We are accustomed to speak of the senses of the body, in remarking upon the five channels which God has dug or made in some way in the physical nature for the incoming tides of pleasure and knowledge.
In describing the soul men use the terms faculties and sensibilities. Hence we are told of the will, the intellect, the affections, and a great crowning attribute called the conscience.
But in addition to these endowments of a man's spirit, are what may be called the senses of the soul. In a word our spiritual nature has something in it that is marvelously similar to what we recognize and fed in the body. Corresponding to the senses, of the physical man, yet these strange, sweet forces are far more exalted in their character, and deal not with the material, and earthly, but with the spiritual and heavenly.
One of these is the hearing of the soul.
That the human spirit has such a power appears for several reasons. One is that under a gospel sermon a number hear what a large body of the audience fail to recognize. Eyes are filled with tears, hearts comforted, lives strengthened in scores of listeners, while a gaping, untouched portion of the congregation wonder what on earth the others are so moved about. The one division has simply heard a human voice talking, while the other caught the voice of God incarnated in the spoken message of the preacher.
This doubtless was what Christ referred to when he said, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
All indeed have ears, but there is an inner spiritual hearing that when exercised, first stands convicted and overwhelmed at the truth of revelation, and then thrilled and blessed with assurances of divine pardon, acceptance and full salvation.
To this faculty of the soul comes "the still small voice" and the witness of the Spirit to our being born again and wholly sanctified. We have known of totally deaf people who never received a single earthly sound, yet burst into blissful tears, and rippled into happiest of smiles through this power of the soul that heard from and recognized the voice of its God.
Certainly the Almighty would never make such a wonderful thing as the human spirit, with an everlasting destiny before it, and surrounded with a babel of tempting and distracting voices, without giving it the power of hearing from heaven, and knowing the voice of its Maker, Redeemer and Judge. Christ settled this point for all ages and centuries when he said of his sheep that they heard his voice, and knew his voice.
Before passing from the consideration of the strange attribute or sense of the soul, it is well to remember that the Savior in speaking to the dead maiden, youth, and Lazarus, could not possibly have been heard by the corpse. If their spirits were in their bodies, then was there no miracle. But the Bible tells us differently, and to their absent spirits came the divine voice. It reached them, and they returned into their bodies; and he that had been dead four days came forth from the sepulchre.
In the conversion of Paul, when the flash came and he was overthrown, they who were with him saw the light, but he alone heard the voice of the ascended and glorified Son of God.
In addition we notice that the man who is truly called to the ministry, does not obtain it by inheritance as a younger son, or through colleges, nor is it to be taken up as a profession or means of livelihood, but it comes and only can come through the power of the soul to hear the call of God.
Men in criticism of these wonderful facts of salvation and a heaven sent ministry, dub them by the name of impressions. But the Bible says that the Spirit witnesseth with our spirit, and that no man taketh the honor of the ministry upon himself but he that is called of God as was Aaron.
Let it be remembered that we are not pleading for any physical audible sound. No one in religious testimony should say this. We are simply stating that the soul has a hearing of its own. Bless God we have heard, and therefore have we spoken.
A second sense of the soul is that of tasting. David writes, "O taste and see that the Lord is good."
Again he says that the judgments or commandments of the Lord were "sweeter also than honey or the honeycomb." Much is said in the Scripture about "feeding the sheep," while a spiritual bill of fare is seen to consist of milk, honey, wine, bread, meat, grapes, and every kind of delicious fruit. All this of course involves and necessitates the fact of taste and the enjoyment that it is known to bring.
What is here plainly taught in the Word is and has been experienced in the soul. The spirit feasts on the word and truth of God, as the body partakes of agreeable and delightful viands. Gospel sermons and hymns actually taste sweet, and spiritual books and articles are like marrow and fatness.
We once saw a lady at a full salvation meeting who had been deprived of the gospel for months.
Her gaze was never taken from the preacher, while her eyes as well as ears seemed to be drinking in the truth. Her lips worked at times as if she was eating the word; and reaching a hand occasionally to touch a neighboring lady friend, she would say under her breath quickly, as if fearful of losing a word, "Did you hear that? Wasn't that delicious?" A ravenously hungry person at a full table with keenest enjoyment of every mouthful was the picture conjured up most naturally and easily by this scene.
At a large holiness campmeeting in the South, we have seen hundreds of sanctified people crowded around the pulpit, and some almost under the preacher and looking up eagerly into his face as if they would catch and swallow every word he uttered. The working and almost smacking of their lips, with the genial, deeply satisfied expression of their faces, showed their souls were feasting and everything was tasting good.
A third sense of the soul is that of sight.
The Savior said that "Abraham rejoiced to see his day; and he saw it and was glad." Paul declares that the patriarchs died in faith, not having received the promises, but "saw them afar off" While it is said of Moses that he feared not the wrath of the king. but "endured as seeing him who is invisible."
Of course it will be affirmed that all this was the action and result of faith; and so it is in a sense;
but what is faith but soul sight after all? It makes "substance" of things hoped for, and creates
"evidence" out of things not seen.
But the Bible and religious experience have both much to say concerning spiritual illumination and revelation, coming to us from the divine and heavenly side, and that are unspeakably ahead in vividness and power of anything reaching us from the human and terrestrial side.
It is through this faculty of the soul that the Holy Spirit is enabled to flood passages of Scripture with new and blessed meanings to the devout reader. It is this that explains the sudden, deeper visions of God while in prayer; the thrilling imagery of holy testimony; and the marvelous uplifting power upon an audience of a sermon preached in the fulness of the Holy Ghost.
Here we can understand how Newton wrote,
"I saw one hanging on a tree In agonies and blood, Who fixed his dying eyes on me,
As near his cross I stood."
And right here we can understand in a measure the solemn awe-inspiring mysteries of the Island of Patmos; and feel that it was true when the exiled servant of God wrote, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.
And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."
This soul sight has wonderful flashes of power on the deathbed. And it is remarkable that just when the physical sight begins to weaken and fail, the vision of the spirit commences to assert itself.
The former has reached its sunset, the latter its sunrise. There has been a dawn before this, but now the east begins to glow, and a glorious high noon of an unclouded spiritual sight is at hand.
A certain president of a church college lost his wife in early life. He never married again, but remained true to her memory. When an elderly man he died in Christian triumph. Just before passing away he suddenly looked up, said the angels had come, and then with an expression of amazement and delight on his face cried out, "My wife!"
Senator L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, was present in the death chamber and witnessed the scene.
Afterwards in conversation with Bishop Kavanaugh he said in reference to it, "How do you account
for it, Bishop?" The Bishop replied, "I account for it very easily. The Lord is good, and when he sent the angels for our brother's soul, he let the wife come along with them to add to his confidence and happiness as he was swept up to heaven. I doubt not that she was in the room, and he saw her."
Very numerous and amazing have been these death-bed scenes, where time ends and eternity begins, where earth recedes and heaven bursts on the sight, and where the soul shaking itself loose from and standing on the ruins of the worn-out body, sees no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face, and enters upon a knowledge where it knows, even as it is known, perfectly and altogether.
There is a soul sight. But for it many of us would have gone down long ago. By it we read our titles clear to mansions in the skies. Through it we give up the world with its pleasures and rewards, and choose to suffer affliction with the people of God. By it we endure labor, weariness, reproach, slander, and sorrow of all kinds, seeing him who is invisible. And by it we look for rest and reward at the glorious reappearing of our Lord at the great final day. And all who live this kind of life declare plainly to the observing world, that "they seek a country." But it is an heavenly country. For they "look for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
BEULAH LAND By Beverly Carradine
CHAPTER 32