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DISCOURSE XV.

Matt. xvii. 4.

THE THREE TABERNACLES.

LORD, IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE: IF THOU WILT, LET US MAKE HERE THREE TABERNACLES.

THE disciples who had followed Jesus from their homes far and long through town and desert, when he took three of them, as it is supposed, to the top of Mount Tabor, to behold his transfiguration, might be pardoned for wishing to shake the dust from their way-worn sandals, and to rest in such a scene. They perhaps fancied that all their glowing though indefinite anticipations were now on the eve of accomplishment. No more exposure and hardship! The world is to be a wilderness no more! The Master's triumphant manifestation, his longedfor kingdom, is at hand; and this sacred effulgence, these celestial visitants, announce his grand coronation.

Empty dream of temporal display! Foolish confidence of ended toil and blissful security! At that moment, Moses and Elias were speaking to Jesus of that departure in agony from the world he himself had predicted. In an hour, they were to descend from that mount, gleaming with a lustre more beau

tiful than the ancient crown of Sinai. Those golden clouds but hid the bare earth, along which still further they must wend their toilsome way, and were but as a yellow haze over the midnight coldness of Gethsemane and the wild desolateness of Golgotha. That lightning-clad summit must be exchanged for the low vale of yet sorer privation and anguish than they had ever known. But were they to sink thus into final prostration? No: the near vale but intervened between Tabor and a height more glorious for their future ascension. The bright mountain-cloud that veiled the lonely garden, and hung between them and Calvary, shadowed forth, beyond all the towerings of earthly sublimity, and infinitely above the disciples' present idea of the kingdom of God, that heavenly Jerusalem, whence Moses and Elias came, whither Christ was going, and where Peter, James, John, and others innumerable, would at last rejoice with them together.

Is not this scene from our Saviour's history a picture of human life and of human love? When the bright, heavenly cloud of unbroken domestic joy has overshadowed us, we, in our sweet converse, have said with Peter, "It is good for us to be here." Like the disciples, we have reached the spot of our desire, after much fatigue and anxiety. To this day the traveller approaches Mount Tabor over a range of stony hills. So come we to the mountain of our social peace and prosperity. "Why should we not remain?" we ask with almost a bold exultation, as we cast our eye backward over the long, rough passages through which, on our progress, we

have wound. We have paid the costly price which only endears to us our invaluable boon. "Sweet is pleasure after pain." Labor gladdens ease, difficulty burnishes acquisition, suffering blesses affection. And, after we have taken every hard step, after care has chiselled its lines in the face, and the sinews remain stretched from habitual toil, why should we not build tabernacles for a permanent abode ?

It is, indeed, like the old paradise, a scene at which even an enemy might pause, and gaze with delight. Beautiful it is to contemplate the work love does for this world only. What tabernacles like those it builds! How it moves to effort, spurs to success, kindles the desire of gain, else sordid, and cherishes a tenderness for reputation! It dignifies even the gaudy show of earthly luxury and splendor, to remember how far this is the gift of a prompting affection; how many of the beautiful adornments are tokens of love; how much that would be folly, if spent on selfish and sensual desires, is sanctified and immortalized by disinterested kindness; for how much lavish profusion a true sentiment gravely pleads; how it alone keeps the splendor undimmed on the diamond's point, and the fine gold unchanged in the bracelet's polish; how the weaving in of its filaments preserves beauty in the band, which cunningly, of half invisible threads, the loom has fashioned; and allows us to keep, wear, or enjoy what we should be ashamed to procure! Love prompts us to toil, to endure, to forego, and to sacrifice. Its children are patience, devotion, and heroism. Second only to religion is its motive and in

spiration. How it surrounds the dear object with every comfort, privilege, and social advantage; with all the means of solid education and various accomplishment! How it builds up the precious heart with the granite strength of principle, and on the front of sincerity shapes the ornaments of grace! Alas! does it make but a momentary transfiguration? Is it building for the grave, at service under death, decorating a victim and an offering? Did our discernment and solicitude overlook this? Saw we

not the stamp of mortality in the face so dear, and death's mark of property on the palms we clasped as our own? Supposed we the beloved head insured, at least for a term beyond our own decline? Or, in our solitary, self-examining hours, have we seemed to make a covenant with God to spare our jewel? In the petitions which cannot be uttered aloud, have we secretly cried, "O God! thy will be done! Yet, quench not the light of my eyes! Remove not the joy of my heart! Take all but that, without which goods and possessions turn to ashes!" Our prayer anticipates David's wish of vain supplication, that he had died for his son Absalom; and, from such secret wrestlings with the Almighty Providence, fond creatures, we turn to look at the precious countenance. "Oh! it is mine, my fine gold, my pure treasure; a heart warmer than mine; a life better than mine; that which makes achievement bright, and honor dear, and virtue itself strenuous ! I am not to give it to the dust; it is part of my own soul; vitally-I know not where it joins with the inmost fibres and circulations of my being."

But we cannot decide such a question, of the outward shape and tabernacle of our life. We may say, "Send other trials of weakness and disease upon us, steep us in poverty to the very lips;" but we cannot thus deal with God in compensations and substitutions. He must appoint both the measure and the kind of our discipline; while we can gain the benefit he intends, only by willingly submitting to the allotment, and rob the thunderbolt of something of its sharpness, by a wisely previous and habitual principle of resignation.

Let us not, then, build our tabernacle with a vain feeling of its sure continuance; nor foolishly say, as our solid fabric of domestic comfort rises, "This is for us and our friends, and we build it strongly, as of enduring stone, because we would have it last us our lives." Alas! how the building survives the builder! The traveller in foreign lands tells us the most striking impression of the great works of art is the shadowy, transitory life of their framers. We rear monuments in our church-yards and in our beautiful city of the dead; yet what are our houses but mausoleums, and our streets but lines of memorial structures, in which have lain corpses unnumbered! Our dwellings cry to us with the Scripture, "Arise and depart, for this is not your rest!" Let the sense of life's uncertainty breathe through us, not only when we tread the silent aisles of man's final resting-place, but as we walk amid the bustling crowd, so soon to be hushed into what stillness! Within the door, upon which, as we go by, our eye carelessly falls, the last sands of life may be running.