uivers 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
should pass up from the ear to the nerves and brain, so that we
_hear_. Therein is a mystery which no mortal man can explain.

So of the eye. All the telescopes and microscopes which man makes,
curiously and cunningly as they are made, are clumsy things compared
with the divine workmanship of the eye. I cannot describe it to
you; nor, if I could, is this altogether a fit place to do so. But
if any one wishes to see the greatness and the glory of God, and be
overwhelmed with the sense of his own ignorance, and of God's
wisdom, let him read any book which describes to him the eye of man,
or even of beast, and then say with the psalmist, 'I am fearfully
and wonderfully made. Marvellous are thy works, O Lord, and that my
soul knoweth right well.'

And remember, that as with the ear, so with the eye, the mere
workmanship of it is only the beginning of the wonder. It is very
wonderful that the eye should be able to take a picture of each
thing in front of it; that on the tiny black curtain at the back of
the eye, each thing outside should be printed, as it were,
instantly, exact in shape and colour. But that is not sight. Sight
is a greater wonder, over and above that. Seeing is this, that the
picture which is printed on the back of the eye, is also printed on
our brain, so that we _see_ it. There is the wonder of wonders.

Do some of you not understand me? Then look at it thus. If you
took out the eye of an animal, and held it up to anything, a man or
a tree, a perfect picture of that man or that tree would be printed
on the back of the dead eye: but the eye would not _see_ it. And
why? Because it is cut off from the live brain of the animal to
which it belonged; and therefore, though the picture is still in the
eye, it sends no message about itself up to the brain, and is not
seen.

And how does the picture on the eye send its message about itself to
the brain, so that the brain sees it? And how, again--for here is a
third wonder, greater still--do _we_ ourselves see what our