The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1898-04-23

and academy of music the fOrtreSSes
for the contest for the ear. England
and Egypt fought for the supremacy
of the Suez canal, and the Spartans
and the P~ersians fought for the defile
at Thermopylae, but the musicians of
ali ages have fought for the mastery
of the auditory canal and the deile of
the immortal soul and the Thermopy-
lac of struggling cadences-
For the ear everything ~mellihuous,
from the birth hour when our earth
was wrapped in swaddling clothes of
light and ~serenaded by other worlds,
from the time when Jubal thrummed
the first harp and pressed a key of the
first organ down to the music of this
Sabbath day. Yea. for the ear the
coming o%vertures of Heaven, for what
ever other part of the body may be
left in the dust, the ear, we know, is
to come to celestial life; otherwise,
why the ''harpers harping with their
harps?" For the ear, carol OF lark,
and whistle of quail, the chirp
of cricket, and dash of cascade,
and roar of tides oceanic, and
doxology of worshipful assembly
and m~instrelsy, cheru bic, Seraphic
and ~archangelic. For the ear all Pan
dean pipes, all flutes, all clarinets, all
hautboys, all bassoons, and all organs
-Luzerene and Westminster Abbey,
and F~reyburg, and Berlin. and all the
organ pipes set across Christendom,
the great Giants Causeway for the
monarchs of music to pass over. For
the ear, all chimes, all tickings of
chronometers, all anthems, all dirges,
all glees, all cho ruses, all lullabies, all
~,al N-a oh NhA Cd
honored the ear, grooved with
divine sculpture and poised with
divine gracefulness and uphol-
stored with curtains of divine EN-
b~roidery, and corridored by divine car.
pentry, and pillared with divine archi-
lecture, and chiselled in one of divine
masonry, and conquered by professions
of divine marshalliug. The earl A
perpetual point of Interrogation, ask
ing How? a perpetual point of apos-
trophe appealing to God. None but
God could plan it. None but God
could build it. None but God could
work it. None put God could keep it.
None but God could understand it.
None but God could explain it. Oh,
the wonders of the human ear.
How surprisingly sacred the human
ear. You had better be careful how
you let the sound of blasphemy or I'M
cleanness step into that holy of holies.
The Bible says that in the ancient
temple the priest was set apart by the
putting of the blood of a ram on the
tip of the ear, the right ear of the
priest. But, my friends, we need all
of US to have the sacred touch or ordi-
nation on the hanging lobe of
both ears, and on the arches OF
the ears, on the Eustachian tube
of the ear, on the mastoid cells
of the ear, on the tympanic cavity of
the ear. and on everything from the
outside rim of the outside ear clear in
to the point where sound steps off the
auditory nerve and rolls on down into
the unfathomable depth of the immor-
tai soul. The Bible speaks Of dull
ears" and of ''uncircumsized ears"
and of etching ears" and of I''rebell-
ious ears" and of open ears" and OF
those who have all the organs of hear
ing AID yet who seem to be deaf, TOR
it cries to them: lie hat 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 right ear of the pa
tient, and agitated the tympauum,
and startled the ~bonelets, and with a
voice that rang clear through the
mans soul cried: ''EphphathaF' and
the polyphoid growths rave way and
the infamed auri0la 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 mid
die ear and the internal ear that nc
sword could clip away.
And to show what roc thinks of the
ear we are informed of the fact that
in the millennial June which shall
roseate all the earth, the ears of the
deaf will be unstopped, all the vascu-
lar growth gone all reformation of
the listening organ cured, corrected,
changed. Every being on earth will
have q hearing apparatus as perfect
as God knows how to make it, and all
the ears will be ready for that great
symphony in which all the musical ins
struments of the earth shall play the
accompaniment, nations of earth and
empires of heaven mingling their
voices together with the deep bass of
the sea and the alto of the woods, and
the tenor Of the winds, and the bari
tone OF the thunder; ''Alleluiah!"
surging up, meeting the "AlleluiahI"
descending,
On, yes, my friends, we have been
looking for God too far away instead
of looking for Him close by and in our
own organism. We go up into the OBJ
serVatory and look through the tele-
scope and see God in Jupiter, and God
in Saturn, and God in Mars; but we
could see more of Him through the
microscope of an aurist. No king is
satisfied with only n residence, and
in FRANCE it has been st. Cloud and
Versailles and the Tpileries, and in
Great Britain it has been Windsor and
Balmoral and Osborne. A ruler does
rot always prefer the larger. The
King of earth and Heaven may have
larger castles and greatcr palaces, but
! do not think there is any one more
curiously wrought than the human
ear The Heaven of heavens cannot
contain Him, and yet He says He finds
room to dwell in a contrite heart, and,
1 think, in a Christian ear.
We have been looking for God in the
infinite let us ooh for Him in the in
Anitesimal. God walking in the corri-
dor of the ear, God sitting in the gal
lery of the human ear, God speaking
along the auditory nerve of the ear,
God dwelling in the ear to hear that
which comes from the outside, and so
near the brain and the soul He can
hear all that transpires there. The
Lord of hosts encampihg under the
curtains OF the membrane. Palace OF
the Almighty in the human ear. The
ider On the white horse of the
Apocalypse thrusting his foot into the
looD of bone which the Psychologist has
been pleased to call the stirrup of the
ear.
Are you now ready for the question
of my textP Have you the endurance
to bear its overwhelming suggestive
ness? Will you take hold of some