EAR VS. EYE, OR MAN THE HEARER.
By I. Lamb
One design in the creation of man, seems to have been to test whether the ear cannot glorify God as much as the eye: “no man hath seen God at any time.” Job, speaking prospectively, says: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes see thee.” All the knowledge of God that is now manifest in the character of man is the result of faith in the Invisible. Angelic character was lost; but Lucifer and his angels had the advantage of having seen the hierarchy of Heaven from the first: he had walked “amid the stones of fire” (Ezek. xxviii, 14); the fallen angels needed no testimony. Their prying proclivity exceeded the bounds of temperance. Curiosity prompted them to leave their first habitation, hence their depravity is total. Said Satan to Eve, “Ye shall be as the Elohim, knowing good and evil.” Satan tempts men everywhere to regard the testimony of the eye more than that of faith, which comes by hearing. The heathen generally consult the spirits; the Indians, the Kaffirs, the ancient pagans, the modern Buddhists and Lamaists, who number four hundred millions, found their superstitions on the miraculous manifestations of evil spirits. Belief in witchcraft is world-wide: the fact that Satan has induced the Buddhists to believe that annihilation is the chief good, and a rare gift to obtain, betrays his limited knowledge, notwithstanding the vast period of his existence; and soon feeble, octogenarian man, with simply hear-say and an imperfectly translated Bible for his evidence, will outstrip, through Christ, the wisdom of the fallen angels. “He that hath ears to hear let him hear.”