The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1888-09-27

and bought up half Of heaven and let it
out at ruinous rent, or loaned the
money to celestial citizens at Q per
cent. month and got a corner on harps
and trumpets. They lived in this world
fifty or sixty years In the presence Of ap-
palling suffering and want and made no
effort for their relief. The charities of
such people are for the most part in
sspaulo-post future" tense and they are
going to do them. The probability is
that il such one in his last viii by
donation to benevolent societies tries to
atone for his lifetime closefistedness, the
heirs at law will try to break the viii by
proving that the old man was senile or
crazy, and the expense Of the litigation
will about leave in the lawyers hands
what was meant for the American Bible
society. Oh, ye overweighted successful
business men, whether this sermon reach
your ear or your eye, let me say that
If you are prostrated with ankle
ties about keeping or investing
these tremendous fortunes, can tell
you how you can do more to get your
health back and your spirits raised ithan
by drinking gallons of bad tasting water
at Saratoga, Homburg or Carlshad-give
to god and humanity and the Bible 10 per
cent. Of all your income, and it viii make
a new man of you, and from restless walk
ing of the floor at night you shall have
eight hours sleep without the help of
bromide of potassium, and from no appe-
tite you will hardly be able to wait your
regular meals, and your wan cheek will
fill up, and when you die the blessings
of those who but for you would have per-
ished will bloom all over your grave with
violets, il it be spring, or gladiolus, if it
be autumn.
Perhaps some of you will take this ad
vice, but the most of you will not. And
you will try to cure your swollen hand
by getting on it more fingers. and your
rheumatic foot by getting on 1t more
toes, and there will be sigh OF relief
when you are gone out of the world;
and when over your remains the minis
ter recites the words, BLESSED are the
dead who die In the Lord" persons who
have keen appreciation of the ludicrous
will hardly be able to keep their faces
straight. But whether in that direction
my words do good or not, am anxious
that all who have only ordinary equip
ment be thankful for what they have
and rightly employ it. I think you
all have, figuratively as well as
literally, fingers enough. Do not
long for hindering superfuities. Stand
ing in the presence of this fallen giant of
my text and in this pest-mortem exami-
| nation of him, let us learn how much
better off we are with just the usual
hand, the usual foot You have thanked
God fov thousand things, but / warrant
you never thanked him for those two
implements of work and looomotion, that
no one but the infinite and omnipotent
God could have ever planned or made,
the hand and the foot. Only that SOL
dier or that mechanic who, in battle or
through machinery, has lost them, knows
anything about their value, and only the
Christian scientist can have any apprecia-
ton of what divine masterpieces they are.
Sir Charles Bell, the English surgeon, on
the battle field of Waterloo, while en-
gagged in anlputations of the wounded
was so impressed with the wondrous con-
struction of the human hand that when
the Earl of Bridgewater gave $40, 900 for
essays on the wisdom and goodness of
God, and eight books were written, Sir
Charles Bell wrote his entire book on the
wisdom and goodness of God as displayed
in the human hand. The twenty-seven
bones in hand and wrist with cartilages
and iganents and phalanges of the
fingers all made just ready to knit,
to sew, to build up, to pull down,
to weave, to write, to plow, to
pound, to wheel, to battle, to
give friendly salutation. The tips of its
fingers are so many telegraph offices by
reason of their sensitiveness of touch.
The bridges. the tunnels, the cities of the
whole earth are the victories of the hand.
The hands are not dumb, but often speak
as distinctly as the lips. With our hands
we invite, we repel, we invoke, we en-
treat, we wiring them in grief or clap
them in joy, or spread them abroad in
! benedietion. The malformation of the
| giants hand in the text glorifies the usual
| hand. Fashioned of God more exqtlis-
| itely and wondrously than any human
| mechanism that was ever contrived,
charge you use it for God and the lifting of
the world out of its moral predicament.
Employ it in the sublime work of Gospel
handshaking. You can see the hand is
| just made for that. Four fingers just
set right TO touch your neighbor's hand
on one side and your thumb set SO as to
clench it ON the other side. By all its
bones, and joints, and muscles, and carti-
lagos, and ligaments, the voice Of nature
| joins with the voice of God commanding
you to shake hands. The custom is as
old as the Bible, anyhow. Jehu said to
Jehonadab: "Is thine heart right as my
heart is with thine hearth If it be, give
me thine hand" When hands join in
Christian salutation Gospel electricity
thrills across the palm from heart to
heart, and from the shoulder Of
one to the shoulder of the other. Shake
hands all around. With the timid
and for their encouragement, shake
hands. With the troubled and in warm
hearted sympathy, shake hands. With
the young man just enteHng business
and discouraged at the small sales and
the large expenses, shake hands. With
| the child who is new from God and
started on unending journey for which
he needs to gather great supply of
strength, and who can hardly reach up
to you now, because you are SO much
taller, shake hands. Across cradles and
dying beds and graves, shake hands,
With your enemies who have done all
to defame and hurt you, but whom
you can afford to forgive, shake
hands. At the door of churches
where people come in, and at the
door of churches where people go out,
shake hands. Let pulpit shake hands
with pew, and Sabbath day shake hands
with week day, and earth shake hands
with heaven. Oh the strange, the
mighty, the underlined, the mysterious,
the eternal power of an honest hand
shaking. The difference between these
times and the millennial times is that
now some shake hands but then all will
shake hands, throne and footstool, across
seas nation with nation, God and man,
church militant and church triumphant.
Yea; the malformation of this fallen
giants foot glorifies the ordinary foot,
for which I fear you have never once
thanked God. The twenty-six bones of
the foot are the admiration of the anat-
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