311. Wing and Hand

Wing and Hand

Eze_10:21 : ’93The likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings.’94

While tossed on the sea between Australia and Ceylon, I first particularly noticed this text, of which then and there I made memorandum. This chapter is all a-flutter with cherubim. Who are the cherubim? An order of angels radiant, mighty, intelligent, adoring, worshipful. When painter or sculptor tried in temple at Jerusalem, or in marble of Egypt to represent the cherubim, he made them part lion, or part ox, or part eagle. But much of that is an unintended burlesque of the cherubim whose majesty, and speed, and splendor we will never know until lifted into their presence we behold them for ourselves, as I pray by the pardoning grace of God we all may. But all the accounts Biblical, and all the suppositions human, represent the cherubim with wings, each wing vaster, more imposing than any plumage that ever floated in earthly atmosphere. Condor in flight above Chimborazo, or Rocky Mountain eagle aiming for the noonday sun, or albatross in play with ocean tempest, presents no such glory. We can get an imperfect idea of the wing of cherubim by the only wing we see’97the bird’92s pinion’97which is the arm of the bird, but in some respects more wondrous than the human arm; with power of expansion and contraction; defying all altitudes and all abysms; the bird looking down with pity upon boasting man as he toils up the sides of the Adirondacks, while the wing with a few strokes puts the highest crags far beneath claw and beak. But the bird’92s wing is only a feeble suggestion of cherubim’92s wing. The greatness of that, the rapidity of that, the radiance of that, the Bible again and again sets forth.

My attention is not more attracted by those wings than by what they reveal when lifted. In two places in Ezekiel we are told there were hands under the wings; human hands; hands like ours: ’93The likeness of the hands of a man was under the wings.’94 We have all noticed the references to the wing of the cherubim, but no one seems yet to have noticed the human hand under the wing. There are whole sermons, whole anthems, whole doxologies, whole millenniums in that combination of hand and wing. If this world is ever brought to God, it will be by appreciation of the fact that supernatural and human agencies are to go together; that which soars, and that which practically works; that which soars into the heavens, and that which reaches forth to earth; the joining of the terrestrial and the celestial; the hand and the wing. We see this union in the construction of the Bible. The wing of inspiration is in every chapter. What realms of the ransomed earth did Isaiah fly over? Over what battlefields for righteousness; what coronations; what dominions of gladness; what rainbows around the throne did St. John hover? But in every book of the Bible you just as certainly see the human hand that wrote it. Moses, the lawyer, showing his hand in the Ten Commandments, the foundation of all good legislation; Amos, the herdsman, showing his hand in similes drawn from fields and flocks; the fishermen apostles showing their hands when writing about Gospel nets; Luke, the physician, showing his hand by giving especial attention to the record of diseases cured; Paul showing his scholarly hand by quoting from heathen poets, and making arguments about the Resurrection that stand as firmly as on the day he planted them; and St. John shows his hand by taking his imagery from the appearance of the bright waters spread around the Island of Patmos at hour of sunset, when he speaks of the sea of glass mingled with fire; scores of hands writing the parables, the miracles, the promises, the hosannas, the raptures, the consolations, the woes of ages. Oh, the Bible is so human; so full of heart-beats; so sympathetic; so wet with tears; so triumphant with palm-branches, that it takes hold of the human race as nothing else ever can take hold of it’97each writer in his own style; Job, the scientific; Solomon, the king-philosophic; Jeremiah, the despondent; Daniel, the sagacious and heroic’97why, we know their style so well that we need not look to the top of the page to see who is the author. No more conspicuous the uplifting wing of inspiration than the hand, the warm hand, the flexible hand, the skillful hand of human instrumentality. ’93The likeness of the hands of a man was under the wings.’94

Again, behold this combination of my text in all successful Christian work. We stand or kneel in our pulpits, and social meetings, and reformatory associations, offering prayer. Now, if anything has wings, it is prayer. It can fly farther and faster than anything I can now think of. In one second of time from where you sit, it can fly to the throne of God and bring the blessing in England. In one second of time from where you sit, it can fly to the throne of God, and its effect be felt in India. It can girdle the earth in a shorter time than you can seal a letter, or clasp a belt, or hook an eye. Wings, whether that prayer starts from an infant’92s tongue, or the trembling lip of a centenarian, rising from the heart of a farmer’92s wife standing at the dashing churn, or before the hot breath of a country oven, they soar away, and pick out of all the shipping of the earth, on all the seas, the craft on which her sailor boy is voyaging. Yea, prayer can fly clear down into the future. When the father of Queen Victoria was dying, he asked that the infant Victoria might be brought while he sat up in bed; and the babe was brought, and the father prayed, ’93If this child should live to become Queen of England, may she rule in the fear of God!’94 Having ended his prayer, he said, ’93Take the child away.’94 But all who know the history of England for the last fifty years know that the prayer for that infant more than seventy years ago has been answered, and with what emphasis and affection millions of the Queen’92s subjects have this day in chapels and cathedrals, on land and sea, supplicated, ’93God save the Queen!’94 Prayer flies not only across continents, but across centuries. If prayer had only feet, it might run here and there and do wonders. But it has wings, and they are as radiant of plume, and as swift to rise, or swoop, or dart, or circle, as the cherubim’92s wings which swept through Ezekiel’92s vision.

But the prayer must have the hand under the wing, or it may amount to nothing. The mother’92s hand, or the father’92s hand, must write to the wayward boy as soon as they can hear how to address him. Christian souls must contribute to the evangelism of that far-off land for which they have been praying. Stop singing, ’93Fly abroad, thou mighty Gospel,’94 unless you are willing to give something of your own means to make it fly. Have you been praying for the salvation of a young man’92s soul? That is right; but also extend the hand of invitation to him to come to a religious meeting. It always excites our sympathy to see a man with his hand in a sling. We ask him, ’93What is the matter? Hope it is not a felon;’94 or, ’93Have your fingers been crushed?’94 But nine out of ten of all Christians are going their life long with their hand in a sling. They have been hurt by indifference, or by wrong ideas of what is best; or it is injured of conventionalities; and they never put forth that hand to lift, or help, or rescue any one. They pray, and their prayer has wings, but there is no hand under the wings.

From the very structure of the hand, we might make up our mind as to some of the things it was made for: to hold fast, to lift, to push, to pull, to help, and to rescue. And endowed with two hands, we might take the broad hint that for others as well as for ourselves we were to hold fast, to lift, to push, to pull, to help, to rescue. Wondrous hand! Its machinery beginning at the shoulder, and working through shafts of bone, upper arm and forearm, down to the eight bones of the wrist, and the five bones of the palm, and the fourteen bones of the fingers and thumb, and composed of a labyrinth of muscle, and nerve, and artery, and flesh, which no one but Almighty God could have planned or executed. But how suggestive when it reached down to us from under the wings of the cherubim! ’93The likeness of the hands of a man was under the wings.’94

This idea is combined in Christ. When he rose from Mt. Olivet, he took wing. All up and down his life you see the uplifting divinity. It glowed in his forehead. It flashed in his eyes. Its cadences were heard in his voice. But he was also very human. It was the hand under the wing that touched the woes of the world, and took hold of the sympathies of the centuries. Watch his hand before it was spiked. There was a dead girl in a governor’92s house, and Christ comes into the room and takes her pale, cold hand in his warm grasp, and she opens her eyes on the weeping household, and says, ’93Father, what are you crying about? Mother, what are you crying about?’94 The Book says, ’93He took her by the hand, and the maid arose.’94 A follower, angered at an insult offered Christ, drew the sword from sheath and struck at a man with the sharp edge, aiming, I think, at his forehead. But the weapon glanced aside and took off the right ear at its roots. Christ with his hand reconstructed that wonderful organ of sound, that whispering gallery of the soul, that collector of vibrations, that arched way to the auditory nerve, that tunnel without which all the musical instruments of earth would be of no avail. The Book says, ’93He touched his ear and healed him.’94 Meeting a full-grown man who had never seen a sunrise, or a sunset, or a flower, or the face of his own father or mother, Christ, from his own tongue, moistens the dust and stirs it into an eye-salve, and with his own hands applies the strange medicament, and suddenly all the colors of earth and sky rush in upon the newly-created optic nerve, and the instantaneous noon drives out the long night. When he sees the grief of Mary and Martha, he sits down and cries with them. Some say it is the shortest verse in the Bible; but to me it seems, because of its far-reaching sympathies, about the longest’97’94Jesus wept!’94 So very human. He could not stand the sight of dropsy, or epilepsy, or paralysis, or hunger, or dementia; but he stretches out his sympathetic hand toward it. So very, very human. Omnipotent, and majestic, and glorious, this Angel of the New Covenant, with wings capable of encircling a universe, and yet hands of gentleness, hands of helpfulness, ’93The hands of a man under the wings.’94

There is a kind of religion in our day that my text rebukes. There are men and women spending their time in delectation over their saved state, going about from prayer-meeting to prayer-meeting, and from church to church, telling how happy they are. But show them a subscription paper, or ask them to go and visit the sick, or tell them to reclaim a wanderer, or speak out for some unpopular Christian enterprise, and they have bronchitis, or stitch in the side, or sudden attack of grippe. Their religion is all wing, and no hand. They can fly heavenward, but they cannot reach out earthward.

While Thomas Chalmers occupied the chair of moral philosophy in St. Andrews University, he had at the same time a Sabbath-school class of poor boys down in the slums of Edinburgh. While Lord Fitzgerald was traveling in Canada, he saw a poor Indian squaw carrying a crushing load, and he took the burden on his own shoulders. That was Christ-like. That was ’93a hand under the wing.’94 The highest type of religion says little about itself, but is busy for God and in helping to the heavenly shore the crew and passengers of this shipwrecked planet. Such people are busy now up the dark lanes of our cities, and all through the mountain glens, and down in the quarries where the sunlight has never visited, and amid the rigging, helping to take in another reef before the Carribbean whirlwind. A friend was telling me of an exquisite thing about Seattle, then of Washington Territory, now of Washington State. The people of Seattle had raised a generous sum of money for the Johnstown sufferers from the flood. A few days after, Seattle was destroyed by fire. I saw the city while the people were living in tents. In a public meeting, some one proposed that the money raised for Johnstown be used for the relief of their own city, and the cry was ’93No! No! No! Send the money to Johnstown,’94 and by acclamation the money was so sent. Nothing more beautiful or sublime than that. Under the wing of fire that smote Seattle, the sympathetic hand, the helping hand, the mighty hand of Christian relief for people thousands of miles away. Why, there are a hundred thousand men and women whose one business is to help others. Helping hands, inspiring hands, lifting hands, emancipating hands, saving hands. Sure enough, those people had wings of faith, and wings of prayer, and wings of consolation, but ’93the likeness of the hands of a man was under the wings.’94 There was much sense in that which the robust boatman said when three were in a boat off the coast in a sudden storm that threatened to sink the boat, and one suggested that they all kneel down in the boat to pray, and the robust man took hold of the oar and began to pull, saying, ’93Let you, the strong, stout fellow, lay hold the other oar, and let the weak one who cannot pull give himself up to prayer.’94 Pray by all means; but at the same time pull with all your might for the world’92s rescue. An Arctic traveler hunting beaver while the ice was breaking up, and supposing that there was no human being within a hundred miles, heard the ice crackle, and lo! a lost man, insane with hunger and cold, was wading in the icy water. The explorer took the man into his canoe and made for land, and the people gathered on the shore. All the islanders had been looking for the lost man, and finding him, according to prearrangement all the bells rang, and all the guns fired. Oh, you can make a gladder time among the towers and hilltops of heaven if you can fetch home a wanderer.

In our time, it is the habit to denounce the cities, and to speak of them as the focus of all wickedness. Is it not time for some one to tell the other side of the story and to say that the city is the heaven of practical helpfulness? Look at the embowered and fountained parks, where the invalids may come and be refreshed; the Bowery Mission, through which annually over one hundred thousand come to get bread for this life, and bread for the life to come, all the pillows of that institution under the blessing of him who had not where to lay his head; the free schools, where the most impoverished are educated; the hospitals for broken bones; the homes for the restoration of intellects astray; the Orphan House, father and mother to all who come under its benediction; the Midnight Missions, which pour mid-noon upon the darkened; the Prison Reform Association; the Houses of Mercy; the Infirmaries; the Sheltering Arms; the Bethesda Mission; the Aid Societies; the Industrial Schools; the Sailors’92 Snug Harbor; the Foundling Asylums; the Free Dispensaries, where greatest scientific skill feels the pulse of wan pauper; the ambulance, the startling stroke of its bell clearing the way to the place of casualty; and good souls like the mother who came to the Howard Mission, with its crowd of friendless boys picked up from the streets, and saying, ’93If you have a crippled boy, give him to me; my dear boy died with the spinal complaint,’94 and such a one she found and took him home and nursed him till he was well. It would take a sermon three weeks long to do justice to the mighty things which our cities are doing for the unfortunate and the lost. Do not say that Christianity in our cities is all show, and talk, and genuflexion, and sacred noise. You have been so long looking at the hand of cruelty, and the hand of theft, and the hand of fraud, and the hand of outrage, that you have not sufficiently appreciated the hand of help, stretched forth from the doors and windows of churches, and from merciful institutions, the Christ-like hand, the cherubic hand, ’93the hands under the wings.’94

There is also in my subject the suggestion of rewarded work for God and righteousness. When the wing went the hand went. When the wing ascended the hand ascended; and for every useful and Christian hand there will be elevation celestial and eternal. Expect no human gratitude, for it may not come. That was a wise thing Fenelon wrote to his friend: ’93I am very glad, my dear, good fellow, that you are pleased with one of my letters which has been shown to you. You are right in saying and believing that I ask little of men in general. I try to do much for them and to expect nothing in return. I find a decided advantage in these terms. On these terms I defy them to disappoint me.’94 But, the day cometh when your work, which perhaps no one has noticed, or rewarded, or honored, will rise to heavenly recognition. While I have been telling you that the hand was under the wing of the cherubim, I want you to realize that the wing was over the hand. Perhaps reward may not come to you right away. Washington lost more battles than he won, but he triumphed at the last. Walter Scott, in boyhood, was called ’93The Blockhead;’94 but what height of renown did he not afterward tread? And I promise you victory further on and higher up; if not in this world, then in the next. Oh, the heavenly day when your lifted hand shall be gloved with what honors, its fingers enringed with what jewels, its wrist clasped with what splendors! Come up and take it, you Christian woman, who served at the washtub. Come up and take it, you Christian shoemaker, who pounded the shoe-last. Come up and take it, you professional nurse, whose compensation never fully paid for broken nights and the whims and struggles of delirious sick-rooms. Come up and take it, you firemen, besweated, far down amid the greasy machinery of ocean steamers, and you conductors and engineers on railroads that knew no Sunday, and whose ringing bells and loud whistle never warned off your own anxieties. Come up and take it, you mothers, who rocked and lullabied the family brood until they took wing for other nests, and never appreciated what you had done and suffered for them. Your hand was well favored when you were young, and it was a beautiful hand, so well rounded, so graceful that many admired and eulogized it; but hard work calloused it, and twisted it, and self-sacrificing toil for others paled it, and many household griefs thinned it, and the ring which went on only with a push at the marriage altar, now is too large, and falls off, and again and again you have lost it. Poor hand! Weary hand! Worn-out hand! But God will reconstruct it, reanimate it, readorn it, and all heaven will know the story of that hand. What fallen ones it lifted up! What tears it wiped away! What wounds it bandaged! What lighthouses it kindled! What storm-tossed ships it brought into the Pearl-beached Harbor! Oh, I am so glad that in the vision of my text Ezekiel saw the wing above the hand. Roll on that everlasting rest for all the toiling, and misunderstood, and suffering, and weary children of God, and know right well that to join your hand, at last emancipated from the struggle, will be the soft hand, the gentle hand the triumphant hand of him who wipeth away all tears from all faces. That will be the Palace of the King of which the poet sang in Scotch dialect:

It’92s a Bonnie, Bonnie Warl’92 That We’92re Livin’92 in the Noo,

An’92 Sunny Is the Lan’92 We Aften Traivel Thro’92;

But in Vain We Look for Something to Which Oor Hearts Can Cling,

For Its Beauty Is As Naething to the Palace O’92 the King.

We See Oor Trien’92s Await Us Ower Yonder at His Gate:

Then Let Us A’92 Be Ready, for Ye Ken It’92s Gettin’92 Late;

Let Oor Lamps Be Brichtly Burnin’92; Let’92s Raise Oor Voice An’92 Sing:

Soon We’92ll Meet, to Part Nae Mair, I’92 the Palace O’92 the King.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage