The Hazel Green herald. [volume] (Hazel Green, Wolfe County, Ky.) 1885-19??, 1894-06-07
FAIRESI OF THE FAIR.
Jesus Christ Was and Is, Altogether
Lovely.
altogether His Appearance Is an Artistic
Guess-Dr. Talmage Draws some
beautiful Lessons From the
saviour's Attractiveness.

T., 10: He is altogether lovely"
The human race has, during centur.
les, been improving For a while it
DETECTED and degenerated, and from
Ill | can read, for ages the whole
tendency was toward barbarism. But
under the overwhelming and deepening
influence of Christianity the tendency
Is now in the upward direction. The
physical appearance of the human race
Is seventy-five per cent more attrac-
five than in the sixteenth, seventeenth
or eighteenth centuries. From the
pictures on canvas and the faces and
forms in sculpture of those who were
considered the grand looking men and
the attractive women of two hundred
years ago, ! conclude the superiority
OF the men and women of our time.
Such looking people of the past CEN
turies as painting and sculpture have
presented as fine specimens of beauty
and dignity, would be in our time con-
sidered deformity and responsiveness
complete. The fact that many men
and women in antediluvian times were
eight and ten feet high tended to
make the human race obnoxious rather
than winning. Such portable noun
tains of human flesh did not add to
the charms of the world.
But in no climate and in no age did
there ever appear any one who in phys
ical attractiveness could be compared
TO Him whom my text ccle brates, 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
writers declare Him to have been bru-
nette or dark compleXioned, and others
. blonde or light compleXioned. St
John, of Damascus, writing eleven
hundred years ago, and SO much
nearer than ourselves to the time of
Christ, and hence with more likeli-
hood of accurate tradition, represents
him with beard black and curly, eye
brows joined together, and yellow
complexion and long fingers like his
mother" An author writing 1900
years ago represent Christ as blonde:
''His hair the color of wine and golden
ut the root; straight and without lus-
TER but from the level of the ears curl
ing and glossy, and divided down the
senter after the fashion of the Nazar-
enes. His forehead is even and smooth,
His face without blemish, and en-
HANGED by a tempered bloom; his coun-
tenance 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"
Ny opinion is it was a Jewish face.
His mother was a Jewess, and there is
no womanhood on earth more 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 feat
ureS know that sculpture and paint
ing were born long before Christ, and |
they might have transferred from olden |
tmes to our times the forehead the |
nostril, the eye, the lips of our Lord. |
Phidas, the sculptor, put down his CHS |
el of enchantment five hundred 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
did not some one take it up and give |
us ut least the eye of the Lord-tne eye |
that sovereign of the face? Diony-
sius the literary artist, who saw at He'll |
opolis, Egypt, the strange darkening |
Of the heavens at the time of Christs
erucifxion near Jerusalem, and, not |
knowing what it was, but describing it |
as peculiar eclipse of the sun, and
saving Either the Deity suffers or
svInpathizes 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 perpetuating the form and appear
ance of the worlds favorites only, and
not the form and appearance of the
pcasantry, among whom Christ APP
peared.
II was not until the fifteenth CEN
4ury. or until more than fourteen hun
dred years after Christ, that tai
euted painters attempted by pencil to
give us the idea of Christ's face. The
pictures before that time were so often
eiyc that the council at Constantinople
forbade their exhibition. But Leon
ardo Da Vinci in the fifteenth century,
presented Christ's face on two canvases,
yet the one was repulsive face and
the other an effeminate face. Raphael's
face ofChrist is weak face. Albert Ours
face of Christ was a savage face. Titians'
face of Christ is an expressionless face
The mightest artists either with PEN
Gil 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
something positive and beyond contro-
xersv. Il am sure il was n soulful face.