Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1895-05-23

turleS. III prayer had only feet, 1t might
run here and there and do wonders But
1T has wings, and they are as radiant
OF plume. and as swift to rise, or swoop,
or dart, or circle, as the cherubim's
wings which swept through Ezekiefs
vision. But, oh, my friends, the prayer
must have the hand under the wing, or
IL may amount to nothing. The mothers
hand, or the fathers hand, must write
to the hayward boy as soon as you can
hear how to address him. Christian
souls must contribute to the evangelism
of that far-off land for which they have
been praying. Stop singing Fly
abroad. thou mighty Gospel" unless
you are willing to give something of
your own means to make it fly. Have
you been praying for the salvation OF
a young mans soul? That is right; but
also extend the hand of invitation to
come to religious meeting. 1t always
excites our sympathy to see man
with his hand in sling. We ask him:
What is the matter? Hope it is not
felon'; or, Have your fingers been
crushed?" But nine out of ten of all
Christians are going their lifelong with
their hand in sling. They have been
hurt by Indifference, or wrong ideas of
what is best; or it is injured of conven-
tionalities; 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
push, to pull, to help, to rescue. Won
drous hand! You know something Of the
"Bridgewater Treatises." When Rev.
Francis Henry Bridgewater in his will
left $4,000 for essays on 1.-THE Power
Wisdom and Goodness of God, as Man.
ifested in the Creation" and Davies
Gilbert, the president of the Royal So
ciety, chose eight persons to write eight
books, Sir Charles Bell, the scientist,
chose as the subject of his great book:
"The Hand; it's Mechanism and Vital
Endowments as Evincing De-
sign" Oh, the hand! Its
machinery beginning 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 suggest
i've when it reached down to us from
under the wings of the cherubim! THE
likeness of the hands of man was un-
der the wings"
This idea is combined in Christ.
When he rose from Mt Olivet, he took
wing. All up and down his life you see
the uplifting divinity 1t glowed in his
forehead. 1t flashed in his eyes, it's
cadences were heard in his voice. But
he was also very human. 1t was the
hand under the wing that touched the
woes of the world, and took hold of the
sympathies of the centuries. Watch his
hand before it was spiked. There was
a dead girl in the 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
household, 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 a man with
the sharp edge, aiming, l think, at his
forehead. But the weapon glanced
aside and took off the right ear at its
roots Christ with his hand recon-
structed that wonderful organ of sound,
that whispering gallery of the soul, that
collector of vibrations, that arched way
to the auditory nerve, that tunnel with
out which all the musical instruments
of earth would be of no avail. The
Book says, He touched his ear and
healed him." Meeting a full-grown
man who had never seen a sunrise, or
a sunset, or a 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-salve, and with his
own hands applies the strange medical
ment, and suddenly all the colors of
earth and sky rush in upon the newly
created optic nerve, and the instan-
taneous noon drove out the long night
When he sees the grief of Mary and
Martha, he sits down and cries with
them. Some day it is the shortest verse
in the Bible; but to me it seems, be-
cause of its far-reaching sympathies,
about the largest Jesus Wept!' so
very human. He could not stand the
sight Of dropsy, or epilepsy. or paraly-
sis, or hunger, or dementia; but he
stretches out his sympathetic hand to-
ward it. So very, very human. ON
rtipotent, and majestic, and glorious,
this angel of the new covenant, with
wings capable of encircling a universe.
and yet hands of gentleness, hands of
helpfulness, THE hands of a man I'M
der the wings" There is a kind of re-
ligion in our day that my text rebukes.
There are men and women spending
their time in delectation 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 subscrip-
ton paper, or ask them to go and visit
the sick, or tell them to reclaim wan
derer, or speak out for some unpopular
christian enterprise, and they have
bronchitis, or stitch in the side. or sud-
den attack of grippe. Their religion is
all wing, and no hand. They can fly
but they cannot reach
out earthward.
In our time it is the habit to denounce
the cities, and to speak of them as the
perdition of all wickedness. Is it not
time for some one to tell the other side