IF the portrait of one who serves us — as one of Christ’s deputies — be valued by us, how much more are the traits of the Master Himself to be admired and enjoyed? To my soul it is a wonderful thing that not only I may see what I am learning to admire so much, but that in the power of His Spirit I may be transformed into what I so admire!
I can behold His glory! contemplate Him until I get like Him! The glass of the photographer is detained under the action of the light playing on the face until it has caught the features. So, looking at Christ, we are the glass, and it is His image that is inscribed by the light of the glory on the fleshy tables of our hearts. You must not look at the glass until you get into a dark room, and it is to be looked at in order to find — not that His image is not there, but that it is there — and if not you must only sit again, and yet again! Our whole business is to get a full and good portrait in our hearts of Him Who is altogether lovely, not only to hang up there, but to be inscribed there. Stephen’s was the face of an angel. What was that? A face looking on God — not on man.
J. B. S.
O fix our earnest gaze,
So wholly Lord on Thee,
That with Thy beauty occupied
We may transformed be.