Connecticut western news., 1898-09-29

one but the minute and omnipotent God could have ever planned or made-tbe hand and the foot. Only that soldier or that mechanic who in battle or through machinery has lost them knows anything adequately about their value, and only the Christian scientist can have any appreciation of what di- vine masterpieces they are.
 The Hand That Works.
 Sir Charles Bell was SO impressed with the wondrous construction of the human hand that when the Earl of Bridgewater gave $40, 900 for essays on the wisdom and goodness of God and eight books were written Sir Charles Bell wrote his entire book on the wis dom and goodness of God as displayed in the human hand. The 27 bones in the hand and wrist with cartridges and fragments and phalanges of the fingers all made just ready to knit to sew, to build up, to pull down. to weave, to write, to blow, 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 vio- 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 benediction. The malformation of the giants hand in the text glorifies the usual hand. Fashioned of God more exquisitely and wondrous- ly than any human mechanism that was ever contrived, I charge you to use it for God and the lifting of the world out of its moral predioament. Employ it in the sublime work of gospel hand shak- ing. You can see the hand is just made for that. Four fingers just set right to touch your neighbours hand on one side, and your thumb set so as to clinch 1t on the other side. By all it's bones and joints and muscles and cartridges and fragments the voice of nature joins with the voice of God commanding you to shake hands The custom Is as old as the Bible anyhow. Jehu said to Jehon- adab: "Is thine heart right as my heart is with thine heart? If it be, give me thine hand" When hands join in Christian salutation, gospel electricity thrills across the palm from heart to heart, and from the shoulder of one to the shoulder of the other.
 With the timid and for their encour. agement, shake hands. With the trou- bled in warm hearted sympathy, shake hands. With the young man just enter ing business and discouraged at the small sales and the large expenses, shake hands. With the child who is new from God and started on intending journey, for which he needs to gather great supply of strength ahd 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 enc. mics, who have done all to defame and hurt you, but whom you can afford to forgive, shake hands. At the door of the churches where people come in and at the door of churches where people go 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 undefned, the mys- terious. the eternal power of an honest hand shakingl The difference between these times and the millennial times is that now soine shake hands, but then all will shake hands, throne and foot stool, across seas. nation with nation, God and man, church militant and church triumphant.
 The Human Foot.
 Yea, the malformation of this fallen giants foot glorifies the ordinary foot, for which I fear you have never once thanked God. The 26 bones of the foot are the admiration of the anatomist. The arch of the foot fashioned with grace and poise that Trajan's arch or Constantine's arch or any other arch could not equal. Those arches stand where they were planted, but this arch of the foot is an adjustable arch, g yielding arch, flying arch and ready for movements innumerable. The hu- man foot so fashioned as to enable 8 man to stand upright as no other crea- ture and leave the hand that would otherwise have to help in balancing the body free for anything 1t chooses The foot of the camel fashioned for the sand, the foot>of the bird fashioned for the tree branch, the foot of the hind fash toned for the slippery rock, the foot of the lion fashioned to rend its prey, the foot of the horse fashioned for the solid earth, but the foot of man made to cross the desert or climb the tree or scale the cliff or walk the earth or go anywhere he needs to go.
 With that divine triumph of anatomy in your possession where do you walk? In what path of righteousness or what path of sin have you set it down? Where have you left the mark of your foot steps? Amid the petrifactions in the rocks have been found the mark of the feet of birds and beasts of thousands of years ago. And God can trace out all the footsteps of your lifetime, and those you made 50 years ago are as plain as those made in the last soft weather, all of them petrified for the judgment day. Oh, the foot Give me the autobiography of your foot from the time you stepped out of the cradle until today, and will tell your exact character now and what are your prospects for the world to come.
 That there might be no doubt about the fact that both these pieces of divine mechanism, hand and foot, belong to Christ's service both hands of Christ and both feet of Christ were spiked on the cross. Right through the arch of both his feet to the hollow of his instep went the iron of torture, and from the palm of his hand to the back of it, and there is not muscle or nerve ST bone among the 27 bones of hand and wrist or among the 26 bones of the foot but it belongs to him now and forever.
 The Beauty of Service.
 That is the most beautiful foot that goes about paths of greatest usefulness and that the most beautiful hand that does the most to help others I was