The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-02-02
VALUE OF THE HAND.
Dr.. Talmage Calls 1t the Souls
Executive Officer.
ItH COnstruetIsR Illustrates Divine
wisdom and Its Right Employ
ment Makes Mankind Bet
ter aad Happier.
copyright. 1900. by Louis Klopsch.l
Washington

Washington.
The discourse of DR.. Talmage is a
lesson of gratitude for that which
Lone of US fully appreciate and shows
the divine meaning in our physical
structure; text, l Corinthians 1921:
The eye cannot say unto the hand,
] have no need of thee"
These words suggest that some time
two very important parts of the hu-
man body got into controversy, and the
eve became insolent and full of brag-
gadocio and said: Il am an independ-
ent part of the human system. How
Gar I can see, taking in spring morning
and midnight aurora! Compared with
myself, what an Insignificant thing is
the human hand. / look down upon ii.
There it hangs, swinging at the side.
a clump of muscles and nerves, and
il cannot see an inch either way. Ii
has no luster compared with that which
I beam forth" What senseless talk"
responds the hand. You, the eve,
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.
than 7 can do without YOU" At this
part of the disputation Paul Of my
text breaks in and ends the controversy
by declaring: The eye cannot say
unto the hand, 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 book entitled: The
Hand; Its Mechanism and Vital En-
dowments as Evidencing Design" But
it is so profound a book that only
scientist who is familiar with the
1echnicalities of anatomy and physi-
ology can understand it.
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 elimination
in the hand. There is your wrist, with
fts 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
toe 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 ii bones,
each finger with its curiously wrought
tendons, five of the bones with end
ing roughened 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
46 muscles, so that all are under mas
terry. The whole anatomy of your hand
as complex, as intricate, as symmet-
ricaI, as useful as God could make it.
What can it not do? 1t can climb, ii
can lift, it can push, il can repel, it
can menace, it can clutch, il can deny,
il can affirm, it can extend, it can
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,
il can imprecate, it can pray.
\ skeleton of the hand traced on
blackboard. or unrolled in diagram, or
hung in medical museum, is nightly
illustrative of the divine wisdom and
goodness, but how much more pleas
ing when in living action all its nerves
and muscles and bones and tendons
and tissues and phalanges display
what God invented when He invented
the human hand. Two specimens of
il we carry at our side from the time
when in infancy we open them to take
a toy till in the last hour of long life
we extend them in bitter farewell.
With the divine help l shall speak |
of the hand as the chief executive Off !
Ger of the soul. whether lifted for de- |
fense, or extended for help. or busted |
in the arts. or offered in salutatiOn, or |
wrung in despair, or spread abroad in |
benedIction. God evidently intended |
ga NAiG AONCA NAANAS "a AANAAiS bNAAASS
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, the /
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 it
needs no augmentation. The hand |
Is the divinely fashioned weapon of
defense We may seldom have to use
it for such purposes, but the fact that
we are so equipped insures safety.
The hand is a weapon sooner loaded
than any gun, sooner drawn than any
sword. Its fingers bent into the palm,
il becomes a bolt of demolition. Sol
omon speaks OF the hands as the
"keepers of the house." or the defend
ers. Surely such a castle as the hu-
man body needs such protection as the
hand alone can offer.
What a defense it is against acci-
dentI There have been times in all
our experiences when we have with
the hand warded of something that
would have extinguished our eye