The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-01-12
 2 DIR. TALMAGF'S SERMON  REv D. D.

Los Angeles. January 5.-What we think we are, what we really are and what we most desire to be is the theme of this practical sermon, the preacher taking for his text James i,29: He is like unto a man beholding his natural lace in a mirror" (R. V)
 It is strange fact that most people know little of their physical appear ance. The shrewd Scottish poets de- sire is familiar to us ali:
 Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
 To see ourselves as ithers see us.
 But the "giftie" he invoked never gave the power. No man ever sees him. self as he is seen either by his friends or by his enemies. When looking at ourselves we nearly always havo blurred spectacles. Sir Anthony Van dyke. like other great portait painters, used his own face for a model, but it Is very likely the picture was not true 10 life. Queen Elizabeth bade the court artist omit the shadows from his pie ture of her face, the Shadows being wrinkles that a straw might have been
 
 Cromwell, who told the artist to paint him as hezwas and not leave out the warts. Nest of us want to look better than we are, and we often deceive even ourselves.
 I once heard great speaker give a humorous description of how he first saw himself as others saw him. Like most of us, up to that time he never knew how he looked but one day friend took him to visit ''the Hall of Thousand Mirrors" When he went into this palace he found the floors, the ceilings, the walls, all composed of looking glasses. In these thousand mirrors he saw his own face and body reflected in thousand different places. He saw every motion and gesture re- peated from every angle and learned how he appeared full face and side wise. and he was unpleasantly aston ished. "Whatw he soliloquized. "Dd l look like those people? Dc I act like those people? Well, one fact is certain other people may like rne but could never learn to like myself" The cas- fest place in all the world for an aver age man to kill his egotism and van fty would be for him occasionally to visit a "hai of a thousand mirrors" where he can see himself as others see him.
 The nSufe or my text implies that we are as unconscious of our faults of character as we are of our physical de- fects. As the man vain of his outward appea rance is reproved by his mirror, so the man proud of his character is reprovcd when he looks into Gods word But he, like the other is prone to forget the revelation and goeth his way, forgetting what manner of man he is. This is unfortunate, because we might remedy the defects of our character if we studied them and sought Gods help.
 The Defects of Character.
 There are other mirrors that help us to get true estimate of ourselves, and I want to point out this morning how we may use them for our self inn provement. In the first place, I want you to carefully examine the reflec- tions we may see in the looking glasses held before our faces by the loving hands of our best and tenderest and dearest friends. It is not by any means a pleasant mirror to look at. Somehow many of us are deceived by the idea that friends above all man. kind should think that our faces are perfect faces and our natures perfect natures, but that is unreasonable. The true friend by intimate association many find virtues in us hidden from the