The Nostril, the Tongue, and the Hand are similarly bounded, perhaps even more so; but the Eye so triumphs over space, that it traverses in a moment the boundless ocean which stretches beyond our atmosphere, and takes home to itself stars which are millions of miles away; and so far is it from being fatigued by its flight, that, as the Wise King said, "it is not satisfied with seeing." Our only physical conception of limitless infinity is derived from the longing of the eye to see farther than the farthest star.

And its empire over time is scarcely less bounded. The future it cannot pierce; but our eyes are never lifted to the midnight heavens without being visited by light which left the stars from which it comes, untold centuries ago; and suns which had burned out, æons before Adam was created, are shown to us as the blazing orbs which they were in those immeasurably distant ages, by beams which have survived their source through all that time.

How far we can thus glance backwards along a ray of light, and literally gaze into the deepest

recesses of time, we do not know: and as little can we tell how many ages will elapse after our sun's torch is quenched, before he shall be numbered among lost stars, by dwellers in the sun most distant from us; yet assuredly it is through the eye that we acquire our most vivid conception of what eternity in the sense of unbeginning and unending time may mean.

It is most natural, then, that the eye which can thus triumph over space and time should hold the place of honour among the senses. Of all the miracles of healing which our Saviour performed, if we except the crowning one of resurrection from death, none seems to have made such an impression on the spectators as the restoration of sight to the blind. One of the blind whose sight was restored by Christ, triumphantly declared to the doubters of the marvellousness of the miracle," Since the world began was it not heard that any one opened the eyes of one that was born blind." The perplexed though not unfaithful Jews inquired, "Could not this man, which

eyes

opened the of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?" And the opening of the eyes of the blind would startle us as much did we witness it now. To the end of time men will acknowledge that He who formed the eye justly declared of it, that "The light of the body is the eye;" and all tender hearts will feel a peculiar sympathy for those whom it has pleased God in his unsearchable wisdom to deprive of sight, and for whom in this life "Wisdom is at one entrance quite shut out."

II. THE EAR.

The second of the Gateways of Wisdom is the Ear. The organ or instrument of hearing is in all its most important parts so hidden within the head, that we cannot perceive its construction by a mere external inspection. What in ordinary language we call the ear, is only the outer porch or entrance-vestibule of a curious series of intricate, winding passages, which, like the lobbies of a

great building, lead from the outer air into the inner chambers. Certain of those passages are

full of air; others are full of liquid; and thin membranes are stretched like parchment curtains across the corridors at different places, and can be thrown into vibration, or made to tremble, as the head of a drum or the surface of a tambourine does when struck with a stick or the fingers. Between two of those parchment-like curtains, a chain of very small bones extends, which serves to tighten or relax these membranes, and to communicate vibrations to them. In the innermost place of all, rows of fine threads, called nerves, stretch like the strings of a piano from the last points to which the tremblings or thrillings reach, and pass inwards to the brain. If these threads or nerves are destroyed, the power of hearing as infallibly departs, as the power to give out sound is lost by a piano or violin when its strings are broken.

Without attempting to enter more minutely into a description of the ear, it may now be

stated, that in order to produce sound, a solid, a liquid, or a gas, such as air, must in the first place be thrown into vibration. We have an example of a solid body giving a sound, when a bell produces a musical note on being struck; of a liquid, in the dash of a waterfall, or the breaking of the waves; and of air, in the firing of a cannon, or the blast of a trumpet. Sounds once produced, travel along solid bodies, or through liquids, or through the air, the last being the great conveyor or conductor of sounds.

The human ear avails itself of all these modes of carrying sound; thus the walls of the skull, like the metal of a bell, convey sounds inwards to the nerves of hearing; whilst within the winding canals referred to, is enclosed a volume of liquid, which pulsates and undulates as the sea does when struck by a paddle-wheel or the blade of an oar. Lastly, two chambers divided from each other by a membrane, the one leading to the external ear, the other opening into the mouth, are filled with air, which can be thrown into vibration.

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