a corresponding grandeur which no familiarity with its incidents will tend in the least to abate. The place selected, a lonely mount ; the time, the solemn hour of night. The Master is engaged in prayer. Sleep is falling on the eyelids of the weary disciples. Presently the person of Christ is vested in unearthly splendor. Moses and Elias also appear in glory, conversing with him. Bewildered with delight, Peter desires to build for Christ and the heavenly visitants abiding tabernacles. But while he is yet speaking the radiant pavilion of the Father, cloud-like, is wafted over them. Moses and Elias, with Jesus, enter therein. Peter and his companions, James and John, remain without, while from out the passing cloud there comes to the terrified disciples a voice of majesty proclaiming, ''This is my beloved Son in whom I am well

THE VOICE OUT OF THE CLOUD. 3 pleased: hear him." And when the voice was passed, Jesus was found alone."

In this voice out of the cloud, then, do we recognize that of the everlasting Father solemnly introducing to his disciples, and through them to all mankind, the Lord Jesus as the only and the absolute meditator of the new covenant; a transaction singularly impressive, and in which we find the person of Christ designated, his agency approved and his authority ratified. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him. "

I. Here then we have, first of all, the person of the Lord Jesus as the only and the absolute mediator of the new covenant distinctly designated in the words, "This is my beloved Son. " What then is implied in this designation? It implies,

i. The essential dignity of the subject to which it relates. This dignity is indeed indicated by all the circumstances of the scene as exhibited on the mount. The central figure in this scene is Christ. With reference to him are all its parts adjusted. Here we see him standing isolated and apart from all his wonted surroundings, by every act ,and every circumstance distinguished, the object of adoring delight to his disciples, the instructor of Moses and Elias, the glorified representatives of the heavenly world ; to all of whom he now demonstrates his infinite superiority, while, amid the darkness and solemnity of the night, that glory inherent, yet by the infirmities of humanity so long obscured, suddenly unfolding from within, is in all its native effulgence revealed, shedding upon his garments a dazzling snow-white radiance, altering the fashion of his countenance, transfiguringit into the splendors of thesun.

But the decisive words of the Father, "This is my beloved Son," carry with them a still more definite announcement of his essential dignity. Especially when we remember that Christ is here claimed to be the Son of God, in that highest and most peculiar sense as implying supreme divinity, will the transcendant personal dignity of the subject thus indicated the more fully appear. In this sense as implying supreme divinity, as indicating a distinct divine personality in the unity of the Godhead, did the Jews understand the Saviour as claiming for himself the title, Son of God ; and so understanding him, they refused to admit his claim, considering it blasphemy, that he being a man should thus assume to be equal with God. Besides the term "Son" or "Son of God " as applied to Christ is rather a designation of nature than of office, and is predicated of him, not so much in view of his humanity, or of what he became in condescension to man, as in view of his divinity, or of what from eternity he ever has been in his relation to God. It is a term indicative of all that is essential and peculiar to the nature of Christ as the second person in the Godhead, and is characteristic of his mode of existence in the divine essence, or of that mysterious relation from all eternity subsisting between the first and second persons in the ever blessed Trinity. Thus from this high and, by them, well understood import of the term, the disciples were left to infer the infinite dignity of the awful personage who then and there stood transfigured before them. For if the Son of God, then according to their understanding of the term, he must be divine.

Hence these words may be regarded as involving an authoritative recognition of the claims of Christ to divinity, a recognition the necessity of which seems to have originated in the condition of the faith of the Jewish Church at that period of its history. For though in the faith of a very few of that period the Son of God and the Messiah were held to be identical, yet many separated them, holding the Son of God to be a personage altogether distinct from the Messiah. Neither, indeed, in the estimation of such, did a claim to be the Messiah necessarily involve a claim to divinity, as was held to be the case when any one claimed to be the Son of God. Thus we find many of the Jews believing on Christ as the Messiah while they rejected him as the Son of God, for the very moment he assumed this title they pronounced it blasphemy and took up stones to stone him.

Just how far the disciples who were permitted to witness the transfiguration of our Lord were the subjects of this delusion we know not. Of the Messiahship of Christ they seem, indeed, for the most part to have had very clear convictions. And of the existence of some being whom they entitled the "Son of God" they had no doubt. But that his awful presence was identical with the lowly one with whom, in poverty and in grief, they had been so long and so intimately associated, was a conviction of slower growth. This was a gradually developed conviction, needing, in order to its completeness, reiterated proof and continual confirmation. Confirmation internal they had indeed received only a few days previous, through the special illumination of the Father when, for the moment, Peter, catching a glimpse of his Master's inherent glory, was enabled to make declaration of his faith, not only in his Messiahship but in his divinity as well, exclaiming, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Yet even this internal confirmation, consequent upon the inward revealings of the Spirit, was found insufficient to maintain in the hearts of the disciples an unwavering conviction of the divinity of their Lord. Hence confirmation, additional and external, is needed. This they are now about to receive in the decisive word of the Father, "This is my beloved Son."

So that we are led to conceive of this voice out of the cloud, thus authoritatively designating Christ, as one of a sublime series of special revelations, granted by the Father of lights to these wavering disciples, in order to the confirmation of their faith in the real Sonship and consequent absolute divinity of their Lord and Messiah. Hitherto they had but dimly and transiently conceived of him as divine. Here and there a significant ray, yet suddenly intercepted by the shadow of the ever impending cross. Henceforth, however, a stronger, steadier light is to invest his character. For even here, amid the mysterious circumstances of this eventful hour, the rays of his divinity, piercing the intercepting vail of humanity, beam forth resplendently. Self-luminous, he stands before them, all radiant in splendors celestial and divine. Here they are made the "eye witnesses of his glory," and he whom they already acknowledged as the Messiah is divinely identified as also the "Son of God." Here he is invested with the title by a voice from heaven, yea even by God the Father, whose pavilioned majesty waits to endorse the claims of filial Deity, declared to be the Son of God in a sense peculiar, incomprehensible and divine. As though God, in a single word concentrating and confirming the burden of the testimony of all the ages, had said: "This is really and emphatically my beloved Son, whose existence you have so long acknowledged and to whose incarnation and kingdom the hopes of an expectant world have so long trembled. This is indeed that Son of mine whose eternal generation and unlimited reign I have long since spoken by my servant David, Thou art my Son ■ this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession : This is that Son of mine who is the beloved, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting, whom I have appointed heir of all things, by whom also I made the worlds, the brightness of my own glory, the express image of my own person, upholding all things by the word of his power, being made so much better than the angels as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they, the immaculate, uncreated word who was in the beginning with me and is now made flesh and dwelleth among you and who, even here amid this lonely retreat and by this unexpected revealment of his Godhead, exhibits to you this glory, "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.''" "This is my beloved Son."

2. In the divine designation, " This is my beloved Son," is implied not only the essential but also the official dignity of the subject to which it relates. Hence this designation may be regarded as involving not only an authoritative recognition of the claims of Christ to divinity, but also of his claim to the Messiahship. For though not, strictly speaking, an official designation, yet when we remember that, in accordance with the true and ancient faith of the Jewish Church, the Messiah was to be no other than the Son of God, it follows that to all those who held that faith, the term "Son," or "Son of God," as applied to Christ, would convey the idea of his official relation to man as well as that of his personal relation to God, of his Messiahship as well as of his divinity. Hence the decisive word of the Father, "This is my beloved Son," was not simply a designation of Christ in his essential dignity as the second person in the Godhead, but also a pointing of him out to the world in his official character as the true Messiah, as the divinely recognized Prophet, Priest and King of all succeeding ages. It was a formal substitution of Christ, as the representative of the New Covenant, for Moses and Elias the representatives of the Old, and a sublime transfer to him, as such, of all their official dignities and prerogatives. Hence the special significancy of the fact that, in the transfiguration, Moses the Lawgiver and Elias the Prophet of the old dispensation also appear in glory, conversing with Jesus; and also of the fact that, from out the radiant and evanishing cloud in which disappear these honored representatives of the law, comes back to the entranced disciples the voice of the everlasting Father distinctly designating Christ, who alone remains, as henceforth being to them the only source of instruction. As though he had said, " Cling not to Moses and Elias. They are gone. Their mission is ended. Their economy has passed away. This is my beloved Son. Cling to him. He remains. His mission shall never end. His economy will not pass away. Hear ye him."

Thus when Jehovah uttered these words from the overshadowing cloud of His glory, He was holding up to the view of His disciples and through them, to the view of all mankind, His beloved Son as being the very Christ of promise, as that great central object in the moral universe, to which all the rays of prophecy pointed and in which they all should terminate.

For we find that even the severity of that original curse pronounced upon man, ere he had passed the gates of his primeval Paradise, was ameliorated by the prophetical declaration, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. Henceforth, in those dark, dark heavens, that for ages subsequent, hung pall-like over the earth, one bright star was seen to glow with a steady and still increasing splendor. This star was the emblem of the world's Redeemer, which, by the breath of the Almighty kindled in the midnight of the universe, girt its dark horizon round with the genial radiance of a supernal light. This emblematical star the words of promise and of prophecy had distinctly pointed out to the world as its only indemnity for the loss of its original Paradise. To this star, the first sinning pair, banished the bowers of Eden and the Tree of Life, had turned their anxious eyes and beheld written in tranquilizing light their only surety of restoration to the favor of God and their only pledge of immortality. Still in the advance of the nations and adown through all the laggard centuries, this star led the way, while a long line of prophets and seers, divinely authorized and of its beams inspired, from many a sacred mountain, from lightning-wreathed Sinai, from silent Horeb, and still milder Zion, continued to point it out to the weary vision of successive generations. Thus Moses, thus Elijah and Isaiah, with many an intervening prophet, until Malachi, standing on the verge of the gospel dispensation, with eye kindled, and heart enraptured by his close proximity with its ever deepening splendors, beheld it even as the Sun of Righteousness arising upon the rejoicing nations with healing in His beams.

But now this star is leading the way to Bethlehem, and, lured by its mystic light, wise men enter the royal stable, and with adoring, palpitating hearts gaze into the infant eye of the incarnate God. Here hope is lost in fruition, the emblem in the reality, and the star typical goes out as stars are wont to do when the sun is risen. The desire of all nations is come ; but not in accordance with human expectation. He comes clothed with humility, in the obscurity of poverty, in the helplessness of want. And thus coming, innocent of the state and pomp and ceremony usually attendant upon the birth of royalty, infidelity rejects Him, disputes His authority, sternly contesting His right to the throne of David. Though from the star-lit heavens His nativity had been to the ears of watchful shepherds heralded by God's own angel, and by the cherubic choir accompanying, and over the hills of Bethlehem holding night-long jubilee appropriately celebrated, yet He needs a higher and a still more sublime endorsement. This, indeed, He at first receives at His baptism, in the Spirit of God like a dove descending upon Him, and in the voice from heaven proclaiming, "This is My beloved Son." But now the great struggle commences. For in defiance of the sublime attestation of His character, through the ministry of angels received at His birth and at His baptism from the opening heavens and the throne of God, infidelity still opposes His claim and disputes His identity with the long-predicted Messiah. And, as we may suppose, even the hearts of His disciples, trembling in the darkness of ignorance, sometimes instinctively seek, amid the contradictions of His mysterious character, the foundations of a still more undoubting reliance. Nor do they seek in vain. For here, on this holy mount, these foundations are suddenly revealed. Here He uncovers His higher nature, and out on the bosom of night throws the beams of His essential glory, while from out the radiant and receding cloud is heard again the voice of complacent Deity saying, "This is My beloved Son." This is, indeed, the long-predicted Messiah, the very Christ of promise, whom many prophets and righteous men desired to see, but saw Him not.

This is He of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, and whose prerogatives He shall now assume. The fire of their inspiration shall henceforth and forever cease to burn,' and, in token of the glorious substitution, Moses and Elias now appear to lay their offices and their honors at His feet.

Hence, also, when Jehovah uttered these words from the over-shadowing cloud of His glory, He was holding up to the view of His disciples and through them, to the view of all mankind, His beloved Son as that great central object in the moral world to which referred, and in which terminated all the types and shadows of the former covenant. For side by side with the prophets stood the priest of the ancient dispensation ; while the former predicted, the latter typified the coming Redeemer ; what the one delineated in words the other adumbrated in act. Thus, while the prophet touchingly predicted the pending tragedy of the crucifixion, representing the world's sacrifice as a lamb led to the slaughter, the priest mournfully typified the great transaction, as he withdrew the crimsoned blade from the heart of the slaughtered victim. Thus in the fire of its myriad sacrifices, in the altars on which these sacrifices bled, as well as in the sacrifices themselves, did the ancient law prefigure a dispensation comprehending a nobler sacrifice, a loftier altar, and the enkindling of a more devouring fire. But here is its termination. The shadow has been traced to the substance, the type to the antitype, the symbol to the reality. And now from the bright and waiting pavilion of Jehovah, the long predicted and the long typified Redeemer is distinctly designated, to the faith of His disciples of every age and of every hemisphere, by a voice divine proclaiming, "This is my beloved Son." "This is he foreshadowed from of old. This is the meaning of all the past, the solution of all its mysteries, the substance of all its symbols, and that with reference to which, existed all its dispensations. With Moses and Elias the old dispensation vanishes ; in him the new dispensation dawns, a dispensation not of the letter but of the spirit, the transforming energy of which is even here and now in its transfigured Lord, to your delighted vision exhibited \ a dispensation in which all things shall be transfigured, until the saints on earth and the saints in heaven shall, through the revelation of the indwelling Shekinah, be changed into the same image, the image of the heavenly, and with him the only begotten, forever embosomed in the glory which he had with me before the world was. "This is my beloved Son."

Here then, amid the sequestered heighths of this holy mount, stands Christ Jesus, divinely designated as the Apostle and great High Priest of our profession through all generations; a designation which, as given, by heaven in contradiction of the world's infidelity, shall be to his disciples the confirmation of their faith to the end of time. Thus we find that in after days, when the names of these disciples who were permitted to witness the transfiguration were cast out as evil, and the infant Church was struggling for existence amid the combined prejudices of heathenism and the cruel enactments of despotic power, the recollection of this consecrated hour spent with the Master in the holy mount rose up in their minds with a strange and life like vividness even as that of a recent event. To Peter especially it was as the wafting of Tabor's wondrous vision afresh upon his soul. The overshadowing brightness, the golden glory the radiant forms enfolding, the heavenly ministrants, their mysterious colloquy, the voice out of the cloud burdened with its testimony to the everlasting Sonship and power of his transfigured Lord, all to Peter were an ever present reality, under the inspiration of which his soul caught again the impulses of its youth, to the world's dull ear voicing its convictions defiantly; "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the holy mount." This vision was indeed to Peter the occasion of a life long self-gratulation. He never once seems to have been ashamed of the mistake he made when, even there on that bleak mountain top, and for the glorified immortals, he wanted to build the everlasting tabernacles. True, one of the Evangelists, apologizing for his simplicity, tells us that Peter did not know what he was saying but well did he know that it was good to be there.

II. But in this most august and impressive introductory ceremony, we not only have the person of the Lord Jesus as the only and the absolute Mediator of the new covenant distinctly designated in the words, "This is my beloved Son," but also his agency, as such, divinely approved in the words, "in whom I am well pleased;" words implying not only God's gracious disposition towards the person of his Son as Mediator but also a most gracious acknowledgement of the divine complacency as resting upon his entire agency in this .holy and transcendent capacity.

i. God is well pleased in his Son considered only as to his divine nature, as the brightness of his own glory, the express image of his own person. Hence these words must not be regarded as merely an incidental or temporary outburst of the divine complacency, but as heaven's deliberate and eternal estimate of the sublime character designated. Not once or twice or three times only has the sentiment of these words found utterance on the sacred page, but such a frequency of repetition has it received therein as characterizes it as the unalterable conviction of an infinite judgment, a conviction unoriginated by circumstances and dependent on no precarious tenure, and which, as thus announced to man, becomes to him the evident token of a unity in the Godhead incomprehensible and of a fellowship which, clasping within its radiant embrace the persons adorable and divine, is the same yesterday to-day and forever ; so that the proposition is equally true whether stated in the past in the present or in the future time ; This is my beloved Son in whom I have been, now am, and will forever continue to be, well pleased.

The divine complacency from all eternity, resting upon Christ as the only begotten of the Father, is most forcibly expressed in that notable passage in the book of Proverbs. There the mind is carried into periods dateless, infinitely anterior to that in which the foundations of the world were laid, styled ' 'The Beginning of the way of Jehovah." And even in those remote and eternal solitudes, unbroken by the voice of Archangel or the song of seraphim, and unpeopled and unexplored save by the Infinite, even there, God is represented as being well pleased in his Son. " Then was I by him as one brought up with him and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." And as from the beginning of his way his residence has been the bosom of Jehovah and his pavilion the light of the everlasting Father's smile, so onward ever shall those undarkening splendors enshrine the person of God's attested Son, while the hosts of his redeemed disciples, on the mount of his eternal transfiguration tabernacled, shall, from glory unapproachable, forever hear that same approving voice, " This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."

2. God is well pleased in his Son as assuming the great work of mediation, a work, the assumption of which, he can view with complacency in no other being.

And here we must be permitted to survey the condition of man, both before and after his fall, in which we shall recognize the distressing circumstances rendering this assumption necessary.

That supreme intelligence whence all other beings are derived can never act but in accordance wit*h some law. This law we may suppose to be that original idea of truth and good, from all eternity lodged in the uncreated mind. Under the controllings of this idea and with a view to its unlimited development, man was created and his habitation designated. This idea, impressed upon his nature, became to him the sovereign rule of all his actions and that, in obeying which, all the higher purposes of his being would inevitably be secured. Neither indeed could this original idea of truth and good have any possible development or tend in the least to the advantage of the creature or to the glory of the Creator in the absence of moral freedom, the capability on the part of man of determining his own actions in accordance with this idea, and thereby to the attainment of all those ends proper and congenial to the nature with which he has been endowed by the Author of his existence. Hence, man's conformity or non-conformity with this original idea of his being was ever held within the compass of his own resolves. With this prerogative was he endowed either to obey or to disobey, a prerogative in the abuse of which he not only wrecked the original framework of his own destiny, but introduced confusion widespread and dire into the moral government of God.

In order to illustrate which let it be distinctly remembered that God exercises both a natural and a moral government in the world, that he exercises this government, as in the one case so in the other, in strict accordance with certain regular and established laws which, as originating in his own infinite mind, become the foundation of that supreme harmony which, when they have suffered no infringement, must uninterruptedly and without limit, prevail. Hence it is clear that one of those general laws, in accordance with which God governs in the natural world, having been violated, confusion and misery must be the result. Thus philosophers tell us that there is a mysterious law in accordance with which this ball on which we live is poised in its rapid circles around its central orb. Suppose then this law neutralized, for one moment void. How fearful the disorder that must instantaneously ensue. And not in this world only, which would be immediately affected by it, but in all the worlds which, by interdepending laws, are connected with this system ; and not in this system only, but the confusion would become infinite, the equilibrium of the universe would be destroyed, and the shock of the increasing tumult, transferred from sphere to sphere, would be felt to startle the repose of the most distant star that slumbers in the immensity of space. And it is a fact, painfully attested by the experience of thousands, that one of the many delicate laws upon which the health of the human body is depending having been violated, disorder and misery are the unavoidable consequences, consequences which must not only continue to exist, but unless arrested, actually to increase until they end in the dissolution of natural existence.