Connecticut western news., 1894-04-26
ARREST OFTHE FAIR
REV. OR. TAlMAGe'S SERMON AT THE
 BROOKLYN TABERNACLE.

BROOKLYN TASERNAClE.
 TAesElo4uent Pastor Discusses the Attri- butes of Christ-The Great, the Good, tho Fair, the Sublime-A Characteristic Ser mon-Praise From a Thousand Voices.
 BROOKLYN, April 22.-Mrs Prentiss' hymn, More Love to Thee, O Christ, was never more effectively rendered than this morning by the thousands of voices in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, led on by organ and oornet, while by new yocabu- lary and fresh imagery Dr. Talmage presented the gospel. The subject of the sermon was "Fairest of the Fair, " the text chosen being Solomon's Songv, 16, He is altogether lovely.
 The human race has during centuries been improving. For awhile it defiocted and degenerated, and from all I can read for ages the whole tendency was toward barbarism, but under the ever widening and deepening influence of Christianity the tendency is now in the upward di- rection. The physical appearance of the human race is 75 per cent more attract7 i've than in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the pie lures on canvas and the faces and forms in sculpture of those who were consid cred the grand looking men and the at tractive women of 200 years ago con clnde the superiority of the men and women of our time. Such looking peo- pie of the past centuries as painting and sculpture have presented as fine speci- mems of beauty and dignity would be in our time considered deformity and re- pulsiveness complete. The fact that many men and women i'll antediluvian times were s and 10 feet high tended to make the human race obnoxious rather than winning. Such portable mountains of human flesh did not add to tho charms of the world.
 The Physical Christ.
 But in no climate and ill no age did there ever appear any one who in phys ical attractiveness could be compared to him whom my text celebrates thou sands of years before he put his infan- tile foot on the hill back of Bethlehem. He was and is altogether lovely. The physical appearance of Christ is, for the most part, an artistic guess. Some writ CTS declare him to have been brunette or dark complexioned, and others a blond or light complexioned. St. John of Damascus, writing 100 years ago, and so much nearer than ourselves to the time of Christ, and hence with more likelihood of accurate tradition, repre- sents him with beard black, and curly eyebrows joined together, and yellow complexion, and long fingers like his mother. An author, writing 1,5OO years ago, represents Christ as blond: His hair is the color of wine and golden at the root, straight and without lus- ter, but from the level of the ears, curl ing and glossy, and divided down the center after the fashion of the Naza- his face without blemish and enhanced by tempered bloom, his countenance ingenious and kind. Nose and mouth are in no way faulty. His beard is full, of the same color as his hair and forked in form; his eyes blue and extremely brilliant.
 My opinion is, 1t was Jewish face. His mother was 8 Jewess, and there is no womanhood on earth moro beautiful than Jewish womanhood. Alas that he lived so long before the daguerrean and photographic arts were born, or we might have known his exact features. I know that sculpture and painting were born long before Christ, and they might have transferred from olden times to our times the forehead, the nostril, the eye, the lips of our Lord.
 Phidias, the sculptor, put down his chisel of enchantment 500 years before Christ came. Why did not some one take up that chisel and give us the side face or full face of our Lord? Polygno- tus, the painter, put down his pencil 400 years before Christ. Why did not some one take it up and give us at least the eye of our Lord-the eye, that sov- ereign of the face? Dionysius, the litera- " artist who saw at Heliopolis, Egypt the strange darkening of the heavens at the time of Christ's crucifxion near Je- rusalem, and not knowing what it was, but describing it as peculiar eclipse of the sun, and saying, "Either the Del ty suffers or sympathizes with some suf-
 
 his pen to the work and drawn the DOT trait of our Lord But, no; the fine arts were busy perpetuating the form and appearance of the world favorites only, and not tho form and appearance of the peasantry, among whom Christ appear ed
 Portraits of Christ.
 It was not until the fifteenth century, or until more than I, 100 years after Christ, that talented painters attempted by pencil to give us the idea of Christ S face. The pictures before that time were so offensive that the council at Constan- tinople forbade their exhibition. But Leonardo da Vinci, in the fifteenth cen. tury, presented Christ's face on two can vases, yet the one was repulsive face and the other an effeminate face. Raph. ael's face of Christ is a weak face. Albert Durer's face of Christ was say. age face Titian's face of Christ is al expressionless face. The mightiest art. ists, either with pencil or chisel, have made signal failure in attempting to give the forehead, the cheek, the eyes, the nostril, the mouth of our blessed Lord.
 But about his face can tell you some thing positive and beyond controversy. am sure it was a soulful face The face is only the curtain of the soul. Il was impossible that disposition like Christ's should not have demonstrated itself in his physiognomy. Kindness a. an occasional impulse may give no illu imitation to the features, but kindness as the lifelong, dominant habit vii produce attractiveness of countenanct as certainly as the shining of the SUI produces flowers. Children are afraid O scowling or hard visaged man. They cry out if he proposes to take them. | he try to caress them, he evokes slaI rather than kiss. All mothers know how hard it is to get their children tc go to a man or woman of forbidding ap- pearance. But no sooner did Christ ap- pear in the domestic group than there yag an infautila excitement and the