yet a change should pass over our lives, like the change that passes over the winter landscape when the summer sun draws out the green leaves from the hard black boughs, and flashes a fresh colour over all the brown pastures.  There should be such a change as when a drop or two of ruby wine falls into a cup, and so diffuses a gradual warmth of tint over all the whiteness of the water.  Christ in us, if we are true to Him, will make us more ourselves, and yet new creatures in Christ Jesus.

And the transformation is to be into His likeness who is the pattern of all perfection.  We must be moulded after the same type.  There are two types possible for us:  this world; Jesus Christ.  We have to make our choice which is to be the headline after which we are to try to write.  ‘They that make them are like unto them.’  Men resemble their gods; men become more or less like their idols.  What you conceive to be desirable you will more and more assimilate yourselves to.  Christ is the Christian man’s pattern; is He not better than the blind, corrupt world?

That transformation is no sudden thing, though the revolution which underlies it may be instantaneous.  The working out of the new motives, the working in of the new power, is no mere work of a moment.  It is a lifelong task till the lump be leavened.  Michael Angelo, in his mystical way, used to say that sculpture effected its aim by the removal of parts; as if the statue lay somehow hid in the marble block.  We have, day by day, to work at the task of removing the superfluities that mask its outlines.  Sometimes with a heavy mallet, and a hard blow, and a broad chisel, we have to take away huge masses; sometimes, with fine tools and delicate touches, to remove a grain or two of powdered dust from the sparkling block, but always to seek more and more, by slow, patient toil, to conform ourselves to that serene type of all perfectness that we have learned to love in Jesus Christ.

And remember, brethren, this transformation is no magic change effected whilst men sleep.  It is a commandment which we have to brace ourselves to perform, day by day to set ourselves to the task of more completely assimilating ourselves to our Lord.  It comes to be a solemn question for each of us whether we can say, ’To-day I am liker Jesus Christ than I was yesterday; to-day the truth which renews the mind has a deeper hold upon me than it ever had before.’

But this positive commandment is only one side of the transfiguration that is to be effected.  It is clear enough that if a new likeness is being stamped upon a man, the process may be looked at from the other side; and that in proportion as we become liker Jesus Christ, we shall become more unlike the old type to which we were previously conformed.  And so, says Paul, ’Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed.’  He does not mean to say that the nonconformity precedes the transformation.  They are two sides of one process; both arising from the renewing of the mind within.