Milford chronicle., 1888-09-28


tinctly Us the lips With our hands we in
/ vite, we repel, We invoke, we entreat, we
wiring them in grief or clap them in joy, or
/ spread them abroad in benediction. The NAL
formation Of the giants hand in the text
glorihes the usual hand Fashioned OF God
more exquisitely and wondrouSly than any
human mechanism that was ever contrived,
4 / charge you use 1t for God and the lifting
/ of the world out Of its moral pre-
dicament Employ il in the sublime
work Of gospel handshabing. 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 cartilages. knd
lgaments, the voice of nature joins with the
voice of God commanding you to shake
hands. The custom is as old as the Bible,
I anyhow Jehu said to Jehonabad: 'Is thine
heart right rs my heart is with thine heart
/ II it be, give me thine hand When hands
Join in Christian salutation a gospel electric
ity 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 en-
tering 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 arc so much taller, shake hands. Across
cradles and dying beds and graves, shake
hands. With your enemies, who have done
all to defame anG 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 hon
est handshaking The difference between
these times and the millennial times is that
now some shake hands, but then all win
shake hands, throne and footstool across
seas nation with nation, God ana man, church
militant and church triumphant
Veal the malformation Of this fallen
giants foot glorifies the ordinary foot, for
which fear you have never once thanked
God. The twenty-six bones of the foot arc
the admiration Of the anatomist. The arch
Of the foot, fashioned with a grace and a
poise that Trajan's arch at Beneventum or
Constantine's arch at Rome or Arch Of Tri-
umph at the end Of Champs Elysees could
not equal. Those arches stand where they
were planted, but this arch of the foot is an
adjustable arch, yielding arch, flying
arch, and ready for movements innumerable.
The human foot so fashioned as to enable
man TO stand upright as no other creature,
ha f1nN 9Th DO,
have to help in balancing the body free
for any thing it chooses The foot
of the camd fashioned for the sand,
the foot of the bird fashioned for
the tree branch, the foot Of the hind fash
ioned for the slippery rock, the foot Of the
lion fashioned to rend its prey, the foot of
tho horse fashioned for the solid earth, but
the foot Of man made to cross the desert, or
climb the tree, or scale the cliff, or walk the
earth, or go anywhere he needs to go With
that divine triumph of anatomy in your pos
session, where do you walkl In what path
of righteousness or what path Of sin have
you set it downl Where have you left the
mark Of your footsteps. Amid the petrifac-
tlOns 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 the footsteps of your lifetime, and
those you made fifty years ago are as plain
as those made in the last soft weather. all Of
them petrifed for the Judgment day. Oh,
/ the foot How divinely honoTed not only
in its construction but In the fact that God
represents himself in the Bible as having
feet: "The clouds on the dust Of his feet .
Darkness was under his feet y ''The earth
is my footstool." And representing cyclones
and auroclydons and whirlwinds and hurri-
canes as winged creatures, he describes him
self as putting his foot on these monsters of
the air and walking from pinion to
pinion, saying: "He walketh upon the
wings of the wind" Thou hast put
all things under his feet" cries the
psalmist. Oh, the foot! Give me the
autobiography of your foot from the time
you stepped out of the cradle until today and
l 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 Christs
service, both hands Of Christ and both feet
: of Christ were spiked on the cross. Right
through the arch with both his feet to the
hollow Of his footstep went the iron Of tor
ture, and from the palm Of his hand to the
back Of it, and there is not muscle or nerve
or bone among the twenty-seven bones
of hand and wrist, or among the
twenty-six bones Of the foot, but It belongs
TO him now and forever. Charles Reade, the
great writer, lost the joint Of his fOrefnger
by feeding a bear. Look out that your
whole hand gets not into the NAV of the old
Cerberus Of perdition. Sir Thomas Trows
bridge at the battle Of lnkermann lost his
foot, and when the soldiers would carry him
l hf eafA No 4 Il rtnk IA
battle is wonln So II our foot be lamed or
lost let 1t be in the service Of our God, our
home or our country.
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. Twas reading Of three women
who were in rivalry about ahe appearance Of
the hand. And the one Redeemed her hand
with berries, and said the beautiful tinge
made hers the most beautiful And another
put her hand In the mountain brook, and
said as the water dripped of, that her hand
was the most beautiful And another plucked
flowers off the bank, and under the bloom
contended that her hand was the most attrac-
tive. Then a poor old woman appeared, and
looking up in her deCyepitude asked for
aims. And a woman who had not taken part
in the rivalry gave her aims And all
the women resolved to leave to this beggar
the question as to which Of all the hands
present was the most attractive, and she
said: 'The most beautiful of them all is the
one that gave relief to my necessities" and
as she so said her wrinkles and rags and her
decrepitude and her body disappeared, and
in place thereof stood the Christ who long
ago said: ''Inasmuch as ye did it to one Of
the least of these, ye did it to me-" and who
to purchase the service Of our hand and foot
here on earth or in resurrection state, had
his own hand and foot lacerated.