244. The Human Face

The Human Face

Ecc_8:1 : ’93A man’92s wisdom maketh his face to shine and the sourness of his face shall be sweetened.’94

Thus a little change in our English translation 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 cannot change them; but under God we decide whether we shall have countenances benignant or baleful, sour or sweet, wrathful or genial, benevolent or mean, honest or scoundrelly, impudent or modest, courageous 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 hair line of the forehead to the bottom of the chin, and 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 sixteen hundred million 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. 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 countenances shall be pleasant or disagreeable. This is so much so that some of the most beautiful faces are unattractive, because of their arrogance or their deceitfulness, and some of the most rugged and irregular features are attractive because of the kindness that shines through them. Accident, or sickness, or scarification may veil the face so that it shall not express the soul, but in the majority of cases give me a deliberate look at a man’92s countenance and I will tell you whether he is a cynic or an optimist, whether he is a miser or a philanthropist, whether he is noble or dastardly, whether he is good or bad.

Our first impression of a man or a woman is generally the accurate impression. You at the first glance 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 generally 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 is of God’92s mercy that we have these outside indices 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’92s character by the shape of his head. Palmistry is another index, and while it may be carried into the fanciful and necromantic, there is no 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 the spread of the nostril, and the correllation of all the features, come to a right estimate of a man’92s character. If it 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 social and religious domains. From one lid of the Bible to the other, there is no science so recognized as that of physiognomy, and nothing more thoroughly taken tor granted than the power of the soul to transfigure the face. The Bible speaks of the ’93face of God,’94 the ’93face of Jesus Christ,’94 the ’93face of Esau,’94 the ’93face of Israel,’94 the ’93face of Job,’94 the ’93face of the old man,’94 the shining ’93face of Moses,’94 the wrathful ’93face of Pharaoh,’94 the ashes on the face of humiliation, the resurrectionary staff on the face of the dead child, the hypocrites disfiguring their face, and in my text the Bible declares, ’93A man’92s wisdom maketh his face to shine and the sourness of his face shall be sweetened.’94 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 English Parliament in the time of George II. 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 discoursed upon 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 going to show that while we are not responsible for our features, the Lord Almighty having decided what they shall be pre-natally’97as the Psalmist declares when he writes: ’93In thy book all my members were written which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them’94’97yet the character which under God we form, will chisel the face most mightily. Every man would like to have been made in appearance an Alcibiades, and every woman would like to have been made in appearance a Cleopatra. We all want to be agreeable. Our usefulness depends so much upon it that I consider it important for every man and woman to be as agreeable as possible. The slouch, the sloven, the man who does not care how he looks, all such people lack equipment for usefulness. My text suggests how we may, independently of features, make ourselves agreeable: ’93A man’92s wisdom maketh his face to shine and the sourness of his face shall be sweetened.’94 What I say may come too late for many. Their countenance may by long years of hardness have been frozen into stolidity; or by long years of cruel behavior they may have Herodized all the muscles of expression; or by long years of avarice they may have been Shylocked until their face is as hard as the precious metal they are hoarding; but I am in time to help multitudes, if the Lord will.

That it is possible to overcome disadvantages of physiognomy was in this country mightily illustrated by one whose life closed several years ago, after having served in the Presidential Cabinet at Washington. By accident of fire in childhood his face had been more piteously scarred than any human visage I ever saw. By hard study he rose from being a poor boy to the very height of the legal profession, and when an Attorney-General for the United States was needed, he entered the Presidential Cabinet. What a triumph over disfigured human countenance! I do not wonder that when an opposing attorney in a Philadelphia courtroom cruelly referred to this personal disfigurement, Benjamin F. Brewster replied in these words: ’93When I was a babe I was a beautiful blue-eyed child. I know this because my dear 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 doing so 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.’94 Heroism conquering physical disabilities! That scholarly, regular features are not necessary for making powerful impression, witness Paul, whose enemies photographed him as in ’93bodily presence weak;’94 and George Whitefield, whose eyes were struck with strabismus; and Alexander H. Stephens, who sat with pale and sick face in invalid’92s chair while he thrilled the American Congress with his eloquence; and thousands of invalid preachers, and Sabbath-school teachers, and Christian workers. Aye, the most glorious Being the world ever saw was foreseen by Isaiah, who described his face bruised, and gashed, and scarified, and said of him: ’93His visage was so marred more than any man.’94 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 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 deliberation: ’93All men are liars;’94 everything is going to ruin. They do not like the present fashion of hats for women, or of coats for men. They are opposed to the administration, 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 at one time one of the worst, of men, falls into the pessimistic mood, and cries out in the twenty-first chapter of Proverbs: ’93Who can find a virtuous woman?’94 If he had behaved himself better and kept in good associations, he would not have written that interrogation point implying the scarcity of good womanhood. Cynicism, if a habit, as it is with tens of thousands of people, writes itself all over the features; hence so many sour visages all up and down the street, all up and down the church and the world. One sure way to make the world worse is to say it is worse. It is the chastisement of God that when a man allows his heart to be cursed with cynicism, his face becomes gloomed, and scowled, and lachrymosed, and blasted with the same midnight.

But let Christian cheerfulness try its chisel upon a man’92s countenance. Feeling that all things are for his good, and that God rules, and that the Bible being true, the world’92s floralization is rapidly approaching, and the day must soon arrive when beer-mug, and demijohn, and distillery, and bombshell, and rifle-pit, and seventy-four pounders, and roulette-tables, and corrupt book, and satanic printing press will have quit work, the brightness that comes from such anticipation not only gives zest to his work, but shines in his eyes and glows in his cheek and kindles a morning in his entire countenance. Those are the faces I look for in an audience. Those countenances are sections of millennial glory. They are Heaven impersonated. They are the sculpturing of God’92s right hand. They are hosannas in human flesh. They are hallelujahs alighted. They are Christ reincarnated. I do not care what your features are or whether you look like your father, or your mother, or look like no one under the heavens’97to 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 it seemed of no use, and Angelo was asked if he could make anything out of it, and if so was told he could own it. 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 Goliath, but the marble was not quite long enough at the base to make the prostrate form of the giant, and so the artist fashioned the marble into another figure that is to be famous for all time because of its expressiveness. A critic came in and was asked by Angelo for his criticism, and he said it was beautiful, but the nose of the statue was not of right shape. Angelo picked up from the floor some sand and tossed it about the face of the statue, pretending he was using his chisel to make the improvement suggested by the critic. ’93What do you think of it now?’94 said the artist. ’93Wonderfully improved,’94 said the critic. ’93Well,’94 said the artist, ’93I have not changed it at all.’94 My friends, the grace of God comes to the heart of a man or woman and then undertakes to change a forbidding and repulsive face into attractiveness. Perhaps the face is most unpromising for the Divine Sculptor; but having changed the heart, it begins to work on the countenance with celestial chisel, and into all the lineaments of the face puts a gladness and an expectation that changes it from glory to glory, and though earthly criticism may disapprove of this or that in the appearance of the face, Christ says of the newly-created countenance that which Pilate said of him: ’93Behold the man!’94

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 eyebrow. It puts cruelty into the compression of the lips. You can tell from the man’92s looks that he is pursuing 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’92 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 countenance, and it is Kindness. There came a moving day, and into her soul moved the whole family of Christian graces, with all the children and grandchildren, and the command has come forth from the heavens that that woman’92s face shall be made to correspond with her superb soul. Her entire face, from ear to ear, becomes the canvas on which all the best artists of heaven begin 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 a-flash, and mountains of transfiguration and noonday in heaven. Kindness! It is the most magnificent sculptor that ever touched human countenance. No one could wonder at the unusual geniality in the face of William Windom, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, after seeing him at the New York banquet just before he dropped dead, turning his wineglass upside down, saying: ’93I may by doing this offend some, but by not doing it, I might damage many.’94 Be kind to your friends. Be kind to your enemies. Be kind to the young. Be kind to the old. Morning, noon and night be kind, and the effects of it will be written in the language of your face. That is the Gospel of physiognomy.

A Bayonne merchant was in the south of Europe for his health, and sitting on the terrace one morning in his invalidism, he saw a rider flung from a horse into the river, and without thinking of his own weakness, the merchant flung off his invalid’92s gown and leaped into the stream and swam to the drowning man, and clutching him as he was about to go down the last time, bore him in safety to the bank, when, glancing into the face of the rescued man, he cried: ’93My God! I have saved my own son!’94 All kindness comes back to us in one way or another; if not in any other way then in your own face. Kindness! Show it to others, for the time may come when you will need it yourself. People laughed at the lion, because he spared the mouse that ran over him, when, by 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 off the ropes 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: ’93They have lied about the President’92s being homely; he is the handsomest man I ever saw.’94 All over that President’92s rugged face was written the kindness which he so well illustrated when he said: ’93Some of our generals complain that I impair discipline and subordination in the army by my pardons and respites, but it makes me rested after a hard day’92s work if I can find some good excuse for saving a man’92s life, and I go to bed happier as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family.’94 Kindness! It makes the face to shine while life lasts, and after death puts a summer sunset between the still lips and the smoothed hair, that makes me say sometimes at obsequies: ’93She seems too beautiful to bury.’94

But here comes another chisel, and its name is Hypocrisy. Christ, with one terrific stroke in his Sermon on the Mount, described this character. ’93When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance; for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast.’94 Hypocrisy having taken possession of the soul, it immediately appears in the countenance. Hypocrites are always solemn. They carry several country graveyards in their faces. They are tearful when there is nothing to cry about, and in their prayers they catch for their breath, and have such general dolefulness that they disgust young people with religion. We had one of them in one of my churches. When he exhorted 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 a paroxysm of ’93ohs’94 and ’93ahs’94 that seemed to demand resuscitation. He went on in that way until we had to expel him from church for stealing the property entrusted to him as administrator, and for other vices that I will not mention, and he wrote me several letters, not at all complimentary, from the West, saying that he was daily praying for my everlasting destruction. A man cannot have hypocrisy in his heart without somehow showing it in his face. An intelligent people who witness it know it is nothing but a dramatization.

Here comes another chisel, and that belongs to the old-fashioned religion. It first takes possession of the whole soul, washing out its sins by the blood of the Lamb, and starting heaven right there and then. This done deep down in the heart, Religion says: ’93Now let me go up to the windows and front gate of the face and set up some signal that I have taken possession of this castle. I will celebrate the victory by an illumination that no one can mistake. I will make even the wrinkles of his face look like furrows plowed for the harvests of joy. I will make what we call the ’91crow’92s feet’92 around his temples suggestive that the dove of peace has been alighting there.’94 There may be signs of trouble on that face, but trouble sanctified. There may be scars of battle on that face, but they will be scars of campaigns won.

’93Now,’94 says some one, ’93I know very good people who have no such religion in their faces.’94 The reason probably is that they were not converted until late in life. Worldliness and sin had been at work with their chisels on that face for thirty or forty years, and Grace, the Divine Sculptress, has been busy with her chisel only five or ten years. Do not be surprised that Phidias and Greenough, with their fine chisels, cannot in a short while remove all the marks of the stonemason’92s crowbar which has been busy there for a long while. I say to all the young, if you would have sympathetic face, hopeful face, courageous face, cheerful face, kind face, at the earliest possible moment, by the grace of God, have planted in your soul sympathy, and hope, and courage, and good cheer, and kindness. No man ever indulged in 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 of the cruel: ’93They have made their faces harder than a rock.’94

Oh, the power of the human face! 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. How long since your child went? ’93Well,’94 you say, ’93if she had lived she would have been ten years old now or twenty or thirty years.’94 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. Or, was it a father’92s face? The storms of life had somewhat roughened it. a good deal of the brightness of the eye had been quenched, and the ear was turned with the hand behind it 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 would mean to you more than any face that Rembrandt ever sketched. That face, though long ago veiled from human sight, is 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 farm-house. Or, was it your mother’92s face? A good mother’92s 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 cheek? 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’92s face, your mother’92s smile, your mother’92s tears! What an overpowering memory! Though you have come on to mid-life, 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. ’93No, you cannot,’94 says some one. I can, and I will. It is the face of Jesus as he was on earth and is now in heaven. What a gentle face it must have been to induce babes to struggle out of their mothers’92 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 face it must have been to lead the Psalmist in prayer to say of it: ’93Look upon the face of thine anointed.’94 Do you want to have his celestial beauty? Paul tells you how you may attain it: ’93With unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, we are transformed into the same image.’94 What a sympathetic face it must have been to encourage the sick woman who was beyond any help from the doctors, to touch the hem of his garment! What a suffering face it must have been when suspended on the perpendicular and horizontal pieces of the wood of martyrdom, and his antagonists slapped the pallid cheek with their rough hands, and befouled it with the saliva of their blasphemous lips! What a tremendous face it must have been to lead St. John to describe it in the coming Judgment as scattering the universe when he says: ’93From whose face the earth and the heaven fled away.’94 Oh, Christ! Once the Nazarene, but now the Celestial! Once of Cross, but now of Throne! Once crowned with stinging bramble, but now coroneted with the jewels of ransomed empires! Turn on us thy pardoning face and forgive us; thy sympathetic face and console us; thy suffering face and have thy atonement avail for us; thy omnipotent face and rescue us. Oh, what a face! So scarred, so lacerated, so resplendent, so overwhelmingly glorious that the seraphim put wing to wing, and with their conjoined pinions keep off some of the lustre that is too mighty even for eyes cherubic or archangelic; and yet this morning turning upon us with a sheathed splendor like that with which he appeared when he said to the mothers, bashful about presenting their children: ’93Suffer them to come;’94 and to the poor waif of the street: ’93Neither do I condemn thee;’94 and to the eyes of the blind beggar of the wayside: ’93Be opened.’94

I think my brother John, the returned foreign missionary, dying in summer at Bound Brook, caught a glimpse of that face of Christ when in his dying hour my brother said: ’93I shall be satisfied when I awake in his likeness.’94 And now unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion, for ever and ever, Amen and Amen! Amen and Amen!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage