The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1894-04-23
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
TALMAGE breaches OF THE
CHARACTER OF JESUS.
The Subject of the Sermon Being
"Fairest of the Fair" From the Text:
solomon's Song, v 16-COnceptiOn OF
Ch-ist's Looks.


Ch-ist's Looks.
Last Sundays Sermon at the Tabernacle,
Brooklyn-l
The human race has during centu-
r1es been improving. For while It
detected and degenerated, and from
all 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 IS 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,
! 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 to 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 text cele brates.
thousands of years before he put his
infantile foot on the hill back of
Bethlehem He was, and is, alto
Rether lovely. The physical appear
ance of Christ is, for the most part. an
artistic guess. Some writer's declare
him to have been a brunette or dark
comp1exioned, and others a blonde or
hight complexioned- St John, of
Damascus, writing l, 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 vel
low complexion, and long fingers like
his mother" An author writing l 800
years ago represents Christ as blonde:
His hair the color of wine and golden
at the root; straight and without
1uster; 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
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 it was Jewish face.
His mother was a Jewess, and there is
no womanhood on earth more beauti-
full 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 1 know that sculp-
ture and painting were born long be-
fore Christ, and they might have trans
ferred from o1den 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 chiseE,
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 a 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 and 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
tury. or until more than fourteen hun
slred 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 a repulsive face, and
the other an effeminate face Raphaers
face of Christ is weak face. Albert
Durer's face Of Christ was a savage
face. Titian's face of Christ is an ex-
pressionless face. The mightiest artists,
either with pencil or chise1, 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 con-
troversy. 1 am sure it was soulful
face. The face is only thecurtain of the
soul Tt was impossible that DISPOSE
ton like Christ's should not have de-
monstrated itself in his physiognomy.
Kindness as an occasional impulse may
give no illumination to the features
1-,% LII he 7ffa1rT1rr M