Proverbs xx. 12. The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath
made even both of them.

This saying may seem at first a very simple one; and some may ask,
What need to tell us that? We know it already. God, who made all
things, made the ear and the eye likewise.

True, my friends: but the simplest texts are often the deepest; and
that, just because they speak to us of the most common things. For
the most common things are often the most wonderful, and deep, and
difficult to understand.

The hearing of the ear, and the seeing of the eye.--Every one hears
and sees all day long, so perpetually that we never think about our
hearing or sight, unless we find them fail us. And yet, how
wonderful are hearing and sight. How we hear, how we see, no man
knows, and perhaps ever will know.

When the ear is dissected and examined, it is found to be a piece of
machinery infinitely beyond the skill of mortal man to make. The
tiny drum of the ear, which quivers with every sound which strikes
it, puts to shame with its divine workmanship all the clumsy
workmanship of man. But recollect that _it_ is not all the wonder,
but only the beginning of it. The ear is wonderful: but still more
wonderful is it how the ear _hears_. It is wonderful, I mean, how
the ear should be so made, that each different sound sets it in
motion in a different way: but still more wonderful, how that sound