Connecticut western news., 1895-05-23


 singing Ely abroad, thou mighty gos- pei, unless you are willing to give something of your own means to make it fly. Have you been praying for the salvation of young mans soulr That is right, but also extend the hand of in- vitation to come to religious meeting
 Useless Christian Hands.
 It always excites our sympathy to see a man with his hand in sling. We ask him: "What is the matter? Hope it is not a felon;'' or, "Have your fingers been crushed?" But nine out of ten of all Christians are going their life long with their hand in sling They have been hurt by indifference or wrong ideas of what is best, or it is injured of con- ventionalities, and they never put forth that hand to lift or help or rescue any one. They pray, and their prayer has wings, but there is no hand under the wings From the very structure of the hand we might make up our mind as to some of the things it was made for-to hold fast, to lift, to push, to pull, to help and to rescue. And endowed with two hands, we might take the broad hint that for others as well as for our selves we were to hold fast, to lift, to drous hand You know something of the "Bridgewater Treatises. When Rev. Francis Henry Bridgewater in his will left $40,00 for essays on "The Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as Manifested in the Creation," and Davies Gilbert, the president of the Royal society, chose eight persons to write eight books, Sir Charles Bell, the scientist, chose as the subject of his great book, "The Hand; Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing De- sign ' Oh, the hand Its machinery be- giuning at the shoulder, and working through shafts of bone, upper arm and forearm, down to the eight bones of the wrist, and the five bones of the palm, and the fourteen bones of the fingers and thumb, and composed of labyrinth of muscle and nerve and artery and flesh, which no one but Almighty God could have planned or executed. But how suggestive when it reached down to us from under the wings of the cher ubim "The likeness of the hands of man was under the wings"
 Christ's Uplifting Divinity.
 This idea is combined in Christ. When he rose from Mount Olivet, he took wing All up and down his life you see the up lifting divinity. It glowed in his fore head. It flashed in his eyes. Its ca dences were heard in his voice. But he was also very human. It was the hand under the wing that touched the woes of the world and took hold of the sym pathies of the centuries. Watch his hand before it was spiked There was dead girl in a governors house, and Christ comes into the room and takes her pale, cold hand in his warm grasp, and she opens her eyes on the weeping house. hold and says: Father, what are you crying about? Mother, what are you crying about?" The book says, "He took her by the hand, and the maid arose !" A follower, angered at an in- suit offered Christ, drew the sword from sheath and struck at man with the sharp edge, aiming, think, at his fore head But the weapon glanced aside and took of the right ear at its roots Christ with his hand reconstructed that wonderful organ of sound, that whisper ing gallery of the soul, that collector of vibrations, that arched way to the audi tory nerve, that tunnel without which all the musical instruments of earth would be of no avail The book says, "He touched his ear and healed him.. " Meeting full grown man who had never seen a sunrise, or 8 sunset, or flower, or the face of his own father or mother, Christ moistens the dust from his own tongue and stirs the dust into an eye saive, and with his own hands applies the strange medicament, and suddenly all the colors of earth and sky rush in upon the newly created optic nerve, and the instantaneous noon drove out the long night.
 When he sees the grief of Mary and Martha he sits down and cries with them. Some say it is the shortest verse in the Bible, but to me it seems because of its far reaching sympathies about the largest" Jesus weptP' So very, human. He could not stand the sight of dropsy or epilepsy or paralysis or hun ger or dementia, but he stretches out his sympathetic hand toward it. So very, very human. Omnipotent and majestic and glorious, this angel of the new covenant, with wings capable of encir- cling universe, and yet hands of gen. tleness, hands of helpfulness, "The hands of man under the wings" ]" There is kind of religion in our day that my text rebukes. There are men and women spending their time in de- lectation over their saved state going about from prayer meeting to prayer meeting. and from church to church. telling how happy they are But show them a subscription paper, or ask them to go and visit the sick, or tell them to reclaim 8 wanderer, or speak out for some unpopular Christian enterprise, and they have bronchitis or stitch in the side or sudden attack of grip. Their religion is all wing and no hand They can fly Leavenward, but they cannot reach out earthward
 Lifting the Burden.
 While Thomas Chalmers occupied the chair of moral philosophy in St. An drew's university he had at the same time Sabbath school class of poor boys down in the slums of Edinburgh. While Lord Fitzgerald was travelling in Cana da he saw poor Indian squaw carrying crushing load, and he took the burden on his own shoulders. That was Christ like. That was "a hand under the wing" The highest type of religion says little about itself, but is busy for God and in helping to the heavenly shore the crew and passengers of this shipwrecked planet. Such people are busy now up the dark lanes of this city, and all through the mountain glens, and down in the quarries where the sunlight has never visited, and amid the rigging, helping to take in another reef before the Caribbean whirlwind. A friend was telling me of an exquisite thing about Seattle, then of Washington territory, now of Washington state The people of Seattle had raised gen. eroua cTIp If yuopav for tho Iohpctoxu1,