‘EPHPHATHA!’
‘He sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.’
I. The hearing ear.—It is certain that an important part of the work of Divine grace is to give to the soul a power of ‘hearing’ effectually; that is, receiving and accepting the Divine truth. It is by this inward ‘hearing’ that faith, which is itself the ‘gift of God,’ comes. It is a great grace, this readiness to hear with the inward ear, and with conviction of its absolute truth, the teaching of Jesus—to distinguish and readily follow His voice. And very specially through the conscience. It is a great thing to have a conscience that speaks clearly and distinctly; it is yet more important to have the ear of our soul trained to catch its least and softest whispers, and to recognise in it the voice of the Good Shepherd.
II. Spiritual speech.—Then there is what we may call our spiritual speech, that ‘utterance’ which St. Paul twice refers to as coupled with ‘faith’ or ‘knowledge,’ a cause for thankfulness and a thing for us to ‘abound’ in (1 Corinthians 1:5; 2 Corinthians 8:7), something, indeed, which does not stop short at the inward assent to what we believe, but finds expression in the outward profession of our faith at all times and on all occasions when we are called upon to profess it.
Only once let us feel our real need of the Divine Healer of our infirmities, and we shall be on the high-road to health and hearing and speech. Our prayer may well be: ‘Lord, speak to me that I may speak’; and, ‘Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth.’
Rev. C. F. G. Turner.
Illustration
‘I once passed the night with a brother clergyman whose house stood between and close to two of the great main lines of railway that run out of London, and throughout the night I could not sleep for the thundering traffic within a stone’s throw of my room. Neither my host nor his servants were in the least disturbed. They had long been used to it, and slumbered peacefully in spite of it. So surely it is with the voice of conscience.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
DUMB BECAUSE DEAF
What are spiritual deafness and spiritual dumbness?
I. Dumbness the result of deafness.—In the physical order there is hardly any such thing as dumbness, except as the result of having been born deaf. If by a miracle the deaf mute could be made to hear, he would soon speak as well as other people. This is, generally, though not quite always, true in the spiritual life. We are apt to deceive ourselves on this point. A great many people are dumb about religion. ‘We also believe, and therefore speak.’ Since we do not speak, do we believe? On other matters, if we have strong convictions, they generally come out. Our friends cannot be with us long without discovering whether we are Liberals or Conservatives, and what our chief likes and dislikes are. If we keep our religious convictions to ourselves, is it that we are afraid of being thought insincere, or that we never think about them?
II. The cause of deafness.—And, if so, what is the cause of our spiritual deafness? Why do we not hear God speaking to our hearts? Why are we not continually, or frequently, conscious of His presence? It is not a congenital infirmity. We could hear God’s voice if we listened for it. I do not say that it is equally easy for all, and I do not think it is. But though there are degrees of acuteness in spiritual hearing, I do not think that any one is destitute of the sense, except through his own fault. And what we have to ask ourselves is whether we have listened and wished to hear.
III. Jesus Christ can heal this spiritual deafness even now, though His bodily presence is withdrawn. If we believe His promise, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world,’ and pray that He will give us tokens of His presence; if we meditate upon His life, and resolve to make Him our standard and our pattern, we shall not have to wait long before He begins to speak to us. If we are rather tongue-tied with our friends, let us not be tongue-tied with God.
—Rev. Professor W. R. Inge.
Illustration
‘If we set an alarum to wake us at a certain hour, and if we always get up when we hear it, there is no danger of our sleeping through it. But if when we hear it we turn over and go to sleep again, in a few days we shall sleep on and not hear it. So when we hear the voice of God saying to us, “This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left”—if we at once obey and follow the path indicated by conscience, we shall go on hearing our inward mentor till it may become almost an instinct with us to take the straightest and most disinterested line whenever a question comes before us to decide. But if we pay no attention, we shall soon hear it no more than a family who live by the side of a cataract hear the continuous noise of the falling water.’
(THIRD OUTLINE)
THE TWO EPHPHATHAS
To deny powers or privileges, or the free exercise of rights and faculties, on the ground that they may be abused, is to act according to the dictates of expediency, not of right. Christ, while He teaches us that the remedy is not to be sought in depriving the man of the gift, points by His conduct to where the real remedy is to be sought. It is by conferring an additional and guiding gift. There is another ‘Ephphatha.’ He speaks, ‘Be opened,’ and the tongue is loosed; but the ear is unstopped also. While, therefore. He bestows the faculty of speech, He bestows the opportunity of hearing those glad and soul-elevating principles of righteousness, and forgiveness, and love, which will fill the loosened tongue with joy and put a new song of praise in that long-silent mouth. The Ephphatha of gift and the Ephphatha of new opportunities for good go hand in hand.
I. A like correspondence may be observed in history.—A wise and watchful Providence seems to unseal the closed ear of human kind at eras when He gives them new-found powers of speech.
II. The era of the Gospel was preceded by those marked changes in the political world which centralised the civilisation of mankind under the imperial sway of Rome. The gift of the Gospel and of the Spirit came when the gift of administration bestowed on Rome had prepared the great fabric of imperialism in which the apostles found facilities of transit, protection, etc.
III. Later the same principle appears.—There came the epoch of intellectual revival after the long slumber of the Middle Ages; the sleeping genius of European thought awoke: the printing-press carried truth and knowledge far and wide; the age became one of mental activity. But with the gift of the unloosened tongue Christ bestowed the gift of revived Gospel truth.
IV. Nearer our own day came an epoch of new thought.—A spirit of political freedom rose and shook the thrones of Europe, and, in its striving after an unrealised ideal, deluged France with blood. The period when the tongue of new-sought liberty found utterance was the time of evangelistic effort, and of the revival of missionary enterprise.
This is the true Christian method: to meet the widespread evil of the world, not by degrading human intelligence, or enslaving human thought, but by directing it. ‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’ If we are wise and humble, we shall not merely ‘covet earnestly the best gifts,’ but we shall also pray for grace to use them lawfully and lovingly.
Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter.