SERMON VI.  THE HEARING EAR AND THE SEEING EYE

Proverbs xx. 12.  The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them.

This saying may seem at first a very simple one; and some may ask, What need to tell us that?  We know it already.  God, who made all things, made the ear and the eye likewise.

True, my friends:  but the simplest texts are often the deepest; and that, just because they speak to us of the most common things.  For the most common things are often the most wonderful, and deep, and difficult to understand.

The hearing of the ear, and the seeing of the eye.—­Every one hears and sees all day long, so perpetually that we never think about our hearing or sight, unless we find them fail us.  And yet, how wonderful are hearing and sight.  How we hear, how we see, no man knows, and perhaps ever will know.

When the ear is dissected and examined, it is found to be a piece of machinery infinitely beyond the skill of mortal man to make.  The tiny drum of the ear, which quivers with every sound which strikes it, puts to shame with its divine workmanship all the clumsy workmanship of man.  But recollect that it is not all the wonder, but only the beginning of it.  The ear is wonderful:  but still more wonderful is it how the ear hears.  It is wonderful, I mean, how the ear should be so made, that each different sound sets it in motion in a different way:  but still more wonderful, how that sound should pass up from the ear to the nerves and brain, so that we hear.  Therein is a mystery which no mortal man can explain.

So of the eye.  All the telescopes and microscopes which man makes, curiously and cunningly as they are made, are clumsy things compared with the divine workmanship of the eye.  I cannot describe it to you; nor, if I could, is this altogether a fit place to do so.  But if any one wishes to see the greatness and the glory of God, and be overwhelmed with the sense of his own ignorance, and of God’s wisdom, let him read any book which describes to him the eye of man, or even of beast, and then say with the psalmist, ’I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Marvellous are thy works, O Lord, and that my soul knoweth right well.’

And remember, that as with the ear, so with the eye, the mere workmanship of it is only the beginning of the wonder.  It is very wonderful that the eye should be able to take a picture of each thing in front of it; that on the tiny black curtain at the back of the eye, each thing outside should be printed, as it were, instantly, exact in shape and colour.  But that is not sight.  Sight is a greater wonder, over and above that.  Seeing is this, that the picture which is printed on the back of the eye, is also printed on our brain, so that we see it.  There is the wonder of wonders.