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

rance, the starting stroke or Its bell
clearing the way to the place of casual
ty; and good souls like the mother who
came to the Howard mission, with its
crown of friendless boys picked up from
the streets, and saying. IF you have
crippled boy, give him to me; my dear
boy died with the spinal complaint"
and such an one she found and took him
home and nursed him till he was well.
1t would take a sermon three weeks
long to do Justice to the mighty things
which our cities are doing for the ur-
fortunate and the lost. Do not say that
christianity in our cities is all show.
and talk, and genuflexion, and sacred
noise. You have been so long looking
at the hand of cruelty, and the hand OF
theft, and the hand of fraud, and the
hand of outrage, that you have not suf-
ficiently appreciated the hand of help.
stretched forth from the doors and win
dows of churches, and from merciful
institutions, the Christ-liks hand, the
cherubic hand, 'the hand under the
wings"
There is also in my subject the sug-
sestion of rewarded work for God and
righteousness. When the wing went
the hand went. When the wing ascend
useful and Christian hand there will be
elevation celestial and eternal. Expect
no human gratitude, for it will not
come. That was wise thing Fenelon
wrote to his friend: Il am very glad,
my dear, good fellow, that you are
pleased with one of my letters which
has been shown to you. You are right
in saying and believing that ask little
OF men in general. / try to do much
for them and to expect nothing in re-
turn. 1 find a decided advantage in
these terms. On these terms 1 defy
them to disappoint me-" But, my
hearers, the day cometh when your
work, which perhaps no one has no
ticed, or rewarded, or honored, will rise
to heavenly recognition. While have
been telling you that the hand was un-
der the wing of the cherubim, 1 want
you to realize that the wing was over
the hand. Perhaps reward may not come
to you right away Washington lost
more battles than he won, but he tri-
umphed at the last. Walter Scott, in
boyhood, was called 1.-The Greek Block
head;" but what height of renown did
he not afterward tread? And 1 promise
you victory further on and higher up;
If not in this world, then in the next.
Oh, the heavenly day when your lifted
hand shall be gloved with what honors,
its fingers enringed with what jewels,
it's wrist clasped with what splendors!
Come up and take it, you Christian
woman, who served at the washtub.
Come up and take it, you Christian
shoemaker, who pounded the shoe-last.
Come up and take it, you professional
nurse, whose compensation never fully
paid for broken nights and the whims
and struggles of delirious sick-rooms.
Come up and take it, you firemen. be-
sweated, far down amid the greasy ma
chinery of ocean steamers, and we con-
ductors and engineers on railroads,
that knew no Sunday, and whose ring
ing bells and loud whistle never warned
off your own anxieties. Come up and
take it, you mothers, who rocked and
lullabied the family brood until they
took wing for other nests, and never
appreciated what you had done and suf-
fered for them. Your hand was well
favored when you were young, and it
was beautiful hand, so well rounded
so graceful that many admired and eu-
logized it; but hard work calloused it,
and twisted it, and self-sacrificing toll
for others paled it, and many household
griefs thinned it, and the ring which
went on only with push at the mar
riage altar, now is too large, and falls
off, and again and again you have lost
it. Poor hand! Weary hand! WORKOUT
hand! But God will reconstruct it, re-
animate it, readorn 1t, and all heaven
will know the story of that hand. What
fallen ones it lifted up! What tears it
wiped away! What wounds it band
aged! What lighthouses it kindled!
What storm tossed ships it brought in
to the pearl-beached harbor Oh, / am
so glad that in the vision of my text,
Ezekiel saw the wing above the hand
Roll on that everlasting rest for all the
toiling, and misunderstood, and suffer-
ing, and weary children of God, and
know right we'll that to join your hand
at last emancipated from the struggle,
will be the soft hand, the gentle hand
the triumphant hand of Him who
wipeth away all tears from all faces
That will be the palace of the king Of
which the poet sang in somewhat
Scotch dialect:
It's a bonnie, bonnie warl that we're
Twin in the moo,
An sunny is the lam we aften traivel
thro';
But in vain we look for something to
which DOR hearts can cling,
For its beauty is as nothing to the pal
ace O. the king.
We see cor frien's await us over yon-
der at his gate:
Then let us a be ready, for we ken it's
gettin' late;
Let DOR lamps be brightly burnin'; let's
raise DOR voice an sing:
Soon we'll meet, to part nae mair 4 the