The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-11-04
THE FINGER OF GOD.
DR.. Talmage Discourses on the
Plaques of Egypt.
The Hand of the Lord Is to BE Seen In All
Great Catastrophies to the Ultimate
End of Working a Great
Good.

ject of plaques, taking his text from
Exodus viii. 10: 1.-THE finger of God. F"
He said:
Pharoah was sulking in his marble
throne room at Memphis. Plague after
plague had come, and sometimes the
Egyptian monarch was disposed to do
better, but at the lifting of each plague
he was as bad as before. The NEGRO
mancers of the palace, however, were
compelled to recognize the divine move
ment, and after one of the most exas-
perating plaques of all the series they
cried out in the words of my text:
This is the finger of God"-not the
first nor the last time when bad people
said good thing.
We all recognize the hand of God and
know it is mighty hand. You have
seen a man keep two or three rubber
balls flying in the air, catching and
pitching them so that none of them fell
to the floor, and do this for several min
utes, and you have admired his dexter
ity. But have you thought how the
hand of God keeps millions and millions
of round worlds vastly larger than our
world flying for centuries without let
ting one fall? Wondrous power and
skill of Gods handl But about that l
am not to discourse. My text leads me
to speak of less than a fifth of the di-
vine hand. This is the finger of God. "
Only in two other places does the Bible
refer to this division of the Omnipotent
hand. The rocks on Mount Sinai are
basalt and very hard stone. Do you
imagine it was chisel that cut the ten
commandments in that basalt? No, in
Exodus we read that the tables of stone
were written with the finger of God. -"
Christ says that He cas5 out devils with
''the finger of God" The only instance
that Christ wrote n word, He wrote not
with pen on parchment, but with His
finger on the ground.
To most of us gesticulation is natural.
If stranger accost you on the street
and ask you the way to some place it is
as natural as to breathe for you to level
your forefnger this way or that Not
one of thousand of you would stand
with your hands by your side and make
no motion with your finger. Whatever
you may say with your lips is empha-
sized and reinforced and translated by
your finger. Now, God, in the dear old
book, says to us innumerable things by
the way of direction. He plainly tells
us the way to go. But in every ext
gency of our life, if we will only look,
we will find providential gesture and
a providential pointing, so that we may
confidentially say: This is the finger
of God"
For much that concerns us we have
no responsibility and we need not make
appeal to the Lord for direction. We
are not responsible for most of our sur
roundings We are not responsible for
the country of our birth, nor for
whether we are Americans or NOrweg-
ians or Scotchmen or Irishmen or En-
glishmen. We are not responsible for
the age in which we live. We are not
responsible for our temperament, be it
nervous or phlegmatic, bilious or san
guine. We are not responsible for our
features, be they homely or beautiful.
We are not responsible for the height
or smallness of our stature. We are not
responsible for the fact that we are
mentally dull or brilliant Do not
blame us for being in our manner cold
as an iceberg, or nervous as cat amid
pack of Fourth of July fire-crackers
If you are determined to blame some
body, blame our great grandfathers or
great grandmothers, who died before
the revolutionary war, and who may
have had habits depressing and ruinous.
Let us take ourselves as we are at this
moment and then ask (which way?"
Get all the direction you can from care
full and constant study of the Bible and
then look up and look out and look
around and see if you can find the finger
of God.
1t is remarkable thing that some
times no one can see that finger but
yourself A year before Abraham Lin
coin signed the proclamation of eman-
cipation the White house was thronged
with committees and associations, min
listers and laymen, advising the presi-
dent to make that proclamation. But
he waited and waited, amid scott and
anathema, because he did not himself
see the finger of God. After awhile
and Just at the right time he saw the
divine pointing and signed the procla-
nation. The distinguished confeder-
ates, Mason and Slidell, were taken off
an English vessel by the United States
government. Don't give them up"
shouted all the northern states Let
us have war with England rather than
surrender them" was the almost unan-
imous cry of the north. But William
II. Seward saw the finger of God lead
ing in just the opposite direction, and
the confederates were given up, and we
avoided a war with England, which at
that time would have been the demoli-
ton of the United States government.
In other words, the finger of God as it
directs you may be invisible to every
body else. Follow the divine pointing,
call you fool. There has never been
a man or a woman who amounted to
anything that has not sometimes been
called fool Nearly all the mistakes
that you and have made have come
from our following the pointing
of some other finger, instead of
the finger of God. Bat, now, sup
pose all forms of disaster close in
upon a man. Suppose his business col
lapses. Suppose he buys goods and can
not sell them. Suppose by a new in
vention others can furnish the same
goods at less price. Suppose a cold
spring or a late autumn or the coming
of an epidemic corners man, and his
notes come due and he cannot meet
them, and his rent must be paid and
there is nothing with which to pay it,
and the wages of the employees are due
and there is nothing with which to
u,aaf thot oblipa tiou and the hank will