[Illustration:  MOSES ON MT.  PISGAH Artist Unknown Page 109]

I seem to hear Moses telling John something of his own history when on the earth, and teaching him lessons from it in words like these:  “This is not the first time I have heard the Lord’s voice, from out this cloud of glory.  Out of the burning bush He called me, ‘Moses, Moses.’  At Sinai He said, ‘Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud.’  And again He appeared in ‘a pillar of a cloud,’ and said, ’Behold thou shall sleep with thy fathers.’  I saw not that cloud again on earth until you beheld it.  My thoughts were about death.  I prayed about it, not as your Master and mine has done in preparation therefor, but that I might not then die.  This was my prayer:  ’Let me go over I pray Thee and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon,’—­the very mountain where we now are.  But the Lord would not hear me.  I prayed yet again more earnestly, and the Lord said unto me, ’Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter.’  From yonder mountain of Nebo He showed me all the land we now see from Hermon; and then I died.  The Lord buried me in yonder land of Moab.  No man knoweth my sepulchre unto this day.  I died, my great hope of forty years disappointed.  My repeated earnest prayer was ungranted then, but it has not been unanswered.  This ‘goodly’ Lebanon, to which I looked from Nebo with longing eyes, is more ‘goodly’ now than when it sadly faded from my dying vision.  You, John, are one of the witnesses to the answer to my dying prayer.  Never did the Shechinah at Horeb, or Sinai, or the Tabernacle, seem so resplendent as on this Mount Hermon.  Here it has enwrapped Elijah and me, the favored two whose mission Gabriel might have envied.  We were sent down from heaven to talk with Jesus concerning His death, of which He has told you.  In view of it He has lead you, the favored three hither to pray.  It was while He prayed that ye ‘beheld His glory.’  Not only for me, but much more for Him, is Hermon the mount—­’The Holy Mount,’ because the mount of Prayer, and therefore the mount of Transfiguration.”

CHAPTER XVII

St. John’s Imperfections

     “Master, we saw one casting out demons in Thy name; and we forbade
     him, because he followeth not with us.”—­John.

     “Lord, wilt Thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and
     consume them, even as Elijah did?”—­James and John.

     “Grant us that we may sit, one on Thy right hand, and one on Thy
     left hand, in Thy glory.”—­James and John.

     “And when the ten heard it, they began to be moved with indignation
     concerning James and John.”—­Mark x. 41.