The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1888-10-25

DOneS IN mana anu WFlSG, Will Car ellag0S,
and ligaments. and phalanges OF the
fingers all made just ready to knit, to
sew, to build up, to pull down, to weave,
to write. to pillow, to pound. to wheel, to
BATTLE to give friendly salutation. The
tips of its fingers are so many telegraph
offices by reason of their sensitiyeness 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 entreat, we wiring them in grief or
clap them in joy, or spread them abroad
in benediction. The malformation of the
giants hand in the text glorifies the
usual hand. Fashioned of God more ex-
quisitely and wondrously than any hui
man mechanism that was ever contrived,
l charge you use it for God and the lift
ing of the world out of its moral predica-
ment. Employ it in the sublime work of
Gospel hand shaking. You can see the
hand is just made for that. -Four fingers
just set right to touch your neighbours
hand on one side and your thumb set so
as to clinch it on the other side. By all
its bones, and joints, and muscles, and
cartilages, and ligaments the voice of
nature joins with the voice of God in
commanding you to shake hands. The
custom is as old as the Bible, anyhow.
Jehu said to Jehonadab:
SIS thine heart right as my heart is with
thine heart? If it be, give me thine
hand.n
When hands join in Christian saluta-
ton gospel electricity thrills across the
palm from heart to heart, and fr ON 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 entering bust
ness and discouraged at the small sales
and large expenses, shake hands. With
the child who is new from God and started
on an unending journey for which he
needs to gather a 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 He aven.
Oh the strange, the mighty, the underlined,
the mysterious, the eternal power of an
honest handsh aking. The difference be-
tween these times and the millennial
times is that now some shake hands, but
then all will shake hands, throne and
footstool, across seas and nation with
nation, God and man, church militant
and church triumphant.
With that Divine triumph of anat omy
in your possession, where do you walk?
In what path of righteousness or what
path of sin have you set it down? Where
have you left the mark of your footsteps?
Amid the petrifcations in the rocks have
been found the mark of the feet of birds
and beasts of thousands of years ago.
And GOD can trace out all of the foot
steps of your lifetime, and those you
made fifty years ago are as plain as those
made in the last soft weather. all of them
petri6ed for the judgment day. On the
foot! How divinely honored not only in
its constructio II. but in the fact that God
represents Himself in the Bible as hav-
ing feet. 1.-THE clouds on the dust
der His feet;" "The earth is my
and curoclydons, and whirlwinds, and
hurricanes as winged creatures, He de-
scribes Himself as putting His foot on
these monsters of the air and walking
from pinion to pinion, saying: she walk
eth upon the wings of the wind" ssThou
hast put all things under His feet" cries
tI,o oil ict tha A.
autobiography of your foot from the time
you stepped out of the cradle until to-day
and will tell your exact character now,
and what are your prospects for the world
to come. That there might be no doubt
about the fact that both these pieces
of Divine mechanism, hand and foot
belong to Christ's service, both hands of
Christ and both feet of Christ were
spiked on the cross. Right through
the arch of both His feet to the hol-
low of His foot went the iron of torture,
and from the palm of His hand to the back
of it, and there is not g. muscle or nerve
or bone among the twenty-seven bones
of the hand and wrist, or among the
twenty-six bones of the foot, but it be-
longs to Him now and forever. Charles
Reade, the great writer, lost the Joint OF
his forefnger by feeding bear. Look
out that your whole hand gets not into the
NAV of the old Cerberus OF perdition.
Sir Thomas Trowbridge, at the battle of
Inkerman, lost his foot, and when the SOL
diers would carry him away he said "No,
I do not move until the battle is wonn
So if our foot be famed or lost let it be in
the service of God, our home or our coun.
try.
That is the most beautiful foot that goes
about paths of greatest usefulness, and
that the most beautiful hand that does
the most to help others. I was reading
of three women who were in rivalry about
| the appearance of the hand. And the
one Redeemed her hand with berries, and
said tho beautiful tinge made hers the
most beautiful. And another put her
| hand in the mountain brook, and said as
the waters dripped off, that her hand was
| the most beautiful. Aud another plucked
| flowers off the bank, and under the bloom
commended that her hand was the most at
| tractive. Then poor old woman APP
peared. and, looking up in her decrepi-
| tude, asked for aims. And woman who
had not taken part in the rivalry gave
her aims. And all the women resolved
to lea We to this beggar the question as to
which of all the hands present was the