His life is eternal. His love is eternal. The power of His Cross Is eternal. II. The vanishing witnesses. 1. The connection of the past with Christ. The authority of the two representatives of the Old Covenant was only (a) derived and subordinate; (b) prophetic; (c) transient. 2. The thought may be widened into that of the relation of all teachers and guides to Jesus Christ. 3. The two witness to the relation of the unseen world to Jesus Christ. (a) Its inhabitants are undying. (b) Are subject to the sway of Jesus. (c) Are expectantly waiting a glorious future. 4. They witness to the central point of Christ's work--'His decease.' This great event is the key to the world's history. III. The waiting disciples. 1. What Christian life should be. Giving Him our sole trust and allegiance. (a) Seeing Him in all things. (b) Constant communion. 'Abide in Me.' (c) Using everything as helps to Him. 2. What Christian death may become. CHRIST'S LAMENT OVER OUR FAITHLESSNESS 'He answereth him and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?'--Mark ix. 19. There is a very evident, and, I think, intentional contrast between the two scenes, of the Transfiguration, and of this healing of the maniac boy. And in nothing is the contrast more marked than in the demeanour of these enfeebled and unbelieving Apostles, as contrasted with the rapture of devotion of the other three, and with the lowly submission and faith of Moses and Elias. Perhaps, too, the difference between the calm serenity of the mountain, and the hell-tortured misery of the plain--between the converse with the sainted perfected dead, and the converse with their unworthy successors--made Christ feel more sharply and poignantly than He ordinarily did His disciples' slowness of apprehension and want of faith. At any rate, it does strike one as remarkable that the only occasion on which there came from His lips anything that sounded like impatience and a momentary flash of indignation was, when in sharpest contrast with 'This is my beloved Son: hear Him,' He had to come down from the mountain to meet the devil-possessed boy, the useless agony of the father, the sneering faces of the scribes, and the impotence of the disciples. Looking on all this, He turns to His followers--for it is to the Apostles that the text is spoken, and not to the crowd outside--with this most remarkable exclamation: 'O faithless generation! how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?' Now, I said that these words at first sight looked almost like a momentary flash of indignation, as if for once a spot had come on His pallid cheek--a spot of anger--but I do not think that we shall find it so if we look a little more closely.