I now take up the last but not the least element in the manner of hearing.  That element is sincerity; which I define to be a heartfelt love for the truth.  Paul puts it “Receiving the truth in the love of it.”  The person who hears the truth lightly, thoughtlessly, carelessly is not instructed by it.  The same is true of one who hears with prejudice against the truth.  He refuses to be instructed, because he does not love the truth he hears.  Let me use an illustration here.  Two men once happened to meet at my house, one a Presbyterian and the other a member of no church.  After dinner the subject of feet-washing was broached.  After we had all talked awhile about it one of the men asked me whereabouts in the Bible it was to be found.  I turned to the thirteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, and he then asked me to read it aloud.  I did so.  These two men listened attentively, so, at least, they appeared to me.  The Presbyterian friend very modestly gave it as his opinion that the command is fully met by acts of hospitality, and referred to the reception which Abraham gave the three angels who came to his tent as proof of the correctness of his conclusion.  Very little more was said about it at that time.  The two men, soon after, went away together; and I had little or no conversation with either of them for probably nearly a year afterward.  But it so turned out that the one who was not a professor of religion came to my house again, and showed a desire to talk on the subject of feet-washing.  I was ready to answer such questions as he proposed; and he very soon expressed a wish to know if I remembered having once read the thirteenth chapter of John’s Gospel to him when on a call at my house.  I told him I did remember it.  “Your reading of that chapter,” said he, “struck my mind with so much force that I could not rid myself of the impression it made.  I never, until then, knew there was anything so plain in the Scriptures, and so easy to understand.  I had always thought the Bible was a book of dark sayings, unintelligible to any but the learned; and even in their hands doubtful as to its true interpretation.  Since then I have been reading it, especially the New Testament part of it, and find so much that I can understand that I begin to love it.”  I have only to add that this man soon applied for membership in our church, was baptized, and manifested enthusiastic delight in obeying the command, “So ought ye also to wash one another’s feet,” at the first love feast he ever attended.

In connection with the case I have just described, the two men spoken of heard with different ears.  The ear of the first was so modified by previous indoctrinations that it could almost shut itself in and become deaf or callous when the plain truth was read:  the ear of the last was open to take in the truth; and the mind, being free from prejudice, received the truth from the love of it.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit:  for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The Lord includes all such hearers as the one I have just described, in the promised blessing.