eye and of the heart (Matt. 6:22; Eph. 6:5).  Spiritual hearing also is

associated with the heart, as Hebrews 3:7,8,12,15; 4:12 suggest.  There is no

need for protracted proof that the heart is associated with the spiritual

equivalent of both the senses of hearing and seeing.  The defect in vision

known as myopia `short sight' has its spiritual equivalent:

`He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off

(muopazo), and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins' (2

Pet. 1:9),

even as the believer can become dull and hard of hearing (Heb. 5:11).  Again,

just as the Lord when healing physical blindness used a compress of clay with

which He anointed the eyes of the man born blind (John 9:6), so He counselled

the church of the Laodiceans to `anoint' their eyes with `eye -salve' (Rev.

3:18), collyrium another kind of fine clay, something akin to the china clay,

kaolin, found in Cornwall.  It is evident from these few scattered references

that the physical eye, its uses and its diseases, form a symbol of the higher

spiritual equivalent, especially in the exercise of faith.

In concluding this brief preliminary survey, it might be salutary for

us to remember the challenging question of the Psalmist and the writer of the

`He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye,

shall He not see?' (Psa. 94:9).

It is plainly indicated that human hearing and human vision are but

faint echoes of the glorious and perfect powers that belong to the living God

Himself.  Again,

`The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of

them' (Prov. 20:12).

In solemn and direct contrast with the activities and powers of the

living God, the Old Testament writers put the `dumb idols' of the heathen:

`Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.  They have

mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: they have

ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: they have

hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither

speak they through their throat.  They that make them are like unto

them: so is every one that trusteth in them' (Psa. 115:4 -8).

When the time for Israel's deliverance from Egypt drew near, the Lord

is said to have `heard' their groaning (Exod. 2:24); to have `seen' their

affliction, and to `know' their sorrows (Exod. 3:7).  In the exercise and use

of the faculty of sight and of hearing, man, made in the image of God, is a

faint adumbration of the perfection of his Maker.