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THE KING’S BUSINESS
dew, but we do want Jesus and Moses and Elijah to come from the glory and live in the booths!” That is what Spiritualism is doing all the time. And I say it is not fair to ask your friends in glory to come down here to tip tables, and write on slates, and entertain an evening aud ience! It is not fair to ask them to come from the glory and live in the booth! Satan comes to us right at our weakest time, when we are stupe fied by grief sometimes, and we want to speak another word and get an other vision; and we make any sort of selfish, anti-Christian request to have our friends come back. It is a joy to my soul—I have not time to enter into it—it is a joy to my soul, believe me, that my father and mother and first-born boy are with the Lord. “ To depart and be- with Christ” is “ far better” than to be with you on the mountain top in a booth! “ To die is gain.” “The time of our departure is at ■hand.” Greek scholars tell us that word “ departure” is a nautical term. It really means, in its context, to lift anchor and spread sail and go out of the land-locked harbor into the open sea. “ The time o f my exodus,” which I compare to a departure from Egypt, through the Red Sea of death into the glory, and not into the wil derness, “ is come.” In our hymnology death , is often compared to furling sail, casting an chor, coming into harbor; but to the vision of the Apostle Paul death was not limitation and restriction, but ex pansion. It was lifting anchor and spreading sail, and going out of the land-locked harbor into the open sea of eternity.
“ To die is gain,” and shall I, in my selfishness, try to drag my loved ones down from the glory to earth, and bring them into touch with my limita tions and my sin? No, friends; and there is just one word that explains why. They looked up, and beheld “ J esus o n l y .” That is all you need. If you have Jesus, you can afford to let your loved ones stay in the glory, till they that sleep in Jesus He shall bring with Him. If you have Jesus, you can go down into the valley at the foot of the mountain, and meet all the devils that are there in the dark. “ J esus o n l y .” On a London foggy morning, Jos eph Parker came to the City Temple one Sunday, when he could hardly find his way through the gloom. Ris ing in the pulpit, he said, “ I have been to Switzerland. Why should a man live in London when he can go to Switzerland. As I walked to the Temple I did not think of a London fog. I had in mind the Matterhorn and the Rigi, and the glory of a Swiss sunrise and sunset; and in this Lon don fog I am living in Switzerland!” God pity the man who goes to the mountains and cannot take the moun tains home. God pity the man who comes to Montrose and cannot take Montrose back. Remember, as John did, the glory, and, as Peter did, the majesty; and this glory and majesty with “Jesus only”—not now shining forth like 'the lightning, and the sun, and the white light, but Jesus as .the Companion and the Helper. That means victory, and the great issue of the Transfiguration is to prepare you for the demons at the foot o f the mountain.
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