St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1898-10-29


can tell you how you can do more to
get your health back and your spirits
raised than by drinking gallons of bad
tasting water at Saratoga. Hamburg
or Carlsbad: Give to God, humanity
and the Bible ten per cent. Of all your
income, and it will make q new man
Of you, and from restless walking ON
the floor at night you shall have eight
hours sleep, without the help OF bro
mide Of potassium, and from NO appe-
tite you will hardly te able to wait for
your regular meals, and your wan
cheeks will fill up, and when you die
the blessings of those who but for you
would have perished will bloom all
over your grave.
Perhaps some of you will take this
advice, but the most of you will not
And you will try to cure your swollen
hand by getting ON it more fingers.
and your rheumatic foot by getting on
it more toes, and there will be . sigh
of relief when you are gone out of the
world; and when over your remains
the minister recites the words:
blessed are the dead who die in the
Lord" persons who have keen appre-
citation of the ludicrous will hardly be
able to keep their faces straight. But
whether in that direction, my words
do good or not, / am anxious that all
who have only ordinary equipment be
thankful for what they have and
rightly employ it. I think you all
have, figuratively as well as literally.
fingers enough. Do not long for him
dering superfuities. Standing in the
presence of this fallen giant of my
text, and in this post mortem examina-
ton of him let us learn how much bet
ter off we are with just the usual
hand, the usual foot. You have
thanked God for q thousand things.
but warrant you never thanked Him
for those two implements of work and
locomotion, that no one but the In
finite and Omnipotent God could have
ever planed or made-the hand and
the foot. Only that soldier or that
mechanic who in battle, or through
machinery, has lost them, knows any
thing about their value, and only the
Christian scientist can have any ap-
they are
Sir Charles Bell was 20 impressed
with the wonderous construction of
the human hand that when the earl
Of Dridgewater gave $4O,0 900 for essays
on the wisdom and goodness of God.
and eight books were written, Sir
Charles Bell wrote his entire book on
the wisdom and goodness of God as
displayed in the human hand. The
q bones In the hand and wrist with
cartilages and igaments and pha-
langes Of the fingers all made just
ready to knit, to sew, to build up, to
pull down, to weave, to write, to plow,
to pound, to wheel, to battle, to give
friendly salutation. The tips of its
fingers are so many telegraph offices
by reason Of their sensitiveness OF
touch. The bridges, the tunnels, the
cities of the whole earth are the VIC
tories of the hand. The hands are not
dumb, but often speak as distinctly as
the lips. With our hands we invite,
we repel, we invoke, we entreat, we
wiring them in grief. or clap them in
Joy, or spread them abroad in bene-
diction. The malformation OF the
giants hand In the text glorifies the
usual hand. Fashioned of God more
exquisitely and wont.erously than any
human mechanism that was ever con-
trived, I charge you to use it for God
and the lifting of the world out OF its
moral predicament. Employ it in the
sublime work of Gospel hand-shaking.
You can see the hand is just made for
that. Four fingers just set right to
touch your neighbor's hand on one
side, and your thumb set SO as to
clench it on the other side. BY all its
bones and joints and muscles and
cartilages and ligaments, the COM
manding you to shake hands, The
custom is rs old as the Bible, anyhow.
Jehu said to Jehonadab: rs thine
heart right as my heart is with thine
heart? If it be, give me thine hand"
When hands join in Christian saluta-
tion Gospel electricity thrills across
the palm from heart to heart, and
from the shoulder of one to the shouI-
der of the other.
With the timid and for their en-
couragement, shake hands. With the
troubled in warm-hearted sympathy,
shake hands. With the yonug man
lust entering business and discouraged
at the small sales and the large ex-
penses. shake hands. With the child
who is new from God and started on
unending journey, for which he needs
to gather great supply of strength, and
| who can hardly reach up to you now
because you are so much taller, shake
hands. Across cradles and dying beds
and graves shake hands, With your
enemies, who have done all to defamc
and hur. you, but whom you can al
ford to forgive, shake hands. At the
door of the churches where people 60
out, shake hands. Let pulpit shake
hands with pew, and Sabbath-day
shake hands with weekday, and earth
shake hands with Heaven. Oh. the
strange, the mighty. the underlined,
the mysterious, the eternal power OF
an honest UhuuSuhAAuS. AAAN NN-~-
ence between these times and the
mellenial times is that now some
shake hands, but then all will shake
hands, throne and footstool, across
seas, nation with nation, God and man.
church militant and church tr1um-
phant.
That il the most beautiful foot that
goes about paths of greatest useful.
ness. and that the most beautiful
hand that does the most to help 9TH
ers. / was reading OF three women
in rivalry about the appearance Of the
hand. And the one REDEEMED her
hand with berries, and said the beau
tiful tinRe made hers the most beau
tiful. And another put her hand in
the raountain brook and said, rs the
waters dripped on. that her hand Wal
the most beautiful. And another
,lucxed flowers on the bank. and un.
der the bloom contended that hc1
jhand was the most attractive. Then
Ia poor old woman appeared, and look
link up in her decrcpitude asked fol
aims. And all the women resolved Il
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