"REV. DR. TALMAGE. THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN- DAY SERMON. Subject: “The Human Face.” Text: “A man's wisdom maketh his face fo shine, and tha boldness of his face shall be changed,” or as it may be rendered, *‘the gsourness of his face shall be sweetened,’ Ecclesiastes viii, 1. * Thus a little change in our English trans- lation brings out the better meaning of the text, which sets forth that the character of | the face is decided by the character of the soul. The main features of our countenance were decided by the Almighty, and we can- | not change them, but under God we decide | whether we shall have countenances be- nignant or baleful, sour or sweet, wrathful or genial, benevolent or mean, honest or | scoundrelly, impudent or modest, courage- ous or cowardly, frank or sneaking. 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 the hair line of the forehead to the bottom of the chin and the broadest face 1s less than eight inches from cheek bone to cheek bone, yet in that small compass God has wrought such differences that the 1,600, 000,000 of the human race may be dis- tinguished from each other by their facial | appearance. The face is ordinarily the index of charac ter. 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. And | while the Lord decides before our birth whether we shall be handsome or homely, we are by the character we form deciding whether our countenance shall be pleasant or disagreeable. This is so much so that some of the most beautiful faces are unattrac- | tive because of their arrogance or their de- | ecoitfulness, and some of the most rugged | and irregular features are attractive because | of the kindness that shines through them. Accident or sickness or scarifleation may veil the face so that it shall not express the soul, but in the majority of cases give mea deliberate look at a man's countenance | and I will tell you whether he is a eynie or an optimist, whether he | 48 a miser or a philanthropist, whether he is | noble or ignominious, whether he is good or | P bad. Our first impression of a man or woman is generally the accurate impression. You at the first glance make up your mind that some man is unworthy of your friend. ship, but afterward, by circumstances being put into intimate association with him, you come to like him and trast him. Yet stay with him long enough, and you will be com- lled to return to your original estimate of is character, but it will be after he has oheated you out of everything he could lay his hands on. It 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 iz: the fanciful and necromaantic there is no dount 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 some- | times mislead us we can generally, after looking into the eye and noticing the curve of the lip and the spread of the nostril, and the correlation of all the features, come toa right estimate of a man's character, fit] were not so, how would we know whom to trust and whom to avoid? Whether we will or not, physiognomy decides a thousand things in commercial and financial and so- cial and religious domains. From one lid of the Bible to the other there is no science | #0 recognized as that of physiognomy, and | nothing more thoroughly taken for granted thao the Ln of the soul to transfigure the face. Bible of the “face of Gud,” the “face of Jesus Christ” the ‘face of Esau" the “ince of Israel.” the “lace of Job," the “fuce of the old man.” the shining ‘ince of Moses ™ the wrathful “face of Pharaoh,” the ashes | on the face of humiliation, the resurrection- | ary staff on the face of the dead child, the hypocrites disfiguring their face, and in my text the Bible declares, “A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the sourness of his face shall be sweetened.” If the Bible | has so much to say about physiognomy, we | do not wonder that the world has made it a | study from the early ages. In vain the Eng- lish Parliament in the time of George IL ordered publicly whipped and imprisoned those who studied physiognomy. Intelligent | people always have studied it and always will study it. The pens of Moses and Joshua | and Job and John and Paul as well as of | Homer and Hippocrates and Galen and Aristotle and Socrates and Plato and Lavater | have been dipped Into it, and whole libraries of wheat and chaff have been garnered on this theme, Now, what practical religious and eternal use would I make of this subject? I am go- ing to show that while we are not responsi ble for our features, the Lord Almighty hav- | ing decided what they xaall be prenatally, as the psalmist declares when he writes, “In thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fnshioned when as vet there was none of them," yet the character which under God we form will | chisel the face most m ghtily, Every man | would like to have been made in appearance an Alcibiades, and every woman would like | to have been made a Josephine, We all want | to be agreeable. Oar usefulness depends so much upoa it that I consider it important | and Christian for every man and woman to be as agreeabls as possible, The slouch, the sioven, the tian who does not care how he looks, all such people lack equipment for usafulness, A minister who has to throw a | quid of tobacco out of his mouth before he | begins to preach or Christians with beard un- trimmed, making them to look like wild | beasts come out of the lair—yea, unkempt, | uncombed, unwashed, disagreeable men or | women--are a hindrance to religion more thau a racommendation, Now, my text suggests how we may, inde- pendent of features, make ourselves agree | able, ‘A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the sourness of his (ase shall be sweetened.” What I say may come too late for many. Their countenance may by long ears of hardness have been frozen into stol- dity, or by long years of erusl behavior they may have Herodized all the machinery of ex. pression, or by long years of avarice they may have been Bhylocked until their face is as hard as the precious metal they are hoard. ing, but I am in time to help multitudes if the Lord will. That it is possible to over come disadvantages of physiognomy was In this country mightily ils rated by one whose life recently closed after having served in the Presedential cabinet at Washington, By accident of fire in ohildhood his face had been more piteously searred than any human visage that I ever saw. By hard study he arose from being a Juat hoy 16 ths vary height of the legal pro- , and when an Att General for the United States was needed he entorad the Presidential cabinet, What a triumph over destroyed human countenance ! I do not wonder that when an opposing at- torney in a Philadelphia court-room erusily roferrd to this disfigurement Bea. lod In these words When I was a babe, I was a besutiful blue child, [know this becnuse my dear mother told me so, but I was one du playing with my sister when ber olothas took fire, and I ran to her relief and saved her, but In doing so my clothes took fire, and the fire was not put out until my face was as black as the of the scoundrel who has st now referred to my d rement,” erolsm conquering physical Helos ! That scholarly regular features are not neo. { on the down grade, | of good womanhood, | upon a man's countenance, | heaven impersonated, | sannas in human flesh, { It | Divine Seuiptor. | heart | man { with him | in the revengeful with pale and siek face In invalids chair while he thrilled the American congress with his eloquence, and thousands of invalid preachers and Sabbath-school teachers and Christinn workers, Aye, the most glorious being the world ever saw was foreseen by Isaiah, who deseribed His face bruised and gashed and searified and sald of Him, “His visage was so marred, more than any man," S80 you see that the loveliest face in the unl- | verse was a soarred face, And now I am going to tell you of some of { nnd the smoothed hair that the chisels that work for the disfiguration or | irradiation ofthe human countenance, One of the sharpest and most destructive of those | chisels of the countenance 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 nostril as with a malodor, What { David said in haste they say in their deliber- ation. “All men are lars,” everything is go- ing to ruin, are going to be, Society 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 They are opposed to the adminis | for men, tration, municipal and 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, Even Solomon, one of the wisest and atone time one of the worst of men, falls into the pessimistic mood and cries out in the twenty-first chapter of Pro- verbs, “Who oan find a virtuous woman?" If he had behaved himself better and kept in | good associations, he would not have written that interrogation point implying the scarcity Cynicism, if a habit, as it is with tens of thousands of people, writes itself all over the features ; hence so which he so well {llustrated when he sald, “Some of our generals complain that I im- pair discipline and subordination in the army by my pardons and respites, but it makes me rested after a hard day's work If [ ean find some good excuse for saving a man's fe, and I go to bed happler as I think how Joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family,” Kindness! It makes the face shine while life lasts and after death puts 4 summer sunset between the still lips makes me say sometimes at obsequies, ‘‘Bhe seems too beautiful to bury." But here comes another chisel, and its name is hypoerisy. Christ, with one terrific | stroke in His sermon on the mount described | this charroter, “When yo fast, be not as the | possession of the soul, All men and women are bad or | and the church are | hypoerites, of a sad countenance, for they disfigure thelr faces that they may appear unto men to fast,” Hypocrisy having taken it immediately ap- pears in the countenance, Hypocrites are always solemn, They carry several country graveyards in their faces, They are tearful when there is nothing to ery about, and in their peayues they catch for their breath and have such general dolefulness that they dis- gust young people with religion. We had one ofthem in one of my churches, When he ex- orted, he always deplored the low state of religion in other people, and when he prayed | it was an attack of hysteria, and he went into | demand resuscitation. | way until we had to expel him from the | how showing it in his face, many sour visages all up and down the | | street, all up and down the church and the | world, worse is to say it is worse, and foreboding opinion of everything take possession of you for twenty years, and you will be a sight to behold, It is the chastise. ment of God that when a man allows his heart to be cursed with cynicism his face be- comes gloomed and scowlad and lachrymosed | and blasted with the sams midnight, But let Christian cheerfulness try its chisel Feeling that all things are for his good, and that God rules, and that the Bible being true the world's i floralization is rapidly approaching, and the day when beer mug and demijohn and distil- lery and bombshell and rifle pit seventy-four sounders and roulette tables and corrupt book and satanic printing press will quit work, the brightness that comes from a paroxysm of obs and ahs that seemed to He went on in that church for stealing the property intrusted to him as administrator and for other vices that I will not mention, and he wrote me saveral letters not at all complimentary from the West, saying that he was dally praying for my everlasting destruction. A man can- not have hypocrisy in his heart without some- All intelligent people who witness it know it is nothing but | & dramatization, One good way to make the world | Let a depressed | Oh, the power of the human face! I war- rant that you have known faces so maguetic and impressive that, though they vanished long ago, they still hold you with a holy spell, How long sinee your child went? “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's | face still have tender supremacy over your entire nature? During does it not look at you? many san eventide What a sanctifying, | hallowing influence it hes been in your isl have | | days, such anticipation not only gives zest to his work, but shines in his eyes and glows in his entire countenance, look for in an audience are sections of millennial glory. They are They are the sculp- turing of God's right hand. They are ho- They are hallelulahs alighted. They are Christ reincarnated. I do not ears what your features are or whether | you look like your father or your mother or } look like no one under the heavens, to God and man you are beautiful, Michael Angelo, the sculptor, visiting Florence, some one showed him in a back yard a piece of marble that was so shapeless that it seemed of no use, and Angelo was asked {f he could make anything out of it, and if so was told he could ownit The artist took the marble, and for nine months shut himself up to work, first trying to make of it a statue of David with his foot on Go- liath, but the marble was not quite long | ride, Those are the facts I Those countenanons | | 8 father's enough at the hase to make the prostrate | | form of the giant, and so the artist fashionad the marble into another figure that is so Ia- mous for all time because ness, A critic came in and was asked by Angelo for his criticism, and he sald it was beautiful, but the nose of the statute was not of right shape. Angelo picked up from the floor some sand and tossed about the ing he was improvement “What do you {aoe using his chisel to make the suggested by the eritie, think of it now?" said the artist, “Wonderfully improved,” said the eritie. “Well,” said the artist, “I have not changed it at all.” My friends, the grace of God comes to the heart of a man or woman and then attempts to change a forbidding and prejudicial face into attractiveness. Per. haps the face is most unpromising for the But having changed the it begins to work on the countenance with celestial okisel and into all the laea- ments of the face puts a gladness and an ex- pectation that changes it from glory to glory, and though earthly eriticism may disapprove of this or that in the appearance Christ says of the newly created countenance that which Pilate said of Him, “Behold the Here is another countenance, and you may call it revenge or hate or malevolence, taken possession of the heart, it sncamps seven devils under the eyebrows, It puts cruelty into the compression of the fips. You ean tell from the man’s looks that he is pursuing some one and trylag to get even There are suggestions of Nero and Robespierre and Diocletian and thumb- sorews and racks all up and down the feat- ures, Infernal artists with murderses’ dag- gers have been cutting away at that visage of its expressive | | mother's f the statue pretend. | You can say in the words of the poet, ‘Bet. ter to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all Or it may bave been a» sister's face, Perhaps she was the invalid of the family. Perhaps she never want out except on very clear and then she Baa to be carried down the stairs to the plasza or for a short but she was 80 patient and cheerful under it all, As that face looks at you through the years with what an elevated and heavenly emotion you are filled. Or was it face? The storms of life had somewhat roughenad it. A good deal of the brightness of the eye had been quenched, and the ear was turned with the haad behind i in order to hear at all, But you remember that face so vividly that if you were an artist you could put it on canvas, and It woukl mean to you more than any face that Rembrandt ever sketched, That face, though long ago velled from human sight, fa as plain in your memory as though you this moment saw it moving gently forward and backward in the rocking chair by the stove in the old farmhouse, Or was it your mother's face? A good mothers face is never homely to her boys and girls. Itis a “Ma- donna” in the ploture gallery of the memory. What a sympathetic face it was! Did you ever have a joy and that face did not respond tot Did you ever have a grisf and no tears trickle down that maternal cheek? Did you had thing and a shadow did not Oh, 1t was a sweet face! The spoe- round glasses through you, how sacredly they bureau or closet! Your your mother's smile, your mother s What an overpowering memory | Though you have come on to mid- lis or old age, how you would like just ones more to bury your face in her lap snd havea : ever do a ross it? tacles with large, which she Jookead at have beans kept in tow tears | »d ory ! But I can tell you of a more sympathetic and more tender and more loving face than any of the faces | have mentioned, “No, you cannot,” says some one, I oan, and 1 will it is the face of Jesus Christ as Je was on earth and is now in heaven, When prepar- ing my life of Christ, entitled “From Man- ger to Throne,” | masacked the art galier- | fas and portfolios of the world to find a ple- f the face | ture of our Baviour’s face that might be most expressive, and [ saw it as Francesco Francia painted it in the sixteenth century, and as the emerald intaglio of the sixth century presented it, and as a fresco in the ostacombs near Rome preserved it, and as Leonardo da | Vinel showed it in “The Last Sapper,” and I mightly ohisel for the | This aplrit baving | | for the most looked in the Louvre, and the Luxembourg, and the Vatican, and the Dresden, and the Berlin, and Neapolitan and London galleries inspiring face of Christ, and many of the pressntations were wonderful for pathos and majesty and power and exe. eution, but although I selected that by Ary Scheffer as in some respects the most expres. sive 1 felt as we all feel