News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1894-03-01

face did not respond to it? Did you ever
have grief and no tears trickled down
that maternal cheek? Did you ever do
bad thing and shadow did not cross
it? Oh, 1t was a sweet face! The spec
tacles with large, round glasses through
which she looked at you, how sacredly
they have been kept in bureau or closet!
Your mothers face, your mothers
smile, your mothers tears! What an
pyerpowering memory! Though you
have come on to midlife or old age, how
you would like just once me re to bury
your face in her lap and have a good
cry!
But I can tell you of a more sympa-
thetic and more tender and more loving
face than any of the faces l have men
toned. mo, you cannot, says some
one. I can, and l will. 1t is the face
of Jesus Christ as he was on earth and
is now in heaven. When preparing my
life of Christ, entitled From Manager
to Throne" I ransacked the art gal
lerie5 and portfolios of the world to find
a picture of our Saviour's face that
might be most expressive, and ! saw it
| as Francesca Francia painted it in the
sixteenth century, and as the emerald
| intaglio of the sixth century presented
| it. and as fresco in the catacomb s near
| Rome preserved it, and as Leonardo da
Vinci showed it in 1.-The &last Supper,
and I looked in the Louvre, and the
| Luxembourg, and the Vatican, and the
| Dresden, and the Berlin, and Neapolltan
| and London galleries for the most In
spiring face of Christ, and many of the
presentations were wonderful for pathos
and majesty and power and execution,
| but although l selected that by AIRY
Scheffer as in some respects the most
| expressive felt as we all feel-that our
| Christ has never yet been presented
either in sculpture or painting, and
| that we will have to wait until we rise
to the upper palace, where we shall see
| him as he is.
What gentle face it must have been
to induce the babes to struggle out of
| their mothers arms into his arms!
What an expressive face it must have
been when one reproving look of it
threw stalwart Peter into fit of tears
What pleading face it must have been
to lead the psalmist in prayer to say
of it, ''Look upon the face of thine
anointed!" What sympathetic face it
must have been to encourage the sick
woman who was beyond any help from
the doctors to touch the hem of his gar
menti What suffering face it must
have been when suspended ON the per-
pendicular and horizontal pieces of the
wood of martyrdom, and his antagonists
slapped the pallid cheek with their
rough hands and befouled it with the
saliva of their blasphemous lips! What
a tremendous face it must have been tC
lead st. John to describe it in the COM
ing Judgment as scattering the universe
when he says. From whose face the
earth and the heaven fled away"
THE FACE oMNIPOTENT.
o Christi Once the NaZarene, but
now the CELESTIAL Once of cross, but
now of throne! Once crowned will
singing bramble, but now coroneteC
with the jewels of ransomed empires
Turn on us thy pardoning face and for
give us, thy sympathetic face and con
sole us, thy suffering face and have thy
atonement avail for us, thy omnipoten
face and rescue us. Oh, what a face! Sc
SCARED, so lacerated, SO respondent, 81
overwhelmingly glorious that the sera
phim put wing to wing and with thei1
conjoined pinions keep off some of thu
luster that is too mighty even for eye
, cherubic or angelic, and yet this morn
} ing turning upon us with sheathet
splendor like that with which he ap
peared when he said to the mother
: bashful about presenting their children
fSuffer them to come, "and to the poo
wait of the street, Neither do ! con
denim thee, and to the eyes of tn
blind beggar of the wayside, - Be open
ed" think my brother John, the re
turned foreign missionary, dying sum
mer before last at Bound Brook, caugh
a glimpse of that face of Christ whei
in his dying hour my brother said, .
, shall be satisfied when | awake in hi
likeness. " And now unto him tina
loved us and washed us from our sin
in his own blood and hath made us king
and priests unto God and bis Father, t.
him be glory and dominion for ever ant
ever. Amen and amen! Amen ant
! amenl