J. R. Miller, 1902
"Then a voice came from heaven: 'I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again!' The crowd standing there heard it and said it was thunder. Others said, 'An angel has spoken to Him!'" John 12:28-29
Different people continually give a different answer—to the same question. Our eyes are alike—and yet no two people see the same picture on the canvas. Our ears are constructed on the same pattern—and yet no two hear the same song as they listen side by side to the singer. The world is not the same to any two people. We carry within us a mysterious power, which interprets to us whatever we see or hear of the sights and voices of the outside world; and this power is distinct in each one. Thus it happens continually that the same voice falls upon the ears of two different people, and is altogether different to the two. Each hears what his own soul is prepared for hearing.
We have an illustration of this in the story of Christ. One day a voice was heard in the temple. It was a Divine voice speaking from heaven. The people standing about the Master heard it, and were strangely impressed by it. Yet they were not all impressed in the same way. Some thought itthundered; the voice awed and terrified them. Others thought an angel had spoken. It was the same sound; the difference was in those who heard it. The state of their heart—gave tone to the voice.
It is always so; our own heart makes our world for us, and fills and populates it, and the music we hear is modulated as it passes over the chords of our own soul. If you hold a sea shell to your ear, you hear a strange, murmuring sound, which we used to be told in childhood, was a sort of reminiscence of the ocean's roar. The thought is that the shell, having lain long amid the waves, the music of the sea has hidden in its magic chambers, and that this is what you hear when you hold the shell to your ear.
This pretty thought is dispelled, however, when you learn that, instead of the music of the ocean, the sound you hear is caused by the beating of your own heart, the throbbing of the blood in your fingers. Lay the shell on a table, and put your ear to it, and there is no music; you hear the murmur—only when you hold the shell in your hands.
Many of the sounds which we hear, attributing them to various sources—are but the noise of our own pulses; and every sound that breaks upon our ear is modified at least by the mood or quality of our own inner life. When our heart is glad—the world is full of song! When our heart is sad—the world is full of tears!In ourselves the sunshine dwells;
In ourselves the music swells!
Everywhere the light and shade;
By the gazer's eye is made!What men and women find in the life—depends on what they are themselves. We hear some people talk of the coldness of the world. They find no love anywhere, no gratitude, no appreciation, no sympathy, no tenderness. Others, living in like circumstances and conditions—find only brightness, beauty, gladness, and tenderness wherever they go. The same skies are dull and dreary to one—and glorious with their deep, wonderful blue to another. The same fields are dreary and desolate to one eye—and filled with splendid beauty to another. The same people seem unsympathetic, uncongenial, unneighborly to one—and to the other appear cordial, kindly, responsive, and unselfish.
Each person's heart—casts its own hue and tinge upon all other lives.Two people listen to the same voice: and while one hears what seems to him to be terrifying thunder, the other hears the entrancing strains of angels' songs!
"Two men looked out from their prison bars—
One saw the mud, the other saw the stars!"
This same difference is seen in the way life's experiences appear to different people. To onepessimistic class, everything seems discouraging. They see only the troubles, the difficulties, the hindrances, the disheartenments. They talk always in sad tone of their burdens, tasks, duties, disappointments, and trials. There is no blue sky in their picture, and no stars shine down upon them.
