ervice, forasmuch as they
mattered no words of the captain nor of the soldiers. And first the
King's officers made their force more formidable against Ear-gate: for
they knew that unless they could penetrate that no good could be done
upon the town. This done, they put the rest of their men in their
places; after which they gave out the word, which was, Ye must be born
again! And so the battle began. Now, they in the town had planted upon
the tower over Ear-gate two great guns, the one called High-mind and the
other Heady. Unto these two guns they trusted much; they were cast in
the castle by Diabolus's ironfounder, whose name was Mr. Puff-up, and
mischievous pieces they were. They in the camp also did stoutly, for
they saw that unless they could open Ear-gate it would be in vain to
batter the wall.' And so on, through many allegorical, and, if sometimes
somewhat laboured, yet always eloquent, pungent, and heart-exposing
pages.

With these for our text let us now take a rapid glance at what some of
the more Bunyan-like passages in the prophets and the psalms say about
the ear; how it is kept and how it is lost; how it is used and how it is
abused.

1. The Psalmist uses a very striking expression in the 94th Psalm when
he is calling for justice, and is teaching God's providence over men. 'He
that planted the ear,' the Psalmist exclaims, 'shall he not hear?' And,
considering his church and his day, that is not a bad remark of Cardinal
Bellarmine on that psalm,--'the Psalmist's word _planted_,' says that
able churchman, 'implies design, in that the ear was not spontaneously
evolved by an act of vital force, but was independently created by God
for a certain object, just as a tree, not of indigenous growth, is of set
purpose planted in some new place by the hand of man.' The same thing is
said in Genesis, you remember, about the Garden of Eden,--the Lord
planted it and put the man and the woman, whose ears he had just planted
also, into the garden to dress it and keep it. How they dressed the
garden and kept it, and how they held the gate of their ear against him
who squatted down before it with his innuendoes and his lies, we all know
to our as yet unrepaired, though not always irreparable, cost.

2. One would almost think that the scornful apostle had the Garden of
Eden in his eye when he speaks so bitterly to Timothy of a class of
people who are cursed with 'itching ears.' Eve's ears itched
unappeasably