Percival continued: "Then I felt convinced that imagination could depict the Divine Youth far better than could my weak pencil: so I concentrated my efforts on the face of the dying Joseph, making it reflect, as it were, the brightness of the countenance of Him who bends over His foster-father."
Seyton. Even as artists, unable to give the blaze of the noonday sun, just indicate its presence by lights and shadows thrown on terrestrial objects. Perhaps you did wisely, Percival. One is often pained by the lifeless, soulless countenances given as representations of Christ! Who could depict "the heaven of His eyes," the unearthly sweetness of the lips that spake as never man spake?
Percival. You see the accessories by which I have endeavoured to make the picture tell its own story.
Seyton. There is Mary, dressed in simplest Eastern garb; she has sunk on the floor, exhausted, as it seems, with night after night of watching. Sleep has stolen over her at last. The thin pale countenance shows how much it was needed.
Percival. And her Son will not awaken her.
Seyton. Christ appears to have entered with noiseless step by that open door through which stream the rays of the setting sun on the bed of him whose life-sun is sinking fast. But why should we suppose that Christ had left His mother, even for a little while, to keep her sad watch alone?
Percival. Will you think me too realistic if I point out the small heap of copper coins in that niche in the wall, and the tools on the earthen floor? Christ may have had to take finished work to an employer, and receive the price of His labour; that to the miseries of sickness in that home might not be added that of want.
Seyton. This is being too realistic for me. I can scarcely conceive that He who formed heaven and earth, "without whom nothing was made that was made," actually did common carpenter's work. I can hardly realize that Christ measured, sawed, and planed; that the sound of His hammer was heard; that He actually laboured till He was weary, and then received into a toil-hardened hand, the paltry coins earned by His toil. Can one believe that perhaps He, like poor workmen now, had to call again and again to get even a trifling payment for His work from some purse-proud Jew?
Percival. To gain bread by the sweat of the face was part of the primeval curse; and He who came to bear the more terrible effects of that curse would not be likely to shrink from this. Whatever Christ did, He did as unto God. In His workmanship no flaw could be found. What Christ made, He made to last. And He who was to purchase the redemption of a world, would deem it no disgrace to earn food by His daily toil. In all things, but sin, the Saviour was made like unto us. And this picture is designed to show the shadow of bereavement falling heavily on the Man of Sorrows; probably in the earlier part of His life.
Seyton. We know that Christ wept at the grave of His friend.