Psalms 94:9-10

He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?

He that formed the eye, shall He not see?

Evolution and design

These words contain the germ of all natural and moral philosophy. There are two great underlying ideas--First, the abstract argument from design that intention and purpose, not blind chance, has evolved the most wondrous mechanism of the animal frame; second, the parallelism between the laws and working of mind and of matter, proceeding from one and the same Author. Each has its laws of sequence, causes produce results, and those results intended and foreseen in both cases alike. As the ear is made for hearing and the eye for seeing, so He that gave man knowledge, or, what is the same thing, the power of acquiring knowledge, intends it to be used; and if, as in the case of the heathen, the moral light is perverted, suffering, punishment, as a necessary law or consequence must ensue. Chance is set aside, as it is now by the student of physical science, dismissed like the older idea of fate. On the scientific doctrine of chances, the evolution of such a mechanism as the eye is, as has been shown by Professor Pritchard, almost incalculable. “Blind law,” the next hypothesis, is equally insufficient. Hence some of the ablest exponents of the doctrine of evolution maintain that the circle of evolving laws or forces must certainly be ruled by some Intelligence, either inherent and immanent, or else transcendental and probably personal, guiding and superior to them all. One of the foremost living naturalists and a champion of the doctrines of evolution maintains

(1) that atoms are centres of force,

(2) that force is known to us as Will,

(3) that the Will that governs the world is the will of higher intelligences, or of our own supreme intelligence; that we cannot account for man’s physical peculiarities, much less for his consciousness, his language, his volition, or his moral sense by evolution simply, that there is a feeling, a “sense of right and wrong in our nature, antecedent to, and independent of experiences of utility” (Wallace).

A “Blind Intelligence,” immanent in matter or not, by no means solves the problem. “What are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalculae or animal life, not alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself, emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the “mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation.” But when, passing beyond the notion of a blind intelligence, we accept the fact that He that made the eye could see, that there is a relation between a personal Supreme Being, and His creation; we find far fewer difficulties. There are difficulties, but the fact of the possibility of the theory is admitted by all. John Stuart Mill designated it as the most persuasive of all arguments for Theism. It explains the world; and, what is more, it does what no other theory does, it finds a first ground for all existing things. The theory of design stands undisturbed by the doctrine of evolution. No laws impressed upon matter or upon mind, banish a God from the world He has made. We do not necessarily press the idea of design in each detail, but we maintain that, throughout the universe, there is a general fitness, a correlation of function with power, which point to a prescient antecedent Intelligence. Above all is this correlation manifest in organic structures, animal and vegetable. Mind is presented to us throughout the universe. And, as evolution in the organic world, carries out the Will of a prescient Intelligence, so, in the moral world, sin or evil, by a natural consequence, entails punishment. “He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not He correct, for He knoweth?” We are here brought face to face with the greatest admitted difficulty in the world as we know it: the existence of evil, and of suffering as a consequence of evil. Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to separate the material and moral government of the world. Parallel laws rule both. The existence of man now throws light on the final cause of the animated creation. To be consistent with the plan adopted by God, it was necessary to evolve successively the long line of vertebrates from the Silurian epoch to the present day. Man’s rudimentary organs are suggestive of evolution. But in his moral nature he stands apart from animals by a gap which neither observation nor philosophical reasoning has ever bridged. Nor can we conceive of any force capable of being differentiated into the Will, a power which may act in direct opposition to the forces of nature. Evolution could not by natural laws produce man. As Mr. Wallace writes, “If it be proved that some Intelligent power has guided or determined the development of man, we may see indications of that power in facts which by themselves would not seem to prove its existence.” Among these he adduces the brain, with its convolutions far beyond the needs or use of the savage, the absence of hair on the back of even the lowest races, and the hand, which has all the appearance of an organ prepared beforehand for the advance and use of civilized man, and one which was indispensable to render civilization possible. But why should evil be introduced? Simply because of God’s will. Man was made a moral free agent. Moral evil has been defined as the conscious abuse of means, instead of using them for the ends for which they were designed. An animal cannot be guilty because it obeys natural laws without reflecting upon them. Man can and does reflect, and uses his freewill to obey or not: but he has disobeyed. The heathen did not choose to retain God in their knowledge. Here comes in the distinctive feature of God’s moral government. In all else, a gradual process is wrought out by natural laws. But moral evil has come in, and, as nature cannot always effect a cure without external aid, so natural processes alone could not restore humanity. The impetus of evil was too strong; the natural instincts of goodness were overborne. God steps in as the physician, and by the revelation of His Son enables humanity to rise from its moral degradation. Neither out of Greek philosophy, nor out of Judaism, nor out of any other existing system could the teaching or the work of Christ have been evolved. The results have proved it. No other system has ever done for man what this has done, and is doing, in elevating the degraded. Christ’s teaching of universal love and everlasting life through Himself, has done what no other religion or philosophy ever attempted. If evil be the necessary concomitant of Freewill, it is no less a recognized law of nature as a result of the struggle for existence. Pain and death are spoken of as physical evils. Let it be so. But death is a necessary accompaniment in the natural world of the struggle for existence, and pain is a necessary and benevolent provision for maintaining the instincts of self-preservation. So in the moral world, misery, the result of sin, and sin itself, or the misuse of powers and faculties, are the necessary concomitants of Freewill. Why does evil exist? Why do animals exist? Why do I exist? There is no answer except for Christianity. There is but one explanation of our existence here, and Revelation gives it. It was to render man’s life here probationary in every way. The future existence of man is the only interpretation of his existence here, and the more we wait for our final redemption in patience and hope, the less shall we feel the penal character of physical evil here. And in spiritual life there is the same doctrine of development as in the natural, for what is the growth in grace but the evolution of the perfect man in Christ from the germ of the Holy Spirit’s planting? That Holy Spirit and His work may be an enigma, but it is no greater enigma than the origin of physical life. For both we claim an origin, and that origin divine. And the doctrine of evolution, which deduces all natural life from the germ, on the origin of which it does not speculate, is exactly parallel to the doctrine of theology, which deduces all spiritual life from the heaven-implanted germ, and all man’s spiritual future from the unfolding of that grand revelation of the Will of God, that “what the law could not do,” etc. (Romans 8:3). (Canon Tristram.)

The three/old argument

Reverence is at the root of all religion! When the libertines of the French Revolution crowned the Goddess of Reason with garlands, they worked hard to eradicate the old reverence for God out of the hearts of men! Reverence is not superstitious fear; it is not a degrading and debasing affright at the Great Power above us, who rules the world as with an iron sceptre: it is a reverence for God as He is, the embodiment of all holiness, justice, righteousness and truth. Who, in this sense, shall not fear Thee, O God?

I. The first argument is physical, and founded on the senses. Use has deadened our sense of wonder. The ear is the most wonderful harpsichord in the universe. It is exactly related to the constitution of things around us, working with ease, with pleasure, and with perpetuity, so that year after year it never requires returning, is unaffected by variations of temperature, and is not worn out with use--all this is very, very wonderful! It has opened up to us already a most wonderful world. Myriad are the voices of creation, the whispering of the breeze, the purling of the brook, the songs of birds, the rustling of the corn, the deep bass of the breaking waves of the sea, and all the varied tones of human voices. These sensations of hearing which might have been painful, are all full of pleasure. And so wonderful is the variety of sound, that we know the tones of our own children’s voices in an assembly. The prisoner knew the voice of the musician singing outside his cell. Mary knew her Master’s voice after the resurrection. The sheep on Israel’s mountains may hear the familiar call of Jesse’s shepherd son, but God’s sheep must not hear His voice! We are often told of the marvels of faith: of what men will believe. I have often longed to prepare a paper on the marvels of unbelief! With these facts of observation before us, with this present constitution of things, with man himself the great marvel of workmanship, well may we once more ponder the words, “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?” Then think of the eye; on its soft and delicate mirror, what pictures have been reflected: they have required no porters to carry them into the picture gallery within you, and memory, with little effort and no noise, re-touches them as they hang upon the wall. And is God, who created the eye, the only Being that is not to see? Is the finite being to watch, to behold, to observe, and the Infinite One to be sightless? What a marvel of unbelief is this! We have indeed reached the ultima thule of folly’s argument if we can believe this.

II. The second argument is historical, and founded on God’s moral government of nations. “He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not He correct?” God not only hears and sees, He acts. When the ungodly were exclaiming, as the psalmist says, “The Lord shall not see, the Lord shall not regard it,” the Lord was seeing, regarding, judging! Had they forgotten how Pharaoh and his host were drowned in the Red Sea? Had they forgotten the heathen priests (1 Samuel 5:4)? Had they forgotten the judgments on the priests of the house of Ahab (2 Kings 23:1)? We have a larger and broader background of history than they had! We have seen “joy and gladness taken away from the plentiful field, and from the land of Moab” (Jeremiah 48:32), and now pastures, vineyards, villages, cities, all are waste. Yes! “Moab is spoiled and gone up out of her cities” (Jeremiah 44:15). We can see from ruined ramparts Bozrah desolate as Isaiah says (Isaiah 33:10), “without man, without inhabitant, without beast.” We can look upon the high places of Eastern Judea, and remember the words of Jeremiah, “I beheld, and lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness,” etc. Yes, and far away from Judea we can walk amid the ruins of the idolatrous Egyptians, we can visit their pyramids and the remains of their stupendous temples, and we can turn to the words, “I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, it shall be the lowest of the kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more upon the nations.” We can visit Nineveh, and Babylon, and find the truth of our text written there. We can go to Hebron and Kerioth, and read the words of the old Hebrew prophets (Isaiah 27:10; Isaiah 22:4). “He that chastiseth the heathen, shall,” etc. In the light of these facts we need no voice from the heavens to give us the audible yea! And conscience and Scripture say the same. Is it wise, then, to live the frivolous, indevout lives that so many do? to risk our high estate as immortal beings?

III. The third argument is mental, and founded on the mind of man. “He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not He know?” Few study their own minds! I cannot think that they would indulge in such empty conceits about the future if they did! Any one mind is more wonderful even than a material universe! How noiselessly it works; how vast its store. Some minds, of course, illustrate this wonderfulness more than others. Historians like Hume, Macintosh, Macaulay, Lecky, must have the rich gatherings of years of study stored in their mental treasury. Let a man ponder himself, and then he will cease to be deluded by the sophistries of materialism! Two facts will be self-evident, one is personal consciousness--man is! He mingles with no other! If he is certain of anything, he can say, “I think, therefore I am.” The other fact is, a receptive power, man is constantly receiving, growing alike in the extent of his knowledge and in the capacity to know. Now whilst man has this consciousness himself, it is strange that the tendency of modern science should be to do away with the idea of a personal God, and to lose Him in some generalization of force or law. The psalmist anticipates this beautifully in these words: You know, you think! How came you to do it? “He that teacheth man knowledge,” etc. Yes, the teacher of knowledge knows. Let that thought comfort our hearts in all the bitter experience of grief. He knows. Many of our inner histories may be as difficult for others to interpret as Egyptian hieroglyphics. But He knows. Verily, then, there is a God that judgeth in the earth. Verily, then, there is a God that comforteth His people. Verily, then, there is a God that is able to help and willing to cast His shield over us in every time of battle and trouble. His eye is upon us, His ear is open to our cry, His judgment is not according to outward appearance, but His judgment is just and His thoughts are to us-ward: and once more the Saviour stands before us with open arms, saying, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (W. M. Statham.)

Views of the Divine character

The argument by which the being of a God is established is one of the simplest that can be conceived. We feel that we ourselves exist; we see the world, both of intelligence and of matter, existing everywhere without us; we know that neither we ourselves, nor any other human beings, were the original causes of the existence and powers which we and they possess. Matter, we not less irresistibly conclude, could not create itself. From what we feel in ourselves and see in others, and behold in the material world, we therefore rise to some higher Being and power--to some superior mind--till we reach one that is above all--a first cause, which must be immaterial and uncreated; and this cause is God. Whoever has ears to hear, or eyes to see, or an understanding to apprehend any truth, has, in these powers of body and of mind, a constant and indisputable evidence, if he would only attend to it, of the providence and government of God.

I. “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?” The wonderful mechanism of the human ear; its exquisite adaptation to the purpose which it is intended to serve; the delicate construction of some, and the stronger texture of other parts of its organization; the one so requisite to the acute discernment of the almost infinite variety of sounds that are conveyed to it, and the other to protect it from the external injuries to which it is constantly exposed: all these circumstances bespeak the existence and influence of a Power in its formation super-eminent alike in wisdom and in goodness. He who heard the groanings of Israel in the land of Egypt, and the prayer of Daniel in the lions’ den, heard also the cry of Abel’s blood from the field of fratricide, and the sigh of Jonah from the bowels of the deep. And His ear is not now heavy that it cannot hear. We may be bound in the arms of sleep, and incapable of being roused by the loudest noise around us; but He never slumbers nor sleeps: His ear is ever watchful and acute. We may, through inattention or ignorance, mistake one sound for another; but nothing can weaken or injure His power of perfect and intuitive discernment. We can hear a voice only when it is comparatively near us, and when unimpeded by natural obstructions to its conveyance; but, from the very ends of the earth, and throughout every region of the universe--from the depths of a dungeon, as well as the solitude of an unpeopled wilderness--every sound that is uttered enters His ear.

II. “He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” As, of all our senses, that of sight is the most important and, valuable, so its organs are the most exquisitely and delicately constructed; presenting us, in every part, with new and most demonstrative evidence, that He who formed them must be equally almighty and all-wise. Knowledge is to God what vision is to us. When, therefore, in the figurative language of Scripture, we speak of His eyes being in every place, beholding the evil and the good; of His eyes seeing and His eyelids trying the children of men; of the darkness and the light being both alike unto Him; and of His looking not on the outward appearance, but on the heart--we speak of His universal, intuitive, and penetrating knowledge of every object, and event, and being, through every region and spot of His universe, during every day and hour and instant of time. Appearances may deceive us, but nothing can impose on Him. We may be betrayed by an illusion of our senses, but His is an eye of unerring, penetrating and infallible knowledge.

III. “He that teacheth man knowledge, shall He not know?” Must not He who formed the human mind, with its wondrous complement of varied yet united, and, when in the state in which they originally came from Him, exactly balanced and harmonizing faculties, be perfectly acquainted with every movement of every one of them? He knows on what our affections are most constantly and supremely placed--whether on objects of present earthly endearment, and things that perish with the using; or on Himself and Christ, and the things that are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. He knows how our conscience is directed and influenced--whether by our own wayward passions, and the maxims and practice of the world around us, or by His unerring and holy will, by the dictates of His Word, and the motions of His Spirit; and whether it is insensible and hardened, sometimes roused, but again and more deeply deadened; or sensible and tender, alive and on the watch, as the monitor of His grace within us. He knows also the reception which we have given to the revelation of His mercy and will--the light in which we regard its intimations--the interest which we feel and take in its warnings and its promises--the faith which we exercise in the Saviour, whom it makes known to us--the submission which we give to His righteousness and law, or the impenitence and unbelief and disobedience with which we contemplate and think of His plan of reconciling and justifying and sanctifying grace. (D. Dickson, D.D.)

The Divine signature in man

The text is a beautiful statement of a principle which has always been held to have great argumentative force. It played a part in the mental history of the German philosopher Leibnitz. Suggested to him by a friend, who pointed one day to an open Bible, and asked, “Will not these words help you?” the words of our text became the motto and the keynote of his system, the pattern on which he constructed it, the statement in which he summarized it. We shall look at it, however, not in its philosophical, but its practical bearings, and select our illustrations accordingly.

I. The eye and the ear of perception. Simple observation, that is the thought we set out with: the power to discern, to discover, to watch, to know. And for the purpose we speak of--the purpose of mere perception--how marvellously are these instruments fitted! Take the eye, what a miracle of delicacy, adjustment, and minuteness we have there! “Whence is it,” Sir Isaac Newton asks, “that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom, and the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside a hard, transparent skin, and within transparent humours, with a crystalline lens in the middle, and a pupil before the lens, all of them so finely shaped and fitted for vision that no artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures, alter the most curious manner, to make use of it? These and suchlike considerations always have prevailed, and always will prevail, with mankind to believe that there is a Being who made all these things, and has all things in His care, and is therefore to be feared.” What a power to disturb and disquiet has the human eye! There is the eye of the warder, for instance, with its vigilance. When Lafayette was imprisoned at the time of the French Revolution, part of his punishment was this: that in the door of his cell there was a slit, and at the slit there was placed an eye, never closed, never withdrawn. And it was just the portion of his punishment he felt most intolerable. Or, again, there is the eye of the child with its innocence. That man, that woman must be far gone indeed who can consciously and deliberately sin with the clear, unsuspicious eye of a child turned upon them in the act, in wonder at its character or in ignorance of its guilt. Or, again, there is the eye of the professional man with its searching. Among the heathen recipes for virtue is this one by Cato, pathetic in its half-presentation of the truth: “I conceive,” he says, “that the best plan for cultivating goodness is continually to imagine the eye of some distinguished character fixed upon you.” What the pagan lawgiver commended as a matter of fancy, the Bible-taught believer acknowledges as a matter of sober, solemn fact.

II. The eye and ear of appreciation. What does the eye of the artist mean? It means the revelation of new sights, or rather the shedding of new glory on common and familiar sights. It means a deeper mystery in the sky, a softer shimmer on the sea, a fresher green in the woods, a richer purple on the heather, a brighter gold on the gorse, a lovelier glow in the sunset as it mirrors itself in the placid lake, or sheds itself upon Alpine snows, turning the white into orange and rose. What does the ear of the musician mean? It means a susceptibility to all sweet sounds, and these not only the strains of art, but the melodies of nature too. It means sympathy with song, whencesoever it arises--from the surge as it booms on the beach, from the rivulet as it chimes on the pebbles, from the birds as they pipe on the branches, from the wind as it harps on the pines, from the cataracts as they blow their trumpets from the steep. The eye and the ear of appreciation--this eye of the artist receptive of all fair visions, this ear of the musician receptive of all sweet tones--who gave them? And “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” He that created these faculties of appreciation, shall He not appreciate? He that bestowed these capacities of enjoyment, shall He not enjoy? He that formed the eye, in correspondence with all fair colours, shall He be blind? He that planted the ear, in responsiveness to all rich cadences, shall He be deaf? Nay, let me realize that He watches the unfolding of these colours, let me realize that He listens to the echoing of these cadences, drawing a joy out of each deeper than mine is, as the infinite is deeper than the finite--purer, too, as the absolutely and originally holy is purer than the frail, the imperfect, and the fallen.

III. The eye and ear of affection. We may look at these two senses as symbolical of the feelings that so often inform and direct them, the instincts of love, benevolence, and compassion, to which the eye and the ear are ministers, of which the eye and the ear are interpreters. So that the argument runs, “He that inspired these instincts, so real, so deep, so powerful, in the heart of humanity around, to soothe its sorrow, to help its weaknesses, to cement its relationships, all through social and family life--He that inspired these instincts in His creatures, shall He not Himself possess them, and that too in far higher measure?” While human friendship and human love remain to us, they will be all the more welcome and all the more precious, as windows through which we see the wealth of the Eternal sympathy, stepping-stones by which we may climb to the mystery of the Eternal love. Never let that man or woman despair of the pity and helpfulness of God while there remains to him or to her the beating of one kind human heart, still interested, still loving, still hopeful, still true. So long as that heart is there, it is a witness and a pledge of the friendliness of God’s heart, that great charity of His which suffers long and is kind, and which is still ready to receive you, still anxious to help you, if you will only believe Him, and go back. Yes, and when human friendships vanish, and human ties dissolve, when we can speak of them no longer as possessions of the present, but only as memories of the past, we can learn the lesson, we can use the argument notwithstanding. The eye that brightened with welcome at the sight of our coming, or moistened with sadness at the hour of our going, may have mouldered in the dust of the grave; the ear that lent itself--oh, how readily!--to the tale of our joys and sorrows, our successes and failures, may be sealed in the dulness of decay: but He that planted the eye and the ear lives on, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, unchanged in His sympathy, His helpfulness, and His love; and when father and mother forsake, then the Lord will take up. I say all this is comfort--comfort for those who are willing to accept of it, on God’s own terms, in God’s own way. Recognize Him as a Father, receive Him as a Father, revealed and guaranteed in Christ. (W. A. Gray.)

Man’s powers the gifts and emblems of God

I. Man’s powers are the gifts of God.

1. This fact should check all tendency to pride in the man of superior endowments.

2. This fact should check all tendency to envy in the man of inferior ability.

II. Man’s powers are the emblems of God. The argument implied is, that what He has given us, He has in Himself.

1. A sense of moral justice.

2. Affection for offspring.

3. Power of spontaneous action.

4. Sense of personality. In conclusion: Man! adore thy Maker. Wipe from the mirror of thy being all the pollutions of sin, that, having a pure heart, thou mayest see God Himself, and be blessed for evermore. (Homilist.)

The Planter of the ear must hear

I. The notion that God cannot hear or see is pernicious. We perceive that men who talked in this godless fashion were proud. Hence the prayer, “Lift up Thyself, Thou Judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud.” Pride is very apt to grow great when knowledge is small, and reverence is absent. Proud language usually goes with profane talk and blasphemous ideas; for it comes of the same kindred. “How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?. .. Their tongue walketh through the earth,” saith David. No bounds can be set to the evil perambulations of an atheistic tongue. Not even heaven itself is free from the assaults of its pride. They slander God Himself, because they imagine that He does not hear. Nor is this the end of the mischief. When the fear of God is taken away from men, they frequently proceed to persecute His servants. “They break in pieces Thy people, O Lord, and afflict Thine heritage.” If they cannot get at the leader, if they cannot smite the shepherd, they will at least worry the flock. “They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.” Take God away, and what a place this world would be! Without religion our earth would soon become a huge Aceldama, a field of blood. A world without God is a world without fear, without law, without order, without hope. Note well, that if we were persuaded that God did not hear, and did not see, there would be an end of worship. Would there not? Could you worship a deaf God? Nor is this all: it seems to me that there is, to a large extent, an end of the moral sense. If there be no God to punish sin, then every man will do as seemeth right in his own eyes; and why should he not?

II. The notion that God cannot see and hear is an absurd notion. The very idea of hearing seems to me to necessitate that He who conceived the idea, was Himself able to hear. He could not have borrowed the idea, for there was no other being but Himself in the beginning: whence took He the thought, but from His own Being? He that invented the idea, also planned the way by which hearing would become possible. What an intellect was that which forged the link between matter and mind, so that the movements of particles of air, and the impression made by these upon the drum of the ear should turn into the impressions upon mind and heart! And can you believe that this marvellous instrument for hearing was made by a deaf God, or a dead God, or an impersonal power; or that it came into existence through “a fortuitous concourse of atoms”? But even if you had an ear made--and I suppose that it would be no very great difficulty to fashion, in wax, or some other substance, an exact resemblance to an ear--could you produce hearing then? God alone gives the life which hears. That particular point in which motion is translated into audible sound--where is that? There is a spiritual something--the true man, and this it is which God makes. Do you know yourself? Could you put your finger on yourself? Oh, no; that mystic being, that strange, half Godlike existence, the soul, is not within the range of our senses. He that made the soul, has He no soul? Can He not hear?

III. That God hears His own must be especially certain, from the very argument of the text. “Why?” say you. Why, because they have new and spiritual ears, and they have God-given spiritual eyes; and He that planted the spiritual ear, shall He not hear? And He that formed the spiritual eye, shrill He not see? Do you imagine that if God has given us the grace to hear His voice, He will not hear us when we lift up our voices to Him? Rather let us each one say, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak; for He will speak peace unto His people and to His saints.” He has created in the minds of some of you a sense of need, and will He not pity you? You were not hungry for mercy; you were not thirsty for righteousness till His Spirit came and gave you life, and with that life the soul-hunger. Will He not satisfy the hunger He creates? Will He not fulfil the desire He has implanted? In addition to this, He makes us long after holiness; will He not work it in us? Does your child pine to be good, and can you help him to be good, and will you not do so? To the ear which God has enabled to hear His call the Lord will lend His own ear to hear prayer. He that makes us long for purity will work it in us.

IV. A belief what God hears and sees has a very beneficial tendency upon those who firmly hold it. It works good in a thousand ways. Time would fail me to recount a tithe of them. It may suffice to take a thought or two, and turn the matter over in our minds. If we feel that God sees and hears, what an incentive it is to do right, and to be valiant for the truth! Soldiers will play the man in the presence of their prince. If our Lord looks on, what will we not do and dare? The same sense of His presence will act as a check to any and every deed of sin. We cannot indulge the thought of evil when the Lord Himself hears that thought. Does the Lord look on, and shall I sin in His Divine presence? It acts grandly as a preservative against the desire of applause and the fear of man. He who knows assuredly that God hears him will speak the truth though all the world should listen, or though no one but God should hear him. The assurance that God sees and hears is a wonderful care-killer. Why should I be anxious? If the Lord knows our soul in adversity, and if His eye is ever upon us, are we not safe? And, oh, how this will tend to promote your fellowship with God! How we love Him who heareth us always! Since He is always seeing us, we learn to see Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The ear

Among the most skilful and assiduous physiologists of our age have been those who have given their time to the examination of the ear and the study of its arches, its walls, its floor, its canals, its aqueducts, its galleries, its intricacies, its convolutions, its Divine machinery, and yet, it will take another thousand years before the world comes to any adequate appreciation of what God did when He planned and executed the infinite and overmastering architecture of the human ear. The most of it is invisible, and the microscope breaks down in the attempt at exploration. The cartilage which we call the ear is only the storm door of the great temple clear down out of sight, next door to the immortal soul. Great scientists have attempted to walk the Appian Way of the human ear, but the mysterious pathway has never been fully trodden but by two feet--the foot of sound and the foot of God. Three ears on each side the head--the external ear, the middle ear, the internal ear, but all connected by most wonderful telegraphy. The external ear in all ages adorned by precious stones or precious metals. The Temple of Jerusalem partly built by the contribution of earrings, and Homer in the “Iliad” speaks of Hera, “the three bright drops, her glittering gems suspended from the ear”; and many of the adornments of modern times were only copies of her jewels found in Pompeiian museum and Etruscan vase. But while the outer ear may be adorned by human art, the middle and the internal ear are adorned and garnished only by the hand of the Lord Almighty. The stroke of a key of yonder organ sets the air vibrating, and the external air catches the undulating sound and passes it on through the bonelets of the middle ear to the internal ear, and the three thousand fibres of the human brain take up the vibration and roll the sound on into the soul. The ear so strange a contrivance that by the estimate of one scientist it can catch the sound of 73,700 vibrations in a second. The outer ear taking in all kinds of sound, whether the crash of an avalanche or the hum of a bee. The sound passing to the inner door of the outside ear halts until another mechanism, Divine mechanism, passes it on by the bonelets of the middle ear, and, coming to the inner door of that second ear, the sound has no power to come further until another Divine mechanism passes it on through into the inner ear, and then the sound comes to the rail track of the brain branchlet, and rolls on and on until it comes to sensation, and there the curtain drops, and a hundred gates shut, and the voice of God seems to say to all human inspection, “Thus far and no farther.” In this vestibule of the palace of the soul, how many kings of thought have done penance of lifelong study and got no further than the vestibule! Mysterious home of reverberation and echo. Grand Central Depot of sound. Head-quarters to which there come quick despatches, part the way by cartilages, part the way by air, part the way by bone, part the way by nerve--the slowest despatch plunging into the ear at the speed of 1,090 feet a second. Small instrument of music on which is played all the music you ever heard, from the grandeurs of an August thunderstorm to the softest breathings of a flute. Small instrument of music, only a quarter of an inch of surface and the thinness of one two-hundred-and-fiftieth part of an inch, and that thinness divided into three layers. In that ear musical staff, lines, spaces, bar, and rest. Oh, the ear, the God-honoured ear, grooved with Divine sculpture and poised with Divine gracefulness and upholstered with curtains of Divine embroidery, and corridored by Divine carpentry, and pillared with Divine architecture, and chiselled in bone of Divine masonry, and conquered by processions of Divine marshalling. The ear! A perpetual point of interrogation, asking How? A perpetual point of apostrophe appealing to God. How surpassingly sacred the human earl You had better be careful how you let the sound of blasphemy or uncleanness step into that holy of holies. The Bible speaks of “dull ears,” and of “uncircumcised ears,” and of “itching ears,” and of “rebellious ears,” and of “open ears,” and of those who have all the organs of hearing and yet who seem to be deaf, for it cries to them, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” To show how much Christ thought of the human ear, He one day met a man who was deaf, came up to him, and put a finger of the right hand into the orifice of the left ear of the patient, and put a finger of the left hand into the orifice of the right ear of the patient, and agitated the tympanum, and startled the bonelets, and, with a voice that rang clear through into the man’s soul, cried, “Ephphatha!” and the polypoid growths gave way, and the inflamed auricle cooled off, and that man, who had not heard a sound for many years, that night heard the wash of the waves of Galilee against the limestone shelving. To show how much Christ thought of the human ear, when the Apostle Peter got mad and with one slash of his sword dropped the ear of Malchus into the dust, Christ created a new external ear for Malchus corresponding with the middle ear and the internal ear that no sword could clip away. And to show what God thinks of the ear we are informed of the fact that in the millennial summer which shall roseate all the earth “the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped,” all the vascular growths gone--all deformation of the listening organ cured, corrected, changed. Are you ready now for the question of my text? Have you the endurance to bear its overwhelming suggestiveness? Will you take hold of some pillar and balance yourself under the semi-omnipotent stroke? “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?” Shall the God who gives us the apparatus with which we hear the sounds of the world not be able Himself to catch up song and groan and blasphemy and worship? Does He give us a faculty which He has not Himself? Drs.Wild and Gruber and Toynbee invented the acoumeter and other instruments by which to measure and examine the ear, and do these instruments know more than the doctors who made them? “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?” Just as sometimes an entrancing strain of music will linger in your ears for days after you have heard it, and just as a sharp cry of pain I once heard while passing through Bellevue Hospital clung to my ear for weeks, and just as a horrid blasphemy in the street sometimes haunts one’s ears for days, so God not only hears, but holds the songs, the prayers, the groans, the worship, the blasphemy. How we have all wondered at the phonograph, which holds not only the words you utter but the very tone of your voice, so that a hundred years from now, that instrument turned, the very words you now utter and the very tone of your voice will be reproduced. Amazing phonograph! But more wonderful is God’s power to hold, to retain. Ah! what delightful encouragement for our prayers! What an awful fright for our hard speeches! What assurance of warm-hearted sympathy for all our griefs!” He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?” (T. De Witt Talmage.)

The eye

The imperial organ of the human system is the eye. All up and down the Bible God honours it, extols it, illustrates it, or arraigns it. Five hundred and thirty-four times it is mentioned in the Bible. Omnipresence “the eyes of the Lord are in every place.” Divine care--“as the apple of the eye.” The clouds--“the eyelids of the morning.” Irreverence--“the eye that mocketh at its father.” Pride--“Oh, how lofty are their eye!” Inattention--“the fool’s eye in the ends of the earth.” Divine inspection--“wheels full of eyes.” Suddenness--“in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump.” Olivetic sermon--“the light of the body is the eye.” This morning’s text--“He that formed the eye, shall He not see?”

I. The human eye.. If I refer to the physiological facts suggested by the former part of my text, it is only to bring out in plainer way the theological lessons of the latter part of my text. “He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” I suppose my text referred to the human eye, since it excels all others in structure and adaptation. Man, placed at the head of all living creatures, must have supreme equipment, while the blind fish in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky have only an undeveloped organ of sight, an apology for the eye, which, if through some crevice in the mountain they should get into the sunlight, might be developed into positive eyesight. See how God honoured the eye before He created it. He cried until chaos was irradiated with the utterance, “Let there be light!” In other words, before He introduced man into this temple of the world He illuminated if, prepared it for the eyesight. And so, after the last human eye has been destroyed in the final demolition of the world, stars are to fall, and the sun is to cease its shining, and the moon is to turn into blood.

II. To show how God honours the eye, look at the two halls built for the residence of the eyes. Seven bones making the wall for each eye, the seven bones curiously wrought together. A kingly palace of ivory is considered rich, but the halls for the residence of the human eyes are richer by so much as human bone is more sacred than elephantine tusk. See how God honoured the eyes when He made a roof for them, so that the sweat of toil should not smart them; and the rain dashing against the forehead should not drip into them; the eyebrows not bending over the eye, but reaching to the right and to the left, so that the rain and the sweat should be compelled to drop upon the cheek instead of falling into this Divinely protected human eyesight. See how God honoured the eye in the fact presented by anatomists and physiologists that there are 800 contrivances in every eye. For window shutters, the eyelids opening and closing 30,000 times a day. The eyelashes so constructed that they have their selection as to what shall be admitted, saying to the dust, “Stay out,” and saying to the light, “Come in.” For inside curtain the iris, or pupil of the eye, according as the light is greater or less, contracting or dilating.

III. A contrivance so wonderful that it can see the sun ninety-five millions of miles away, and the point of a pin. Telescope and microscope in the same contrivance. The astronomer swings and moves this way and that, and adjusts and readjusts the telescope until he gets it into the right focus; the microscopist moves this way and that, and adjusts and readjusts the magnifying glass until it is prepared to do its work; but the human eye, without a touch, beholds the star and the smallest insect. The traveller among the Alps, with one glance taking in Mont Blanc and the face of his watch to see whether he has time to climb it.

IV. What an anthem of praise to God is the human eye! The tongue is speechless and a clumsy instrument of expression as compared with it. Have you not seen it flash with indignation or kindle with enthusiasm, or expand with devotion, or melt with sympathy, or stare with fright, or leer with villany, or droop with sadness or pale with envy, or fire with revenge, or twinkle with mirth, or beam with love? It is tragedy and comedy and pastoral and lyric in turn.

V. Divine inspection. Shall Herschel not know as much as his telescope? Shall Fraunhofer not know as much as his spectroscope? Shall Swammerdan not know as much as his microscope? Shall Dr. Hooke not know as much as his micrometer? Shall the thing formed know more than its master? “He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” The recoil of this question is tremendous. We stand at the centre of a vast circumference of observation. No privacy. On us, eyes of cherubim, eyes of seraphim, eyes of archangel, eyes of God. “The eyes of the Lord are in every place.” “His eyelids try the children of men.” “His eyes were as a flame of fire.” “I will guide thee with Mine eye.” Oh, the eye of God, so full of pity, so full of power, so full of love, so full of indignation, so full of compassion, so full of mercy! How it peers through the darkness! How it outshines the day! How it glares upon the offenders! How it beams on the penitent scull Oh the eye of God. It sees our sorrows to assuage them, sees our perplexities to disentangle them, sees our wants to sympathize with them. If we fight Him back, the eye of an antagonist. If we ask His grace, the eye of an everlasting friend.

VI. There is no such thing as hidden transgression. A dramatic advocate in olden times, at night in a court-room, persuaded of the innocence of his client charged with murder, and of the guilt of the witness who was trying to swear the poor man’s life away--that advocate took up two bright lamps and thrust them close up to the face of the witness, and cried, “May it please the court and gentlemen of the jury--behold the murderer!” and the man, practically under that awful glare, confessed that he was the criminal instead of the man arraigned at the bar. “Oh!” you say, “my affairs are so insignificant I can’t realize that God sees me and sees my affairs.” Can you see the point of a pin? Can you see the eye of a needle? Can you see a mote in the sunbeam? And has God given you that power of minute observation, and does He not possess it Himself? But you say, “God is in one world, and I am in another world; He seems so far off from me I don’t really think He sees what is going on in my life.” Can you see the sun ninety-five millions of miles away, and do you not think God has as prolonged vision? But you say, “There are phases of my life, and there are colours--shades of colour--in my annoyances and my vexations, that I don’t think God can understand.” Does not God gather up all the colours, and all the shades of colour, in the rainbow? And do you suppose there is any phase or any shade in your life that He has not gathered up in His own heart? (T. De Witt Talmage.)

God hears

He who knows assuredly that God hears him, will speak the truth though all the world should listen, or though no one but God should hear him. We do not want applause from men, since God hears us. If the Queen were by, and a soldier performed a deed of valour, and a person were to say to him, “You did well, and you may be proud that Corporal Brown and Sergeant Smith saw you and approved of what you did.” “Oh,” says be, “I care nothing for corporals and other petty officers; Her Majesty herself looked at me, and said, ‘Well done.’ She will, with her own bands, put the Victoria Cross upon me in due time. That is the reward I seek.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)