17. “ But the Lord is a Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” “Lord” here means “Christ,” the Second Person of the Trinity, and “the Spirit of the Lord” means “the Holy Ghost.” And since the Holy Ghost has been sent into the world as a Revelation of the spiritual Christ who is none other than the Hero of Mt. Calvary; who has conquered sin, death and Hell, and “brought life and immortality to light,” gloriously delivering His people from all of their enemies and crowning them with the diadem of perfect freedom the Holy Ghost is here among us to conduct all of our meetings, His constant work being the revelation and the glorification of Christ. The poorest beggar becomes a millionaire when it is all given to him by a rich friend. Then he has perfect liberty in financial and temporal matters. How sad to see the spiritual bondage in the churches, the preacher afraid of his members and official board, and they all afraid of one another and the preacher, and afraid of other churches, and afraid of the worldly people; so there is no liberty, they are all in bondage. What a pity they will not all let the Holy Ghost come in and introduce King Jesus, who breaks every chain, sunders every fetter, and makes them all free as angels!

SPIRITUAL PROGRESS
18. “ But we all with unveiled face, beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transfigured into the same image from glory unto glory, as by the Lord the Spirit.” This is a beautiful, vivid and glorious description of the experience enjoyed by people after they have been truly sanctified. This verse is inapplicable to unsanctified Christians, from the fact that their faces are already unveiled, which is not peculiar to the justified experience normal to Moses, who had the vail on his face. Again, we see that the transfiguration here mentioned is not from carnality to the glory of holiness, as in the case of people entering the sanctified experience, but from “glory to glory,” i. e., from the glory of holiness to the glory of transfiguration. The theme of discourse is the reading of God’s Word, under the Mosaic dispensation with a vail over your face, but now that the vail is taken away in Christ, we read the same Word with face unveiled. Hence the Bible is God’s looking-glass, in which we see ourselves mirrored and reflected back. The reason why the wicked hate the Bible is because it shows them their own faces polluted by devils and coiled about with rattlesnakes. The reason why unsanctified Christians do not take much interest in the Bible is because it reveals to them their own faces awfully dirty, ugly and filthy, and it is murderous to all their pride to behold the sight, while sanctified people are unutterably surprised and delighted to see their faces so bright, clean and beautiful that they never get tired looking at them. But beauty hath a charm insatiable, and, while astounded beyond measure as we contemplate the beauty of holiness reflected in our own features from the looking-glass of God’s Word, though we see all the wounds and lacerations of leprosy and small-pox are gloriously healed, odoriferous with Heavenly fragrance and beautiful as the roses of Sharon, yet the old scars are still there, and we long for their final obliteration. Where the E.V. has “transformed” the better reading is “transfigured.” While sanctification is the perfection of grace, the transfiguration is the perfection of glory, the grand ultimatum in the restitutionary economy, actually conferring homogeneity to the Heavenly state, our destination, whither we are bound and to which we are running night and day, like the Grecian racers in the Olympic stadium. Now, remember that the transfiguration glory is really the constant and supreme desideratum of every truly sanctified soul; and as sanctification, though suddenly entered, is gradually approximated, so glorification, though instantaneously wrought upon the soul by the Holy Ghost the very moment of its translation out of the body, yet it is gradually approached during the entire period of the sanctified life. We all desire supremely a part in the rapture of the saints when the Lord comes after His Bride. As we are constantly on the lookout for His appearing, of course we are not expecting to die, but to see our coming King and meet Him in the clouds. In that case, we must be transfigured, body, mind and spirit. Hence there is a prominent sense in which that transfiguration is going on. John Wesley taught a gradual sanctification, antecedent to the instantaneous experience and a necessary preparation for its reception. In a similar manner there is a gradual transfiguration, in which we are weaned from earth and ripened for Heaven. In this gradual transfiguration, great physical changes, as well as intellectual and spiritual, transpire, making us less physical, gross and earthly, and more spiritual, intellectual, ethereal and Heavenly in our constitution and habitude, thus, in a mysterious and indefinable way, preparing us for the wonderful change out of materiality into pure spirituality, when these bodies shall cease to be the tenement of the animal life and intellect, but become the glorified house for our glorified spirit to occupy forever. While looking into this mirror, i. e., God’s wonderful Word, we see our own being reflected back as you see your person when you stand before the looking-glass. What a significant fact! the Heaven bound pilgrim, as the years go by, actually sees himself as he reads his Bible, clearly showing up changes, revolutions and transfigurations, effecting obvious elimination’s of the earthy, and taking on discernible accessions of the Heavenly, and thus more and more approximating the beauty, purity and glory of our blessed Paragon, till the moment of final victory arrives, and, responsive to the call of the Heavenly Bridegroom, this mortal will put on immortality, and fly away to meet Him in the skies. Again, in case that He shall call me to evacuate this tenement to go and meet Him, it is equally pertinent that I should be ripe for translation, so that I will enjoy a part in the first resurrection and a place in the glorified Bridehood of my Lord. I find that this is all done by “the Lord the Spirit,” a better translation than “the Spirit of the Lord,” as in E.V.; setting forth the fact that the Holy Ghost, who is identical with the Lord Himself, i. e., the spiritual Christ to whom we are wedded in sanctification, and who abides here (Matthew 28:20) to the end of the age, i. e., the present age, which will end when the millennium is ushered in. Meanwhile He here abides, is wedded to us in sanctification, and prepares us soul, body and mind in the fullness of our redeemed humanity to be wedded to Him in the fullness of His glorified humanity, when we shall gather in the marriage supper of the Lamb. Hence the Holy Ghost, who is none other than the Spirit of our Savior, is the Omnipotent Agent here with us, felicitously transfiguring us through His Word, and getting us ready for glorification, whether through translation or resurrection.