The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1900-02-02

mana mas DcHlen " DuCk. OF SlTuCk "
down. or disarmed IT,. Every day thank
God for your right hand, and II you
want to hear its eulogy ask him who
in swift revolution Of machinery has
had II crushed. or at Chapultepec or
South mountain or San Juan hill or
Sedan lost IL.
And in passing let me say that he
who has the weapon OF the hand un-
injured and in full use needs no other.
You towards who walk with sword
cane or carry pistol in your hip
pocket had better lay aside your dead
~ weapon. At the frontier, or in bar
barous lands. or as an officer of the
law about to make arrest. such
arming may be necessary, but no citi-
zen moving in these civilized regions
needs such reinforcement. If you are
afraid to go down these streets or
along these country roads without
dagger or firearms, better ask your
grandmother to go with you armed
with scissors and knitting needle.
What towards. il not intended muir
dercrs. uselessly to carry weapons of
death! In our two hands God gave us
all the weapons we need to carry
Again, the hand Is the chief exec
utive officer of the soul for affording
help just see how that hand IS CON
structed. How easily you can lower
~ TO raise the fallen. How easily II
is extended to feel the invalid's pulse,
CT gently wipe away the tear Of or
nh 81 "a or
smooth the excited brow, or beckou
into safety. y the helping handsl
There are hundreds of thousands of
them, and the world wants at least
1000. 100000 of them. Hands to bless
others. hands to rescue others, hands
to save others. What are all these
schools and churches and asylums OF
mercy? Outstretched hands. What
arc all those hands distributing tracts
and carrying medicines and trying to
cure blind eyes and deaf ears and
broken bones and disordered intel
lects and hayward sons? Helping
hands. Let each one Of us add two
to that number IL we have two, or. If
through casualty only one add that
one. If these hands which we have
so long kept thrust into pockets
through Incidence or folded in indif-
ference or employed in writing wrong
things or doing mean things or heav-
ing up obstacles in the way OF right
eous progress might from this hour
be consecrated to helping others out
and up and on. they would be hands
worth being raised on the resurrec-
ton morn and worth clapping in eter-
nal gladness over world redeemed
The great artists OF the ages
Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci and
Quentin Matsys and Rembrandt and
Albert Durer and Titan - have done
their best picturing the face OF Christ,
but none except AIRY Scheffer seems to
have put much stress upon the hand of
Christ. Indeed, the mercy of that hand,
the gentleDess of that hand, is beyond
all artistic portrayal. Some of His mir
acles He performed by word OF mouth
and without touching the subject be-
fore Him. but most of them He per-
formed through the hand. Was the
dead damsel to be raised TO lifeP HE
took her by the hand" Was the blind
man to have optic nerve restored? "He
took him by the hand" Was the demon
TO be exercised from a suffering man?
"He took him by the hand" The peo-
pie saw this and besought Him to put
His hand on their afflicted ones.
His own hands free, see how the
Lord sympathized with the man who
had lost the use of his hand. II was
case Of atrOphy, IA wasting away until
the arm and hand had been reduced in
size beyond any medical or surgical
restoration. Moreover, il was his right
hand, the more important of the two,
for the left side in all its parts is weak
eT than the right side, and we involun-
tarily, in any eXigency, put out the
right hand because we know il Is the
best hand. So that poor man had lost
more than half of his physical arma-
ment. 1t would not have been so bad if
it had been the left hand. But Christ
looked at the shriveled up right hand
dangling useessly at the mans side
and then cried out with voice that had
omnipotence in it: stretch forth thy
right hand!" and the record is "he
stretched it forth whole ms the other
The blood rushed through the shrunk-
en- veins, and the shortened muscles
heightened, and the dead nerves
thrilled, and the lifeless fingers tingled
with resumed circulation, aud the re-
stored man held up in the presence of
the skeptical Pharisee one of Jehovah's
masterpieces perfect hand. No won
der that story is put three times in the
Bible, so that if sailor were cast away
on barren island, or n soldiers New
Testament got mutilated in battle and
whole pages are destroyed, the ship
wrecked or wounded man in hospital
would probably have at least one of
those three radiant stories Of what
Christ thought of the human hand.
pastor in his sermon told how
little child appreciated the value of
his hnnd whom bp ,UoS tOI1 ,b,t 90,