The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1900-02-03
VALUE OF THE HAND.
Or. Talmage Calls It the Souls
Executive Officer.
tts Constructor illustrates Divine
wisdom and Its Right Employ
ment Makes Mankind Bet
ter and Happier.
downright, 1900. by Louis Klopsch.l
Washington. r

Copyright. 1900. by Louis Klopsch.l
Washington.
The discourse of DR.. Talmage is a 1
lesson of gratitude for that which
lone of US fully appreciate n shows
the divine meaning in u physical
structures; text. | Corinthians 1921:
'.The eye cannot say unto the hand
| have no need Of thee"
These words suggest that some time
W very important parts OF the hu-
man body got into controversy, and the
W. became insolent and full OF brag-
padocio and said: II am an independ-
ent part of the human system. How
far l can see. taking in spring morning
and midnight aurora! Compared with
myself, what an Insignificant thing is
tue human hand. / look down upon 1t.
There it hangs, swinging at the side,
a clump of muscles and nerves., apd
IL cannot see an inch either way. 1t
has no luster compared with that which
| beam forth" "What senseless talk
.esponds the hand. YOU, the eye
would have been put out long ago but
for me. Without the food l have
earned you would have been sight
less and starved to death years ago.
You annot do without me any better
than I can do without you" At this
part of the d%isputation Paul OF my
text breaks in and ends the controversy
by declaring: 1.-THE eye cannot say
unto the hand, l have no need OF thee.
Fourteen hundred and thirty-three
times, as nearly as l can count by aid
of concordance, does the Bible speak
of the human hand. We are all IA
miliar with the hand. but the man has
vet to be born who can fully under
stand this wondrous instrument. Sir
Charles Bell, the English surgeon, came
home from the battlefield OF Water
loo, where he had been amputating
limbs and binding up gunshot frac-
lures, and wrote a book entitled: 1.-The
Hand; Its Mechanism and Vital En-
dowments as Evidencing Design" But
it is so profound a book that only a
scientist who is familiar with the
t~echnicalities of anatomy and physi-
ology can understand it.
So we are all going on opening n
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 elimination
in the hand. There is your wrist, with
its eight bones and their ligaments in
two rows. That wrist, with its bands
of fibers and its 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 examinations. There are the
fingers of that hand, with IA bones,
each finger with its curiously wrought
tepdons, five of the bones with end
ing r~oughened for the lodgment of the
nails. There is the thumb, coming
from opposite direction to meet the
fingers, so that in conjunction they
may clasp and hold fast that which
you desire to take. There are the long
nerves running from the armpit to the
&C muscles, so that all are under mas
terry. The whole anatomy of your hano
as complex, as intricate, as symmet
rical, as useful as God could make it
What can it not do? 1t can climb, il
can lift, it can push, it can repel, i
can menace it can clutch, it can deny
it can affirm, it can extend, it car
weave, it can battle, it can smite, it cal
humble, it can exalt, it can soothe, i
can throw, it can DEFY, it a wave
it can impreca-c, it can pray.
A skeleton of the hand traced OIL
blackboard, or unrolled in diagram, O
hung in medical museum, is mightil,
illustrative of the divine wisdom an,
goodness, but how much more pleas
ing when in living action all its nerve
and muscles and bones and tendon
what God invented when He invente'
the human hand. Two specimens o
it we carry at our side from the tim
when in infancy we open them to tax
a toy till in the last hour of a long lf
we extend them in bitter farewell.
With the divine help l shall speal
of the hand as the chief executive off
Ger of the soul, whether lifted for dc
tense. or extended for help, or busie
in the arts, or offered in salutation, O
wrung in despair, or spread abroad i
benediotion. God evidently intende
all the lower orders of living being
should have weapons of defense, an
hence the elephants tusk, and tn
horses hoof, and the cows horn, an
the lions tooth. and the insects sting
| Having given weapons of defense t
the lower orders of living beings, c
course He would not leave man, tn
highes; order of living beings on eartl
defenseless and at the mercy of bruti
or ruflian attack. The right, yea, tn
duty Of sclf-defense is SO evident
needs no augmentation. The han
is the divinely fashioned weapon {
v defense. We may seldom have to us
it for such purposes, but the fact tht
we are SO equipped insures safet,
frl4 an1 t. -.l.