itted to that
art; but since the sun did not become a portrait painter until
eighteen centuries after Christ, our idea about the Saviour's personal
appearance is all guess work. Still, tradition tells us that He was
the most infinitely beautiful being that ever walked our small earth.
If His features had been rugged, and His gait had been ungainly, that
would not have hindered Him from being attractive. Many men you have
known and loved have had few charms of physiognomy. Wilberforce was
not attractive in face. Socrates was repulsive. Suwarrow, the great
Russian hero, looked almost an imbecile. And some whom you have known,
and honored, and loved, have not had very great attractiveness of
personal appearance. The shape of the mouth, and the nose, and the
eyebrow, did not hinder the soul from shining through the cuticle of
the face in all-powerful irradiation.

But to a lovely exterior Christ joined all loveliness of disposition.
Run through the galleries of heaven, and find out that He is _a
non-such_. The sunshine of His love mingling with the shadows of His
sorrows, crossed by the crystalline stream of His tears and the
crimson flowing forth of His blood, make a picture worthy of being
called the masterpiece of the eternities. Hung on the wall of heaven,
the celestial population would be enchanted but for the fact that they
have the grand and magnificent original, and they want no picture. But
Christ having gone away from earth, we are dependent upon four
indistinct pictures. Matthew took one, Mark another, Luke another,
and John another. I care not which picture you take, it is lovely.
Lovely? He was altogether lovely.

He had a way of taking up a dropsical limb without hurting it, and of
removing the cataract from the eye without the knife, and of starting
the circulation through the shrunken arteries without the shock of the
electric battery, and of putting intelligence into the dull stare of
lunacy, and of restringing the auditory nerve of the deaf ear, and of
striking articulation into the stiff tongue, and of making the
stark-naked madman dress himself and exchange tombstone for ottoman,
and of unlocking from the skeleton grip of death the daughter of
Jairus to embosom her in her glad father's arms. Oh, He was
lovely--sitting, standing, kneeling, lying down--always lovely.

Lovely in His sacrifice. Why, He gave up everything for us. Home,
celestial companionship, music of seraphic harps, balmy breath of
eter