The Forrest City times., 1892-01-22
THE ECHOES.
THE SUBJECT OF DR- TALMAoE's
 LATEST SERMON.

from Ezekiel 5s ], Furnishes Thsme
 for sn Instructive Discourse-Echoss
 sf Bsd and Good.
 Talmage gave a new illustration in his sermon this morning of his mastery of the art of drawing spiritual lessons from common natural phenomena. His subject was Echoes and his text: Ezekil :: :. ''The sounding again of the mountains"
 Greek mythology represented the Echo as a nymph, the daughter of Earth and Air, following Narcissus through the forests and into grottoes and every whither, and so strange and weird and startling is the Echo do not wonder that the supcrstitious have lifted it into the supernatural You and in boyhood or girlhood expert mented with this responsiveness of sound. Standing halfway between the house and barn, we shouted many time to hear the reverberations, or out among the mountains back of our home, on some long tramp. we stopped and made exclamation with full lungs just to hear what Ezekiel calls ''the sounding again of the mountains" The Echo has fright ened many child and many man. It is no tame thing after you have spoken to hear the same words repeated by the invisible. All the silences are filled with voices ready to answer. Yet it would not be 30 startling if they said something else, but why do those lips of the air say just what you say? Do they mean to mock or mean to please? Who are you and where are you, thou wonderous Echo? Sometimes its re sponse is reiteration. The shot of a gun the clapping of hands, the beating of drum, the voice of violin are some times repeated many times by the Echo. Near Coblentz-that which is said has seventeen echoes In 1766, writer says that near Milan, Italy, there were seventy such refiec- tions of sound to one snap of pistol. Play a bugle near a Lake of Killarney and the tune is played back to you as distinctly as when you played it. There is we'll 2I0 feet deep at Caris- brooke Castle in the Isle of Wight Dropa pin into that well, and the sound of it's fall comes to the top of the well distinctly. A blast of an Alpine horn comes back from the rocks of Jungfrau in surge after surge of reflected sound. until it seems as if every peak had lifted and blown an Alpine horn. But have you noticed-and this is the reason for the present discourse-that this Echo in the natural world has its analogy in the moral and religious world? Have you noticed the tremendous fact that what we say and do comes back | in recoiled gladness or disaster? So, also, the Judgment day will be an echo of all our other days. The universe needs such day for there are so many things in the world that need to be fixed up and explained. If God had not appointed such day all the nations would cry out, "Oh, God, give us Judgment day." But we are apt to think of it and speak about it as a day away of in the future, having no special connection with this day or any other day. The fact is that we are now making up it's voices, its trumpets will only sound back again to us what we now say and do. That is the meaning of all that Scripture which says that Christ will on that day address the soul, saying, "'I was naked and ye clothed mo, was sick and in prison and ye visited me-"
 My subject advances to tell you that eternity itself is only an Echo of time.
 Mind you. the analogy warrants my saying this The Echo is nc. always exactly in kind like the sound origin ally projected. Lord Raleigh says that . woman's voice sounding from grove was returned an octave higher. A scientist playing a flute in Fairfax county. Va, found that all the notes were returned, although some of them came in raised pitch. A trumpet sounded ten times near Glasgow. Scotland, and the ten notes were all re- peated, but third lower. And the
 spiritual law corresponds with the natural world. What we do of good or bad may not come back to us in just the proportion we expect 1t, but come
 back it will; it may be from a higher gladness than we thought or from a deeper woe, from mightier conqueror
 or from worse captive, from higher
 throne or deeper dungeon. Our
 prayer or our blasphemy, our kind | f,tt
 unbelief. our holy life or our disso-
 lute behavior, will come back some
 how. Suppose the boss of a factory or the head of a commercial firm, some
 day comes out among his clerks or em-
 ployes, and putting his thumb in the
 armholes of his vest, says, with an air
 of swagger and jocosity: Well, don't believe in the bible or the church. The one is an imposition and the other is
 full of hypocrites. l declare l would
 not trust one of those very pious
 people further than I could see
 him" That is all he says, but
 he has said enough. The young men
 go back to their counters or their shut
 ties, and say within themselves: Well,
 he is a successful man and has probably
 studied up the whole subject and is
 probably right" That one lying ute.
 ance against Bibles and, churches has
 put five young men on the wrong track,
 and though the influential man had spoken only in half jest, the Echo shall come back to him in five ruined lifetimes, and five destroyed eter-