A hymn that is often sung has the lines:

`Lord, speak to me, that I may speak

In living echoes of Thy tone'.

Let us take heed whom we hear, what we hear and how we hear, for this

will be not only for our own good, but for the blessing of those with whom we

meet and for whom we have some measure of responsibility.

Practically every text that uses the words `ear', `hear' or `hearken'

would provide further light upon the nature and value of spiritual hearing.

But time passes, and we must keep our search within reasonable limits.  Let

us turn our attention to that other sense, the sense of sight.

It is common knowledge that the organ of sight is a wonderful

mechanism, of which the most elaborate camera is but an imperfect copy.

There are twenty -four separate words in the foregoing sentence, and the eye

of the reader has registered a clear impression of each word and passed on to

the next without the slightest blurring of the image.  In other words God's

camera not only receives on the retina an image which is transmitted by the

optic nerve to the brain, but it removes all trace of that image, prepares

the surface of the film, and takes a stereoscopic picture in full colour in

the time it takes the reader to pass from `this' word to `that'!  And not

only so, the colour that the eye records is received through a crystalline

lens, and this lens, like every other organ of the body, is fed by the blood

stream.  Here the wisdom and benignant provision of the Creator is again made

manifest.  By a special physiological arrangement which we do not pretend to

understand, the red blood becomes transparent and colourless as it passes

through this lens! It is moreover proverbial that the shutter provided for

the human eye is practically instantaneous.  In the expression `the twinkling

of an eye' (1 Cor. 15:52)

the Greek word atom occurs, a word that means something indivisible,

unsplittable, although as a consequence of the discoveries in nuclear fission

we now use the expression `splitting the atom (the unsplittable)'.

The sense of hearing we have already seen is wonderful, but the

Scriptures speak of the sense of sight in even higher terms.  `I have heard

of Thee' saith Job, `by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee.

Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes' (Job 42:5,6).

We have seen how the sense of hearing enters into the Biblical

conception of obedience and disobedience and that it is used of Adam's

disobedience, who `hearkened aside' (LXX, author's translation) to the voice

of his wife (Gen. 3:17).  We must now remind ourselves that the fatal promise

`your eyes shall be opened' and the alluring prospect `pleasant to the eyes'

precede this act of disobedience (Gen. 3:5,6).  Just as the spiritual sense

of `hearing' is associated with understanding, so is the spiritual sense of

sight.  The apostle speaks of:

`The eyes of your understanding being enlightened' (Eph. 1:18),

where the word translated `understanding' in the Received Text is dianoia,

but in the Revised Text is kardia `the heart'.  Understanding is associated

with the heart (Matt. 13:15).  `Blindness' moreover is predicated of the

`heart' (Eph. 4:18), and the condition of `singleness' is used, both of the