The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1895-05-24

out Of all the shipping Of the earth O.
all the seas the craft on which her sailo
boy is voyaging Yea, prayer can fl
clear down into the future. When TIL
father of Queen Victoria was dying, b.
asked that the infant Victoria might b.
brought while he sat up in bed, and tn
babe was brought, and the father prayed
"If this child should live to becom,
queen of England, may she rule in tn,
fear of Godi' Having ended his prayer
he said, "Take the child away. Bu
all who know the history of England
for the last so years know that the
prayer for that infant more than 7(
years ago has been answered, and with
what emphasis and affection millions OF
the queens subjects have this day in
chapels and cathedrals, on land and sea,
duplicated, "God save the queenr'
Prayer flies not only across continents,
but across centuries. If prayer had only
feet, it might run here and there and dc
wonders. But it has wings, and they
are as radiant of plume and as swift to
rise or swoop or dart or circle as the
cherubim' wings which swept through
Ezekiel's vision. But, oh, my friends,
the prayer must have the hand under
the wing, or it may amount to nothing
The mothers hand, or the father
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 faroff land for
which they have been praying. Stop
singing ely abroad, thou mighty Cos
pei" 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 in
vitation to come to religious meeting.
Useless Christian Hands.
1t 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
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 "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, 1.-THE Hand; It's Mechanism
and Vital Endowments as Evincing De-
sign" Oh, the hand Its machinery be-
ginning 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
nbim! ''The likeness of the hands of
man was under the Wings
Christ's Uplifting Divinity.
This idea is combined in Christ When |
le rose from Mount Olivet, he took wing
All up and down his life you see the up
lifting divinity. 1t glowed in his fore
head. 1t flashed in lis eyes. Its Ca
lences were heard in his voice. But he
vas also very human. 1t was the hand
lnder the wing that touched the woes
If the world and took hold of the SYM
oathies 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,
,old hand in his warm grasp, and she
opens her eyes on the weeping house
hold and says: Father, what are you
,rying about? Mother, what are you
frying 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
md took off the right ear at its roots.
Christ with his hand reconstructed that
organ of sound, that whisper
ing gallery of the soul, that collector of
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 a full grown man who had
never seen a sunrise, or sunset, or
lower, or the face of his own father or
mother, Christ moistens the dust from
his own tongue and stirs the dust into
IN eye salve, and with his own hands
applies the strange medicament, and
all the colors of earth and sky
-ush in upon the newly created optic
nerve, and the instantaneous noon drove
out the long night.
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