epeated, He gets no answering glance.

Let anybody in doubt about the strict accuracy of this do some
experimenting on himself, either with outer things or regarding God. Let
him obey the inner voice in some particular that may perhaps cut straight
across some fixed habit, and then watch very quietly for the result. It
will come with surprising sureness and quickness. And the reason why is
simple. The man is simply moving back into his native air, and of course
all the powers work better.

This truth about the nerves of the ears and eyes running down into the
heart is constantly being sounded out in the old Book. A famous bit in
Isaiah puts it very clearly, and becomes a sort of pivot passage of all
others of this sort. That fine-grained, intense-spirited young Hebrew was
caught in the temple one day by a sight of God. That wondrous sight held
him with unyielding grip through all the after years. With the sight came
the voice, and the message for the nation: "Tell these people--you are
continually hearing, but you do not listen, nor take in what you hear.
Your eyes are open, they look, but they do not see." Then the voice said,
"Make their heart _fat_, and their ears _heavy_, and their eyes _shut_."

That is to say, by continually telling them what they will continually
refuse to hear because it does not suit the habit of their lives, he would
be setting in motion the action that would bring these results. The ears
that won't hear by and by _can't_ hear. The heart that will not love and
obey gets into a state of fatty degeneration. The valves that refuse to
move in loving obedience will get too heavy with fat to move at all. The
fat clogs the hinges. There is the touch of a soft irony in the _form_ of
the message. As though Isaiah's talking would affect their ears, whereas
it is their refusal to hear that stupefies the hearing organ. In
faithfulness God insists on telling them the truth even though He knows
that their refusal to do will make things worse. But then God is never
held back from good by the possible bad that may work out of it.

When Jesus came, the Jews, to whom His messages to the world were directly
spoken, were in almost the last stages of that sort of thing. So Jesus,
with the fine faithfulness of love blending with the keenest tact, spoke
in language veiled by parable to overcome the intense prejudice against
plainly spoken truth. They were so set against what He had to tell that
the only way to get