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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.)

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KJV: He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?

WEB: He who implanted the ear, won't he hear? He who formed the eye, won't he see?