The Bossier banner., 1892-03-24
TALMAGE ON ECHOES.
A. Natural Phenomenon Given a
Spiritual Application.
The slipshod Home Produces It's Echo
In the Children Reared in 1.-THE
Judgement Day the Echo
of All Days.

The following discourse on the sub
feet of Echoes" was delivered by Rev.
T. Dewitt Talmage in the Brooklyn
tabernacle from the text:
The sounding again of the mountains.-Eze-
kiel vii, Z.
At last have found it. The Bible
has in it recognition of all phases of
the natural world from the aurora of
the midnight heavens to the phos-
phoescence of the tumbled sea. But
the wefl-known sound that we call the
echo found not, until few days ago
1 discovered it in my text: "The
sounding again of the mountains" That
is the echo. Ezekiel of the text had
heard it again and again. Born among
mountains and in his journey to distant
exile he had passed among mountains,
and it was natural that all through his
writings there should loom up the
mountains. Among them he had
heard the sound of cataracts and of
tempests in wrestle with oak and cedar,
and the voices of the wild beasts, but
man of so poetic nature as Ezekiel
could not allow another sound, viz:
the echo, to be disregarded, and so he
gives us in our text: 1.-The sounding
again of the mountains"
]. Parental teaching and example
have their echo in the character of de-
scendants. Exceptions? Oh, yes. So
in the natural world there may be no
echo, or distorted echo, by reason of
peculiar proXimities, but the general
rule is that the character of the chill
dren is the echo of the character of par
ents. The general rule is that good
parents have good children and bad
parents have bad children. If the old
man is crank, his son is apt to be
crank, and the grandchild crank. The
tendency is SO mighty in that direction
that it will get worse and worse unless
some hero or heroine in that line shall
rise and say: Here! BY the help of
God, | will stand this no longer.
Against this hereditary tendency to
queerness l protest" And he or size
will set up an altar and magnificent
life that will reverse things and there
will be no more cranks among that
kindred. In another family the father
What they do is right what they teach
is right. The boys may for some time
be wild and the daughters worldly,
but watch! Years pass on, per-
haps ten years. twenty years, and
you go back to the church where
the father and mother used to be con-
sistent mem bers. You have heard moth
ing about the family for twenty years,
and at the door of the church you see
the sexton, and you ask him: ''Where
is old Mr.. Webster?" ''Oh! he has been
dead many years" "Where is Mrs.
Webster?" "Oh! she died fifteen years
ago." Il suppose their son Joe went
to the dogs?" ''Oh: no." says the sex-
ton. HE is up there in the elders seat.
He is one of our best and most impor-
tant members. You ought to hear him
pray and sing. He is not Joe any
longer; he is Elder Webster" well.
where is the daughter, Mary? 1 sup
pose she is the same thoughtless but
terfly she used to be?'' 'Oh! no." SAYS
the sexton; ''she is the president of our
missionary society and the directress in
the orphan asylum, and when she goes
take hold OF her dress and cry: 'Auntie,
when are you going to bring US some
more books and shoes and things?'
And, when, in times of revival, there is
some hard case back in a church pew
that no one else can touch, she goes
where he is, and in one minute she has
him crying, and the first thing we know
she is fetching the hardened man I'D to
the front to be prayed for, and saws:
Here is brother who wants to find
the way into the kingdom of God And
if nobody seems ready to pray she
kneels down in the aisle beside him and
says: oh. Lord! with pathos and a
power and a triumph that seems IN
stantly to emancipate the hardened sim
ner. Oh! no, you must not call her a
thoughtless butterfly in our presence
You see we would not stand it." The
fact is that the son and daughter of
that family did not promise much at
the start, but they are now an echo, a
glorious echo, a prolonged echo of par
entail teaching and example
But here is a slipshod home. The
parents are goddess pair They let
their children do as they please. No
example fit to follow. No lessons of
morality or religion. Sunday no better
than any other day. The Bible no bet
ter than any other book. The house is
sort of inn, where the older and
younger people of the household stop
for awhile. The theory acted on, though
perhaps not announced, is: "The chill
dren will have to do as did, and take
their chances. Life is lottery, any,
how, and some draw prizes and some
draw blanks, and we will trust to
luck" Skip twenty years and come
back to the neighborhood where that
family used to live. You meet on the
street or on the road an old inhabitant
of that neighborhood. and you say:
Can you tell me anything about
the Petersons who used to live here?"
Yes" says the old inhabitant, II re-
member them very we'll The father
and mother have been dead for years"
well, how about the children? What
has become of them?" The old inhabit