Connecticut western news., 1900-02-01
FASHIONED BY GOD.
pR. TAlMAGE ExTCtS THE WONDERS OF THE HUMAN HAND.

Oar 'Physical Structure Proof of Di-
 vine wisdom-The Extended Hand
 the Symbol of Infinite Mercy and
 Love.
 tCopyright. Louis Klopsch. 1soo.l
 WARRINGTON, Jan. 2S.-The discourse of Dr. Talmage is a lesson of gratitude for that which none of us fully appre- ciate and shows the divine meaning in our physical structure; text, I Corin. thians xii. 21, The eye cannot say unto the hand, have no need of thee"
 These words suggest that some time two very important parts of the human body got into controversy, and the eye became insolent and full of braggado. cio and said: Il am an independent part of the human system. How far can see. taking in spring morning and midnight aurora. Compared with my self what an insignificant thing is the human hand, I look down upon it, There 1t hangs, swinging at the side, clump of muscles and nerves, and il cannot see an inch either way. It has no mster compared with that which beam forth" "What senseless talk, :" responds the hand. You, the eye, would have been put out long ago but for me. Without the food have earn. ed you would have been sightless and starved to death years ago. You can not do without me any better than can do without you" At this part of the disputation Paul of my text breaks in and ends the controversy by declar- ing, "The eye cannot say unto the hand, have no need of thee"
 Fourteen hundred and thirty-three times, as nearly as I can count by aid of concordance, does the Bible speak of the human hand. We are all familiar with the hand, but the man has yet to be born who can fully understand this wondrous instrument. Sir Charles Bell, the English surgeon, came home from the battlefield of Waterloo, where he had been amputating limbs and binding up gunshot fractures, and wrote a book entitled The Hand: It's Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evidencing Design" But it is so pro found a book that only scientist who is familiar with the technicalities of anatomy and physiology can under stand 1t.
 So we are all going on opening and shutting this divinely constructed in strument, the hand, ignorant of much of the revelation it was intended to make of the wisdom and goodness of God. You can see by their structure that shoulder and elbow and forearm are getting ready for the culmination in the hand. There is your wrist. with it's eight bones and their fragments in two rows. That wrist. with its bands of hbers and it's hinged joint and turn ing on two axes-on the larger axis moving backward and forward and on the smaller axis turning nearly round. And there is the palm of your hand. with its five bones. each having a shaft and two terminations. There are the fingers of that hand, with If bones, each finger with its curiously wrought tendons, five of the bones with ending roughened for the Judgment of the nails. There is the thumb, coming from opposite direction to meet the
 
 may clasp and hold fast that which you desire to take. There are the long nerves running from the armpit to the 46 muscles. so that all are under mas tery. The whole anatomy of yous hand as complex. as intricate. as sym metrical, as useful, as God could make 1t. What can 1t not do? It can climb, it can lift, 1t can push, it can repel, it can menace. it can clutch, it can deny. il can affirm, it can extend, it car weave. it can bathe, it can smite, it can humble, it can exalt, it can soothe, it can throw. it can defy. it can wave. 1t can imprecate, it can pray.
 Illustrates Divine wisdom.
 \ skeleton of the hand traced on blackboard or unrolled in diagram o- hung in medical museum is nightly l. illustrative of the divine wisdom and goodness, but how much more pleasing when in living action all it's nerves and muscles and bones and tendons an6. tissues and phalanges display whaI God invented when he invented th. human hand. Two specimens of 1t WIS carry at our side from the time wber in infancy we open them to take a toy till in the last hour of a long life Vt extend them in bitter farewell.
 With the divine help shall speak os the hand as the chief executive officer of the soul, whether lifted for defense or extended for help, or busted in the arts, or offered in salutation. or wruns in despair, or spread abroad in bene. diction. God evidently intended aE the lower orders of living beings should have weapons of defense, and hence the elephants tusk, and the horses hoof, and the cows horn, and the lions tooth, and the insects sting Having given weapons of defense to the lower orders of living beings, of course he would not leave man, ths highest order of living beings on earth defenseless and at the mercy of brutal or ruffian attack. The right-yea, the duty-of self defense Is so evident 1t needs no augmentation. The hand is the divinely fashioned weapon of de- fense. We may seldom have to use it for such purposes, but the fact that we are equipped insures safety. The hand is a weapon sooner loaded than any gun, sooner drawn than any sword It's fingers bent into the palm. it becomes a bolt of demolition.
 What a defense it Is against acci- dsnti There have been times in all our experiences when we have with the hand warded off something that would have extinguished our eyesight or broken the skull or crippled us for lifetime. While the eye has discovered the approaching peril the hand has beaten 1t back or struck 1t down or dis armed 1t. Every day thank God for your right hand, and if you want to hear its eulogy ask him who in swift revolution of machinery has had 1t crushed or at Chapultepec or South Mountain or San Juan Hill or Sedan lost if