The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1898-04-20

dAOO VI IIlO WOOuS anu LHS JcuOT W
winds, and the baritone of the thunder:
"Alleluiah~ surging up meeting the
"Alleluiah" descending.
Oh, yes my friends, we have been
looking for God too far away instead of
looking for Him close by and in our
organism. We go up into the observa-
tory and look through the telescope
and see God in Jupiter, and God in
Saturn, and God in Mars but we could
see more of Him through the micro
scope of an aurist. No king is satisfied
with only one residence, and in France
it has been st. Cloud and Versailles
and the Tuileries, and in Great Britain
it has been Windsor and Balmoral and
Osborne. A ruler does not always pre-
fer the larger. The King of earth and
Heaven may have larges castles and
greater palaces, but l do not think
there is anyone more curiously wrought
than the human ear. The Heaven of
Heavens cannot contain Him, and yet
He says He finds room to dwell in
contrite heart, and think in Chris
tian ear.
Are you ready now for the question
of my text? Have you the endurance
to bear its overwhelming suggestive
ness? VIII 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,
Himself not be able to catch up song,
and groan and blasphemy and worship?
Does He give us a faculty which He
has not Himself? Drs. Wild and Cru
ber and Toynbee invented the acou-
meter 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?" Jupiter of Crede was al
ways represented in statuary and
painting as without ears, suggesting
the idea that he did not want to be
bothered with the affairs of the world.
But our God has ears. "His ears are
open to their cry" The Bible intimates
that two workmen on Saturday mig hit
do not get their wages. Their com
plant instantly strikes the ear of God:
1.-THE cry of those that reaped hath en-
tered the ears of the Lord of Sab
baoth." Did God hear that poor girl
last night as she threw herself on the
prison bunk in the city dungeon and
cried in the midnight: God have
mercy?" Do you really think God
could hear her? Yes, just as easily as
when Is years ago she was sick with
scarlet fever, and her mother heard
her when at midnight she asked for
drink of water. 'He that planted the
ear, shall he not hear?"
When a soul prays God does not sit
bolt upright until the prayer travels
immensity and climbs to his ear. The
Bible says he bends clear over. In
more than one place Isaiah said he
bowed down his ear. In more than
one place the psalmist said he
inclined his ear, by which come to
believe that God puts his ear closely
down to your lips that he can hear
your faintest whisper. 1t is not God
away off up yonder; it is God away
down here, close up, so close up that
when you pray to him it is not more a
whisper than kiss. All! yes, he hears
the captive's sigh and the plash of the
orphans tear, and the dying syllable
of the shipwrecked sailor driven on the
| ha tnfa 7 L.
me down to sleep" as distinctly as he
hears the fortissimo of brazen bands
in the Dusseldorf festival, as easily as
he hears the salvo of artillery when
the 13 squares of English troops open
all their batteries at once at Waterloo
He that planted the ear can hear.
Just as sometimes an enhancing
strain of music will linger in your ears
for days after you have heard it, and
just as sharp cry of pain l once heard
while passing through Bellevue hos
pital clung to my ear for weeks, and
just as horrid blasphemy in the street
sometimes haunts ones ears for DAYS,
so God not only hears, but holds the
songs, the prayers, the groans, the wor-
ship, the blasphemy. How we have all
wondered at the phonograph, which
holds not only the words you utter, but
the very tones of your voice, so that
hundred years from now, that instru
ment turned the very words you now
utter and the very tone of your voice
will be reproduced. Amazing phono-
graph! But more wonderful is God,
power to hold, to retain. All! what de-
lightful encouragement for our pray
ers. 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 hearP"
Better take that organ away from all
sin. Better put it under the best
sound. Better take it away from all
gossip, from all slander, from all innu-
endo, from all bad influence of evil as
sociation. Better put it to school, to
church, to philharmonic. Better put
that ear under the blessed touch of
Christian hymnology Better conse-
crate it for time and eternity to him
who planted the ear. Rousseau, the
infidel, fell asleep amid his skeptical
manuscripts lying all around the room,
and in his dream he entered Heaven
and heard the song of the worshipers,
and it was so sweet he asked an angel
what it meant. The angel said:
''This is the paradise of God,
and the song you hear is the
anthem of the redeemed" Under an
other roll of the celestial music Rous-
cao,, yuolyanad opJ r.ot 80. l.. Al, IA