Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1894-03-02

rocking chair by the stove in
your mothers face? A good
mothers face is never home
ly to her boys and girls 1t is n Ma
donna in the picture gallery of the
memory. What a sympathetic face it
was! Did you ever have JOY and that
face did not respond to it? Did you
ever have grief and no tears tri skled
down that maternal cheek? Did you
ever do bad thing and shadow did
not cross it? Oh, it was a sweet face!
The spectacles, with large, round
glasses through which she looked at
you, how sacredly they have been
kept in bureau or closet! Your moth
er's face, your mothers Sun les,
your mothers tears! What an
overpowering memory Though
you have come on TO mid-life or old
age, how you would like just once
more to bury your face in her lap and
have a good cry.
But l can tell you OF a more sympa-
thetic. and more tender, and more
loving face than any of the faces
have mentioned. mo, you can not, +"
says some one. / can, and | 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" l ran
sacked the art galleries and port
folios of the world to find picture of
our Savior'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 catacombs pear Rome
preserved it, and as Leonardo Da VinCi
showed it in The Last supper"
and / looked in the Louvre, and
the Luxembourg. and the Vatican,
and the Dresden, and the Berlin, and
Neapolitan, and London galleries for
the most inspiring face of Christ, and
many of the presentations were won
derful for pathos and majesty, and
power, and execution; but although
selected that by AIRY Scheffer as in some
respects the most expressive, ! felt as we
all feel, that oar 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
a gentle face it must have been to in
duce the babes to struggle out of
their mothers arms into his armsl
What an expressive face it
must have been when one re.
proving look of it threw stalwart
Peter into fit of tears! What a
pleading face it must have been to
lead the Psalmist in prayer to say of
it, Look upon the face of Thine An
ointed." What a 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
garment! What suffering face il
must have been when suspended on
the perpendicular and horizontal
pieces of the wood OF martyrdom and
his antagonists slapped the pillid
cheek with their rough hands, and be-
fouled it with the saliva of their bias
phemous lips! What tremendous
face it must have been to lead Saint
John 10 describe it in the coming judg-
ment as scattering the universe WIN
he says, FROM whose face the earth
and the heaven fled away"
Oh Christi Once the Nazarene, but
now the celestial! Once of cross. but
now of throne! Once crowned with
singing bramble, but now coronetcd
with the jewels of ransomed empires
Turn on us thy pardoning face and
forgive us; thy sympathetic face and
console us; thy suffering face and have
thy atonement avail for us; thy omnipo
tent face and rescue us. Oh, what a
facet So Scared. SO lacerated, so re-
splendent, SO overwhelmingly glorious
that the seraphim put wing to wing,
and with their conjoined pinions keep
off some OF the luster that is too
mighty even for eyes cherubic or ARCH
angelic; and yet this morning turn
ing upon us with sheathed splendor
like that with which he appeared
when he said to the mothers bashful
about presenting their children, ''Suf-
fer them TO Gomez" and to the poor
wait of the street Neither do ] con-
denim thee;" and to the eyes of the
blind beggar of the wayside, "Be
opened" / think my brother John.
the returned foreign missionary, dying
summer before last at BouLd Brook.
caught glimpse of that face of Christ
when in his dying hour my brother
said. II shall be satisfied when awake
in his likeness" And now unto him
that loved us, and washed us from our
sins in his own blood. and hath made
us kings and priests unto God and his
Father. to him be glory and dominion,
forever and ever, Amen and Amen!