Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1894 — “THE HUMAN FACE” [ARTICLE]

“THE HUMAN FACE”

The: Tell-Tale Izfdex of the Soul. A Discourse Upon the Varied Physloffo- , mien Produced by Varied Thonghts and Actions—Dr. Talmago’s Sermon. » ■ The Brooklyn Tabernacle was crowded, 'Sunday, to hear Dr. Talmage discourse upon “The Human Face.” Text: Ecclesiastes viii, 1— “A man’s wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the his face shall be changed.” He said: In all the works of God there is nothing more wonderful than the human countenance. Though the longest face is less than twelve inches from c.he hair line of the forehead to the bottom of the chin, the broadest face is less than eight inches from cheek bone to cheek bone, yet in that small compass God hath wrought such differences that the 1,600,000,000 of the human race may be distinguished from each other by their facial appearances. The face is ordinarily the index of character. It is the throne of the emotions. It is the battlefield of the passions. It is the catalogue of character. It is the map of the mind. It is the geography of the soul. You at the first oShce make up your mind that some man is unworthy of your friendship, but afterward by circumstances being put into intimate association with him you come to like him and trust him. Yet. stay with him long enough and you will be compelled ~to return to your original estimate of his character, but it will be after he has cheated you out of everything he could lay his hands on. It l is of God’s mercy that we have these outside indexes of character. Phrenology is one index, and while it may be carried to an absurd extent there is no doubt that you can judge somewhat of a man’s character by the shape of his head. Palmistry is another index, and while it may be carried into the fanciful and necromantic, there is doubt that certain lines in the palm of the hand are indicative of mental and moral traits.

Physiognomy is another index, and while the contour of the human face may sometimes mislead us we can generally, after looking into the eye and noticing the curve of the lip, and tho spread of the nostril, and the correlation of all the features, come to a right estimate of a man’s character. If it were not so, how would we know whom to trust and whom to avoid? Whether we will or not, ohysignomy decides a thousand things in commercial and financial and social and religious domains, Prom one lid of the Bible to the other there is no science so recognized as that of physiognomy, and nothing more thoroughly taken for granted than the power of the soul to transfigure the face. I do not wonder that when an opposing attorney in a Philadelphia court room cruelly referred to this personal disfigurement Bcjamin F. Brewster replied in these words: “When I was a babe I was a beautiful blue eyed child. I know this because my dead mother told me so. But I was one day playing with my sister when her clothes took fire and I ran to her relief and saved her, but in so doing my clothes took fire and the fire was not put out until my face was as black as the heart of the scoundrel who has just now referred to my disfigurement.” Heroism conquering physical disabilities! That scholarly, regular features are not necessary for making powerful impression witness Paul, who photographs himself as in “bodily presence .weak;” and George Whitefield, whose eyes were struck with strabismus; and Alexander H. Stephens, who sat pale and sick in an invalid’s chair while he thrilled the American Congress with his eloquence, and the thousands of invalid preachers and Sabbath school teachers and Christian workers. Ave, the most glorious being the world ever saw was foreseen by Isaiah, who described his f ace as gashed and scarified, and said of him, “His visage was so marred more than any man.” So you see that the loveliest face in the universe was a scarred face.

And now I am*going to tell you of some of the chisels that work for the disfiguration or irradiation of the human countenance. One of the sharpest and most destructive of those chisels of the co'untenace is cynicism. That sours the disposition and then sours the face. It gives a contemptuous curl to the lip. It draws down the corners of the mouth and inflates the nostrils as with a malodor. What David said in haste they say in delibration, “All men are liars." Everything is going to rum. All men and women are bad or are going to be. Society and the church are on the down grade. Tell them of an act of benevolence and they say he gave that to advertise himself. They do not like the present fashion of hats for women or of coats for men. They are opposed to the administration, municipal, State and national. Somehow, food does not taste as it used to, and they wonder why there are no poets or orators or preachers as when they were boys. But let Christian cheerfulness try its chisel upon a man’s countenance. Feeling that all things are for. his good,, and that God rules, and th|at the bible being true the world’s floralization is rapidly approaching, and the day when beer mug and demijohn and distillery and bombshell and rifle pit and seventy-four poundera and tables and corrupt

book and satanic printing press will have quit work, the brightness that comes from such anticipation not only gives zest to the work, but shines in his eyes and glows in bis cheek and kindles a morning in his' entire countenance. Those are the faces I look for in the audience. Those countenances are sections ol millennial glory. They are heaven impersonated. They are the sculpturing of God’s right hand. They are hosannas in human flesh. They are hallelujahs alighted. They are Christ incarnated.

Here is another mighty chisel for the countenance, and you may call it revenge or hate or malevolence. This spirit having taken possession of the heart, it encamps seven devils under the eyebrows. It puts cruelty into the compression of the lips. You can tell from the man’s ldoks that he is some one and trying to get even with him. There are suggestions of Nero and Robespierre and Diocletian and thumbscrews and racks all up and down the features. Infernal artists, with murderers’ daggers, have been cutting away at that visage. The revengeful heart has built its perdition in the revengeful countenance. Disfiguration of diabolic passion! But here comes another chisel to shape the countenace, and it is kindness. There came a moving day and into her soul moved the whole family of Christian graces, with all the command has come forth from the heavpns that that woman’s face shall be made to correspond with her superb soul. Her entire face from ear to ear becomes the canvas upon which all the best artists of heaven beein to put their finest strokes, and on the small compass of that face are put pictures of sunrise over the sea, and angels of mercy going up and down ladders all aflash, and mountains of transfiguration and noonday in heaven. Kindness! It is the most magnificent sculptor that ever touched human countenance. All kindness comes back to us in one way or another; if not in any other wav, then in your own face. Kindness! Show it ta. others, for the time may come when you will need it yourself. People laughed at the lion that spared the mouse that ran over him, when in one motion of his paw the monster could have crushed the insignificant disturber. But it was well that the lion had mercy on the mouse, for one day the lion was caught in a trap and roared fearfully because he was held fast by ropes. Then the mouse gnawed the ropes in two and let the lion go free. You may consider yourself a lion, but you cannot afford to despise a mouse. When Abraham Lincoln pardoned a young soldier at the request of his mother, the mother went down the stairs of the White House, saying: “They have lied about the President being homely. He is the handsomest man I ever saw.” All over that President’s rugged face was written the kindness which he so well illustrated.

No man ever indulged a gracious feeling, or was moved by a righteous indignation, or was stirred by a benevolent impulse, but its effect was more or less indicated in the countenance, while David noticed the physiognomic effect of a bad disposition when he said: “A wicked mad hardeneth his face,” and Jeremiah must have noticed it when he said of the cruel, “They have made their faces harder than a rock.” Oh, the power of the human face! 1 I warrant that you have known faces so magnetic and impressive that, though they vanished long ago, they still hold you with a holy spell. “Well,” you say; “if she had lived she would have been ten years old now, or twenty, or. .thirty years.” But does not that infant face still have tender supremacy over your entire nature? During many an eventide does it not look at you? In your dreams do you not see it? What a sanctifying, hallowing influence it has been in your life! You can say in the words of the poet, “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Or was it vour mother’s face? A good mother's face is never homely to her boys and girls. It is a Madonna in the picture gallery of the memory. What a sympathetic face it was. Did you ever have a joy, and that face did not respond to it? Did you ever have a grief, and no tears trickled down that maternal check? Did you ever do a bad thing, and a 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 mother’s face, your mother's smile, your mother’s tears! What an overpowering memory! Though you have come on to midlife or old age, how you would like just once more,, to bury your face in her lap and have a good cry! But I can tell you of a more sympathetic, and more tender, and more loving'face than any of the faces I have mentioned. “No, you can not;" says some one. I can, and I will. It is the face of Jesus Christ as he was on earth and is now in heaven. What a gentle face it must have been to induce the babes to struggle out of their mothers’ arms into His arms! What an expressive face it must have been when one reproving look of it threw stalwart Peter into a fit of tears! What a pleading faoe it must have been to lead the Psalmists in prayer to say of it, “Look upon the face of thine annotated!" What a sympathetic face it must have been to encourage the stale woman who was beyond any help from the doctors to touch the hem of his garment!