for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose" (Isaiah xxxv. 1), typifying that elevation of the whole being and life of humanity to a higher level which Christ came to effect in his kingdom.

The whole incident also is significant of the tenor of the life of Jesus. We have seen that it is most probable that the family at Cana were relatives of our Lord. The first act, then, of the Lord after He has begun to gather together disciples is to take them with Him, not into the wilderness to ascetic discipline, not into the cities to teach and preach, but into a home, to recognise the social ties and fulfil the kindly sympathies of life.

B

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE SON OF MAN.

EFORE we go any further in the history let us address ourselves to a question which

is one of legitimate interest to every student of the life of our blessed Lord.

In every picture which represents a scene of the Gospel history whether it be the nativity or a miracle or the sacrifice of the cross, the part of the picture upon which the artist has spent most time and thought, and perhaps, like Fra Angelico, most prayer, is the Divine figure in whom the interest centres, whether it be as the holy child on His mother's lap, or the Lord bidding the storm cease, or the dying Saviour.

And we ourselves in endeavouring to meditate upon these subjects, have to begin by painting a mental picture of the scene, as truthfully and as vividly as we can; and we are thus led to consider, not as a question of idle curiosity, but as a matter of devout interest, whether there is any authentic representation or description or any probable tradition of the personal appearance of Jesus.

The

There is no reason why there might not be. arts of painting and sculpture were at a high degree of excellence at the time, and the custom of perpetuating the likeness of great men was common. The atrium of every noble Roman house contained a series of busts of ancestors, and the public places of the cities were crowded with the statues of Emperors and distinguished men. The public collections of Europe contain hundreds of such ancient portraits, of such merit as portraits and as works of art as modern. art can hardly equal.

We have it on record that the Emperor Alexander Severus placed in his oratory statues of four persons whom he considered to be great religious teachers, viz., Abraham, Orpheus, Christ, and Apollonius of Tyana. But this was two centuries after Christ, and whether His statue was derived from original portraits then extant, or was, like those of Abraham and Orpheus, a mere ideal, we are not told.

There are early pictorial representations of Our Lord among the painted decorations of the Roman Catacombs, and some of these paintings are as early as the second century; but a glance at them is enough to show that they are merely conventional symbolical figures, and were never intended to be portraits. The same judgment applies to the sculptured representations of Gospel scenes which are common on the sarcophagi of the fifth and sixth centuries.

Р

There are many legends which show that it was a subject in which Christian people naturally took a great interest. Such as the legend of the Veil of St. Veronica :-that when 'our Lord was on His way to Calvary, she lent Him her veil with which to wipe the sweat of agony from His face, and that when He returned it to her, a portrait of the sacred features was found to have been miraculously impressed upon it. Or that of Abgarus, king of Edessa-that he was a believer in Christ, and wrote to invite him to his dominions, and that our Lord declined to go, but sent the king a portrait of himself painted by St. Luke.

Such legendary portraits, with the growth of the rage for relics, after the fourth century multiplied, so that in the sixth century every principal city and Christian community had some image, picture, cameo, or other representation of Christ, each having a legend which carried it back to the great original. The superstition became so great and objectionable that the Council of Constantinople in 754, A.D., condemned all pictures which pretended to have come down from Christ or His apostles. In fine, an exhaustive study of the subject leads to the conclusion that no authentic portrait of our blessed Lord exists.

There is not even a consistent tradition. At the carliest period at which we find the subject under

discussion, we find no historical statement of what the Lord's appearance was, but only arguments as to what it was likely-from this or that considerationto be.

The earliest conjectures seem to have been founded upon the evidence supplied by allusions in prophecy; and the conjecture which at first found favour was derived from the famous prophecy in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah :-

"He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

It was perhaps the depressed condition of the early church, when "not many wise, not many learned, were called," which led it the more readily to receive the idea that the Lord in his humiliation had taken a form which was studiously mean and repulsive. A little later we find that other passages of Scripture were quoted as leading to the opposite conclusion; e.g., Psalm xiv. 2.

"Thou art fairer than the children of men, full of grace are thy lips, because God hath blessed thee for ever."

"My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand; ... he is altogether lovely" (Cant. v. I^, 16).

Isaiah, speaking of the Christ, says (xxxiii. 17),— "Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty."