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He was the last person to be demonstrative or conspicuous either as to his faith or his works; but no disciple of Christ, perhaps, felt more devoutly than he did the reverential aspiration of "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men." Passing a print-window in Broadway one day, his eye rested on the beautiful engraving of "Christus Consolator."
"Why, you don't know how to make up poetry do you?" said Dotty, leaning on her elbow, and looking with dreamy eyes at the engraving of Christus Consolator at the foot of the bed. "I love poetry when they read it in concert at school. Don't you know, 'Tremendous torrents! For an instant hush! Isn't that splendid?" "Very splendid, indeed," replied Prudy, pinching herself to keep awake.
During the time I was in Paris, I formed the acquaintance of Schoeffer, whose Christus Consolator and Remumrator and other works, have made him known in America. I went with a lady who has for many years been an intimate friend, and whose head has been introduced into several of his paintings. On the way she gave me some interesting particulars of him and his family.
Sunshine and glow were the characteristics of the first school, grayness and sobriety of the second. The works of Ary Scheffer are now the most interesting pictures in the Dortrecht Gallery. Of the subject, "Christus Consolator," there are two representations.
The God revealed in the greatest writings of the greatest authors of the New Testament is Love. The Christ they picture is Christus Consolator. The full breath of inspiration opens only the upper register of notes. The voices of the soul are buoyant, joyous, hopeful.
"Don't let us do any thing this afternoon, but talk or read," proposed Agnes; and hearing this, Philip hurried to the school-room for his own little chair, so that he might lay his head on Ruth's lap and listen. But Christus Consolator was too profound, and lulled by the sound of Agnes's sweet voice, and Ruth's caressing touch, he slept.
No wonder the matchless oratorio of the Messiah opens with this aria, abruptly as the original words are spoken in Isaiah. They sound the key-note of the good tidings of great joy which, growing as a hope in men's souls through the centuries, became a faith, an assured conviction, in the life of the Christus Consolator; in whom God is seen as "Our Father which art in heaven."
But we must acknowledge, if it were so, that the sorrow which oppressed did not embitter his heart, and that a brave and humane spirit appears even in those works which have the least artistic merit to recommend them. The "Christus Consolator" is the best known of this class of pictures.
In his "Christus Consolator," this eminent artist has presented in one of the figures his ideal of female beauty, and was struck on being first introduced to Miss Stirling to find in her the almost exact embodiment of that ideal. She was introduced afterwards in many of his pictures. In a letter addressed to Mrs. Schwabe, and dated February 14, 1859, we read about her:
By his will he bequeathed to his native town of Dordrecht "the portrait of Sir J. Reynolds, by Scheffer; a dog lying down, life-size, by the same; a copy of the picture of the 'Christus Remunerator, on pasteboard, of the size of the original in England; a copy of the 'Christus Consolator, both by himself: also, his own statue, in plaster; his own bust, by his daughter; and the Virgin and Infant Jesus, by himself."
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