"But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears!" Zechariah 7:11Alas, men's ears are still stopped up! An old Puritan has mentioned seven kinds of what he calls "ear stoppers," which need to be taken out of the human ear. They are frequently blocked up by ignorance.They know not the importance and value of the truth, and therefore they refuse to give earnest heed to it. Judging the Gospel to be an idle tale, they go their ways to their farms and to their business. Some ears are stopped up by unbelief.They have heard the glad tidings of salvation, but they have not received it as an infallible revelation from God, a message backed by divine authority.Skepticism and philosophy, falsely so called, barricade the Eargate against the assaults of the Gospel, so that even the great battering-rams of the gospel prove powerless to force an entrance. "He could not do many mighty works, because of their unbelief!" Others ears are stopped up by impenitence.The hardness of the heart, causes a deadness of the ear! You may discharge the great cannons of the law in the ears of some men, but they will not stir. The thunders of God startle the wild beasts of the forest, but impenitence is not moved thereby. The gospel itself sounds upon such ears with no more effect than upon a marble statue. The groans of Calvary are nothing to them. Some ears are stopped by prejudice.They have made up their minds as to what the gospel ought to be, and they will not hear it as it is. They have set up for themselves a standard of what the truth should be, and that standard is a false one, for they have put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter