It was a time of dire extremity.  God was in sore straits.  The kingdom plan was clearly gone for the present.  The rub was to save enough out of the wreckage to get a sure starting-point for the new plan, through which, by and by, the other original plan would work out.  There can be no stronger evidence of God’s need of men than this transfiguration scene.  Just because He had made man a sovereign in his will, God must work out all of His plans through that sovereign will.  He would not lower one whit His ambition for a man free in his own will.  He Himself would do nothing to mar the divine image in man.  For man’s sake, and through man’s will—­that is ever God’s law of dealing.

Fire and Anvil for Leaders.

The great need just now was not simply for men who would be loving and loyal, but men who would be leaders.  It has ever been the sorest need.  Men are not so scarce, true-hearted men, willing to endure sacrifice, but leaders have always been few, and are.  Nothing seems to be less understood than leadership; and nothing so quickly recognized when the real thing appears.  Peter was a leader among these men.  He had dash and push.  He was full of impulse.  He was always proposing something.  He acted as spokesman.  He blurted out whatever came.  The others followed his lead.  There were the crude elements of leadership here.  But not true leadership of the finer, higher kind.

The whole purpose of the transfiguration was to get and tie up leaders.  It was an emergency measure, out of the regular run of things.  Goodness makes character.  It takes goodness plus ability to make true leadership.  The heart can make a loving follower.  It takes a heart, warm and true, plus brains to make a leader.  Character is the essential for life.  For true leadership, there needs to be character plus ability:  the ability to keep the broad sweep of things, and not be lost in details, nor yet to lose sight of details; to discern motive and drifts; to sift through the incidentals which may be spectacular and get to the essential which may be in Quaker garb.

There are two sorts of leadership, of action, and of thought.  By comparison with the other, leaders of action are many, leaders of thought few.  Peter was the leader in action of the disciples, and in the earlier church days.  John became the leader in thought of the later years of the early church.  Paul was both, a very unusual combination.  Leaders are born, it is true.  But the finest and truest and highest leaders must be both born leaders, and then born again as leaders.  There needs to be the original stuff, and then that stuff hammered into shape under hard blows on the anvil of experience.  The fire must burn out the clay and dirt, and then the hammer shape up the metal.  Leaders must have convictions driven in clear through the flesh and bone, and riveted on the other side.