The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1888-10-05

the victories Of the hand. The hands ar,
not dumb, but often speak a. distinctly q!
the lips. With our hands we invite, w
repeal, we invoke, we entreat, we wiring
them in grief or clap them in joy, OF
spread them abroad in benediction. Thu
malformati0n of the giants hand in the
text glorifies the usual hand. Fashioned Of
God more exquisitely and won.
drously than any human mechan.
ism that was ever contrived,
charge you use it for God and the
lifting of the world out of its moral pre-
dicament. Employ it in the sublime worl
OF gospel Handwriting. 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 clinch it on the other side. By all its
bones, and joints, and cartilages, and lig-
aments, 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: els
thine heart right as my heart is with thine
heart? II it be, give me thine hand"
When hands join in Christian salutation a
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 encourage
ment, shake hands. With the troubled and
in warm-hearted sympathy, shake hands.
With the young man just entering business
and discouraged at the small sales and the
large expenses, shake hands. With the
child who is new from God and started on
the unending journey, for which he needs
a greater supply of strength, and who cap
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. o, the strange, the
mighty, The underlined, the mysterious, the
eternal power of an honest handshaking.
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 mill
tant 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 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 triumph at the
end Of Champs Elysees could not equal.
Those arches stand where they were
planted, but this arch of the foot is an ad-
Unstable arch, a yielding arch, a flying
arch, and ready for movements innufner-
able. The human foot so fashioned as to
enable man to stand upright as no other
creature and leave the hand that would
otherwise have to help in balancing the
body free for any thing it chooses.
The foot of the camel fashioned for the
sand, the foot of the bird fashioned for the
tree branch, the foot of the hind fashioned
for the slippery rock, the foot of the lion
to rend its prey, the foot of the
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 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 petrifactions 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 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 petri-
fed for the judgment day. 0, the foot:
How divinely honored not only in its con-
but in the fact that God repre-
sents Himself in the Bible as having feet:
''The clouds on the dust of His feet;"
Darkness was under His feet;" 1.-THE
earth is my foot-stool." And representing
cyclones and euroclydons and whirl-
winds and hurricanes as winged creatures,
He describes Himself as putting His foot
ON these monsters of the air and walking
from pinion to pinion, saying: HE walk
eth upon the wings of the wind" 'Thou
hast put all things under his feet" cries
the Psalmist. D, the foot! Give me the
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
10 come.
That there might be no doubt about the
TACT that both these pieces of divine mech
anism, hand and foot, belong to Christ's
service, both hands of Christ and both feet
If Christ were spiked on the cross. Right
through the arch of both His feet to tho
hollow Of His fOOtstep went the iron of
,orture. and from the palm Of His hand to
he back Of it, and there Is not muscle or
,erve or bone among the twenty.seven
zones of hand and wrist, or
lmong the twenty-six bones Of the
DOT, but it belongs to Him now and forev-
". Charles Reade, the great writer, lost
he joint Of his forefnger by feeding Q
,ear. Lookout that your whole hand gets
lot into the nav Of the old Cerberus Of
'erdition. Sir Thomas Trowbridge at the
,attle of Inkermann lost his foot and
when the soldiers would carry him away
10 said: "No, do not move until the
'attle is won." So il our foot be famed or
ost let it be in the service Of our God, our
ZONE or our country.
That is the most beautiful foot that eoes
bout paths Of greatness and usefulness
md that the most beautiful hand that does
he most to helpothers. was reading Of
hree women who were in rivalry about
he appearance of the hand. And the one
her hand with berries and said
he beautiful tinge made hers the most
And another put her hands in
he mountain brook and said as the waters
ripped of that her hand was the |
most beautiful. And another plucked
overs of the bank and under the bloom |
that her hand was the most at |
ractive. Then poor old woman ap.
cared, and looking up in her decrep-
Jude, asked for aims. And Q woman
rho had not taken part in the rivalrv