THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST. [To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR. "]
Sin,—From time to time, and again recently, some journals and writers have taken up the subject of discoveries of alleged or imagined portraits of Christ. And as this season of Easter is specially associated with the history of His Resurrection appearances, perhaps a remark or two in connection with this topic may be permitted. Most of the discussions which have taken place upon the portraiture of Christ seem to have in- sufficiently estimated the Scriptural evidences of the change- fulness of His appearance, especially after the Resurrection. Even in the period of the Incarnation proper (i.e., up to His death), the circumstances of His life must have greatly changed His countenance, from the time of bright and hope- ful youth, when He was increasing " in favour with God and man," to the later years, when, by His most arduous labours and constant persecution by the Pharisees, He had become emphatically the "Man of Sorrows," and perhaps so "marred" in lineaments as to give the Jews the idea of His being nearer "fifty years old " than only about thirty. But after His Resur- rection, there seems to have been a constant or frequent change of aspect in Christ's manifestations of Himself. Even the Apostles and others previously most familiar with Him did not at first recognise Him on several occasions. Mary Magdalene mis- took Him for "the gardener." Then He appeared "in another form " to the disciples at Emmaus. Again, when standing by the Lake of Galilee, later on, "the disciples knew not that it was Jesus." And when He was seen by many on a mountain in Galilee "some doubted." Christ's risen or "spiritual body," or "glorified " form, seems to have been sub- ject to a miraculous plastic power on His part, both in regard to countenance and dress. And yet with all there was an unchanging and essential identity. He was always the risen Son of Man, as well as Son of God. That identity, even to the marks of nails and wounds, convinced the peculiarly in- credulous Thomas. And at periods long after the Ascension He was still "this same Jesus " (as He is to be at His second coming hereafter). But again He was seen changed by a sublimity of glory and divinity ; as when His appearance near Damascus struck Saul of Tarsus to the ground, and yet later, in the Isle of Patmos, caused the beloved John to " fall at His feet as dead." Yet He was still the identical Lord of John's former. knowledge,—" I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore." If this mysterious plastic power of varying self-manifestation, combined with unchanging identity of being and person, on the part of Christ, were more generally borne in mind, it might reassure many persons who now naturally feel some regret that antiquity has not handed down to them any one certain portrait of our blessed Lord and Saviour. For that portraiture was so varied and changeful. The sufficient comfort and truth is that with omnipotent powers over His own modes of manifestation, localisation and presence, He is also and always "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever."—I am, Sir, &c.,
WILLIAM TALLACE,
31 The Common, Upper Clapton, N.E.
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