HOW TO LISTEN | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 9, 1901

HOW TO LISTEN.

The ears are avenues to the soul. Through them God speaks to the inner life. No miracle is more wondrous than the process by which sound carries thought through the ear to the brain, and through it to the mind. The ear is a harp of more than eight thousand strings. It has a range of eleven octaves, and can distinguish sounds reaching from sixteen and a half vibrations to thirty-eight thousand a second. This mystic mechanism is the organ upon which God plays as He conveys the music of heaven and the melodies of revealed truth to the soul.

He speaks through nature, as the roar of Niagara, the reverberations of the thunder, the music of the sea, the hum of the insect world, the song of the bird, the rippling laughter of a child, oratorios and anthems of the redeemed, and through each, gives to the responsive soul revelations of himself, of His majesty and power, melody and joy, perfection and glory. The attuned ear finds God in all the music of the outer world.

His divinest revelations are made in the story of His redeeming love. In the parable of the sower, Jesus described the process of hearing. Not all ears are adjusted to the truth. Four varieties are mentioned in the parable: “wayside,” “stony-ground,” “thorny-place,” and “good-ground” hearers. In each case the ear has a different attitude to, or capacity for, truth. These four classes describe (1) impervious or unresponsive hearers; (2) superficial hearers; (3) diverted or pre-occupied hearers; (4) receptive hearers.

The first “understand not.” They interpret not the sound. Like ancient Israel, described so often by the prophets, they “have ears, but they hear not.” Professor Huxley and a friend once traveled among the Alps. The friend heard only the tramp of the mules’ hoofs on the hard mountain road, Huxley only the hum of insects which filled the summer air with its mellow melody. There are ears that catch only the dull sounds of the lower ranges of life; others that lose these coarser sounds in the music of a higher sphere. “Speak not in the ears of a fool,” says the wise man; “for he will despise the wisdom of thy words.”

Superficial hearers have thin soil on a substratum of rock. The seed sprouts, but soon dies. Down deep in the soul the nature is still hard. The heart is not contrite, penitent, submissive, obedient. The quick response and its beauteous promise are deceptive. Christians who fall away are not deep and genuine.

Diverted hearers allow the thorns of pleasure and business to root out or displace the Word. They “turn away their ears from the truth” (2 Tim. 4:4), because they have “itching ears.” The voice of the siren woos them from the voice of the Saviour.

Receptive hearers have the obedient, the understanding, the responsive, attentive, prayerful ear. It is trained to hear. David said: “Mine ears hast thou opened.” The Lord said: “Incline your ear . . . unto me: hear, and your soul shall live.” “Take heed how ye hear.” “Take heed what ye hear.” An ordinary ear distinguishes about one thousand shades of sound in the scale; the ear of trained violinists five thousand. Whether truth means much or little to us depends on how we train ourselves to hear. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, . . . the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” O for the ear to catch the still small voice of the Spirit!—Sel.