Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1900-02-01
THE HANDS MISSION.
DR.. TALMAGE CALLS IT THE SOULS
EXECUTIVE OFFICER.
It's Construction illustrates Divine
Wisdom, nnd Its Right Employ
ment Makes Mankind Better and
Happier.
Copyright, Louis Klopsch. 1900.


WASHINGTON, Jan. 2S.-Thc discourse
of DR.. Talmagc is lesson of gratitude
FOR that which none of us fully appreci
ate and shows the divine meaning in our
physical structure; text, | Corinthians
Ali. II, 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 insolcnt and full of braggadocio
and said: Il am an Independent part of
tie human system. How far | can sec,
taking in spring morning and midnight
aurora. Compared with myself, what
m insignificant thing is the human hand.
| look down upon it. There it hangs,
swinging at the side, clump of muscles
and nerves. and it cannot see an inch eli
ther way. 1t has no luster compared
with that which beam forth" What
scnseless talk" responds the hand.
You, the eye, would have been put out
long ago but for me. without the food
have earned you would have been sight
less and starved to death years ago. You
cannot do without me any better than |
can do without you." At this part of
the dsputation Paul Of my text breaks in
und ends the controversy by declaring,
"Ihe eye cannot say unto the hand, !
have no need of thee"
Fourteen hundred and thirty-three
times, as nearly as 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 he born
who can fully understand this wondrous
instrument. Sir Charles Bell, the Eng
lish surgeon, came home from the battle
field of Waterloo, where he had been
amputatng limbs and binding up gun
shot Fractures, and wrote a book entitled
The Hand: Its Mechanism and Vital
Endowments as Evidenciug Design"
But it is so profound a book that only u
scientist who is familiar with the tech
nicaities of anatomy and physiology can
understand il.
So we are all going on opening and
shutting this diviney constructed instru-
ment-the hand-iguorant 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 tibers and its hinged joint
and turning on two aXes-on the larger
axis moving backward and forward, and
on the sElaIle' axis turning nearly round
And there is the palm of your hand, with
its five bones, each having n shaft and
two Examinations. There are the fingers
of that hand, with IA bones, each finger
with its curiously wrought tendons, five
of the bones with ending roughencd for
the Judgment 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 mastery.
The whole anatomy of your hand as COM
pick, as intricate. as symmetrical, as use
ful as God could make it. What can it
not do? /, can climb, it can lift, it can
push, it can repel, it can menace. it can
clutch it can deny, it can affirm, it can
extend, it can weave, it can battle, it can
smite, it can humble, it can exalt, it can
soothe, it can throw. it can defy. it can
wave, it can imprecate, it can pray
illustrates Divine Wisdom.
A skeleton of the hand traced on black
board, or unrollcd in diagram, or hung in
medical museum, is nightly illustrative
OF the divine wisdom and goodness, but
how much more pleasing when in living
action all its nerves and muscles and
bones and tcndons and tissues and pha-
langes display what God invented when
he invented the human hand. Two speci-
mems Of it we carry at our side from the
time when in infancy we open them to
take a toy till in the last hour of a long
life we extend them in bitter farewell.
ha hot CHI al -