Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1894-04-27
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
TALMAOE breaches OF THE
CHARACTER OF JESUS.
Tho Subject of the Sermon Being
"Fairest OF the Fair" From the Text;
solomon's Song, I6--Conoeption of
Christ's Looks.

DETECTED and degenerated, and from
oil i can read for ages the whole tend
ency was toward barbarism But
under the ever widening and deepen
ing influence of Christianity the tend
ency is now in the upward direction.
The physical appearance of the human
race is rs per cent more attractive
than in the sixteenth, seventeenth or
eighteenth centuries From the pic
lures on canvas and the faces and
forms in sculpture of those who were
considered the grand looking men and
the attractive women of 200 years ago,
l conclude the superiority of the men
and women of our time. Such look
ing people of the past centuries as
painting and sculpture have presented
as fine specimens of beauty and dig
nifty would be in our time considered
deformity and responsiveness complete.
The fact that many men and women
in antediluvian times were eight and
ten feet high tended to make the hui
man race obnoxious rather than win
ming. Such portable mountains of
human flesh did not add 10 the charms
of the world.
But in no climate and in no age did
there ever appear any one who in
physical attractiveness could be COM
pared to him whom my textcele brates,
thousands of years before he put his
infantile foot on tic hill back of
Bethlehem. He was and is, alto
na ho
ance of Christ is, for the most part, an
artistic guess. Some writers declare
him to have been a brunette or dark
complexioned, and others a blonde or
light compleXioned. St John, of
Damascus, writing LOO 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,
eye brows joined together, and YET
low complexion, and long fingers like
his mother" An author writing ], 500
years ago represents Christ as blonde:
His hair the color of wine and golden
1t the root; straight and without
luster; but from the level of the ears
curling and glossy, and divided down
the center after the fashion of the
Nazarenes. His forehead is even and
smooth, his face without blemish, and
EXCHANGED by a tempered bloom; his
countenence 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 it was Jewish face.
His mother was Jewess and there is
no womanhood on earth more beauti-
ful 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 know that sculp-
ture and painting were born long be-
fore Christ, and they might have trans
ferred 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? Polygnotus 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 sovereign of the
face? Dionysius the literary artist
who saw at Heliopolis, Egypt, the
strange darkening of the heavens at
the time of Christ's crucifxion near
Jerusalem, and not knowing what it
was, but describing it as peculiar
eclipse of the sun, and saying Either
the Deity suffers or sympathizes with
some sufferer, +" that Dionysius might
have put his pen to the work, and
drawn the portrait of our Lord. But
no! the fine arts were busy perpetual
ing the form ard appearance of the
worlds favorites only, and not the
form and appearance of the peasan-
try, among whom Christ appeared
1t was not until the fifteenth CEN
fury, or until more than fourteen hun
,lred years after Christ, that talented
painters attempted by pencil to give
us the idea of Christ's face. The pict-
ures before that time were so offensive
that the council at Constantinople for
babe their exhibition. But Leonardo
Da Vinci in the fifteenth century pre-
sented Christ's face on two canvases,
yet the one was repulsive face, and
the other an effeminate face. Raphael's
face of Christ is weak face. Albert
Durer's face of Christ was savage
face. Titian's face of Christ is an ex.
pressionless face. The mightiest artists,
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 i can tell you
something positive, and beyond con-
troversy. / am sure it was soulful
face. The face is only thecurtain of ths
soul 1t was impossible that DISPOSE
ton like Christ's should not have de-
monstrated itself in his phys;ognomy.
Kindness as an occasional impulse may
give no illumination to the features,
bat kindness as the lifelong. dominant
habit will produce attractiveness of
countenance as certainly as the shin
ing Of the sun produces flowers. Chill