Paul’s immediate purpose seems to be to illustrate the frank openness which ought to mark the ministry of Christianity.  He does this by reference to the veil which Moses wore when he came forth from talking with God.  There, he says in effect, we have a picture of the Old Dispensation—­a partial revelation, gleaming through a veil, flashing through symbols, expressed here in a rite, there in a type, there again in an obscure prophecy, but never or scarcely ever fronting the world with an unveiled face and the light of God shining clear from it.  Christianity is, and Christian teachers ought to be, the opposite of all this.  It has, and they are to have, no esoteric doctrines, no hints where plain speech is possible, no reserve, no use of symbols and ceremonies to overlay truth, but an intelligible revelation in words and deeds, to men’s understandings.  It and they are plentifully to declare the thing as it is.

But he gets far beyond this point in his uses of his illustration.  It opens out into a series of contrasts between the two revelations.  The veiled Moses represents the clouded revelation of old.  The vanishing gleam on his face recalls the fading glories of that which was abolished; and then, by a quick turn of association, Paul thinks of the veiled readers in the synagogues, copies, as it were, of the lawgiver with the shrouded countenance; only too significant images of the souls obscured by prejudice and obstinate unbelief, with which Israel trifles over the uncomprehended letter of the old law.

The contrast to all this lies in our text.  Judaism had the one lawgiver who beheld God, while the people tarried below.  Christianity leads us all, to the mount of vision, and lets the lowliest pass through the fences, and go up where the blazing glory is seen.  Moses veiled the face that shone with the irradiation of Deity.  We with unveiled face are to shine among men.  He had a momentary gleam, a transient brightness; we have a perpetual light.  Moses’ face shone, but the lustre was but skin deep.  But the light that we have is inward, and works transformation into its own likeness.

So there is here set forth the very loftiest conception of the Christian life as direct vision, universal, manifest to men, permanent, transforming.

I. Note then, first, that the Christian life is a life of contemplating and reflecting Christ.

It is a question whether the single word rendered in our version ‘beholding as in a glass,’ means that, or ’reflecting as a glass does.’  The latter seems more in accordance with the requirements of the context, and with the truth of the matter in hand.  Unless we bring in the notion of reflected lustre, we do not get any parallel with the case of Moses.  Looking into a glass does not in the least correspond with the allusion, which gave occasion to the whole section, to the glory of God smiting him on the face, till the reflected lustre with which it glowed became dazzling, and needed to be hid.