The Gospels do not, like some biographies ancient and modern, give a place to the physical characteristics of Jesus.  Suetonius in a very short sketch adds the personal aspect of the poet Horace, who, it is true, had led the way by such allusions (Epist. i. 4, 15-16), and tells us how Augustus said he was “a squat little pot” (sessilis obba).  The “Acts of Thekla” in a similar way describe St. Paul’s short figure with its suggestion of quickness.  But the only personal traits of this sort that I recall in the New Testament are the eyes of Jesus and Paul’s way of stretching out a hand when he spoke.  In view of this reticence, it is rather remarkable how often the Gospels refer to Jesus “looking.”  He “looked round about on” the people in the Synagogue, and then—­with some suggestion of a pause and silence while he looked, “he saith unto the man” (Mark 3:5).  When Peter deprecated the Cross, we find the same; “when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter” (Mark 8:33).  When the rich young ruler came so impulsively to him to ask him about eternal life, Jesus, “looking upon him, loved him”—­and we touch there a certain reminiscence of eye-witnesses (Mark 10:21).  There are other references of the same kind in the narratives—­the look seems to come into the story naturally, without the writers noticing it.  There must have been much else as familiar to his friends and companions.  They must have known him as we know our friends—­the inflections of his voice, his characteristic movements, the hang of his clothes, his step in the dark, and all such things.  Did he speak quickly or slowly? or move his hand when he spoke?  The teaching posture of Buddha’s hand is stereotyped in his images.  We are not told such things about Jesus, and guessing does not take us very far.  Yet a stanza in one of the elegies written on the death of Sir Philip Sidney may be taken as a far-away likeness of a greater and more wonderful figure—­and not lead us very far astray:—­

    A sweet, attractive kind of grace;
        The full assurance given by looks;
    Perpetual comfort in a face;
        The lineaments of Gospel books.

If we are not explicitly told of such things by the evangelists, they are easily felt in the story.  The “paradoxes,” as we call them—­a rather dull name for them—­surely point to a face alive with intellect and gaiety.  The way in which, for instance, the leper approaches him, implies the man’s eyes fixed in close study on Jesus’ face, and finding nothing there to check him and everything to bring him nearer (Mark 1:41).  When Mark tells us that he greeted the Syro-Phoenician woman’s sally about the little dogs eating the children’s crumbs under the table with the reply, “For the sake of this saying of yours ...,” we must assume some change of expression on such a face as that of Jesus (Mark 7:29).